From Jesse Ventura to Ned Lamont, ad man Bill Hillsman is king of the outsider candidate, and he’s stirring the pot again in 2010.
Bill Hillsman is the founder of Northwoods Advertising, a Minneapolis-based advertising agency. Recognized as one of the most creative media minds in the business, Hillsman’s political ad campaigns have resulted in some of the biggest upsets in modern campaign history. He created ads for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and former Gov. Jesse Ventura (I-Minn.).
C&E: What is your read on the mood of the electorate heading towards November’s midterm elections?
Hillsman: I think it’s shaping up the way we’ve said things have been moving for a number of years—certainly since 1998 and probably even since 1992. For well over a decade now self-identified independent voters have been growing. They’re the swing vote in every important election and they’re really coming into their own.
I would suggest that if you did a straight up analysis that’s not colored by pollsters of either party and the questionnaire is not gamed, you would find self-identified independent voters are pushing up towards 35-40 percent of the electorate. Those voters certainly played a huge role in 2008, but I think this could be the year we really see them taking control of the process.
C&E: Given the types of candidates you have worked for over the years, this cycle seems tailor made for you.
Hillsman: We’re definitely going to be doing some candidate campaigns. A lot of that is sorting itself out as we speak. But I think you’ll also see us involved in some other ways this cycle particularly as a result of the [Citizens United] Supreme Court ruling. So you may see us doing things other than just straight campaign and candidate advertising. I can’t say too much more. All I can say is that we’ve been working very hard on something that I think we’re going to roll out around Independence Day this year. Hopefully, if it all comes together the way we’re planning, it could be a major factor in this year’s elections.
C&E: You obviously think the Citizens United decision will have a big impact on what happens this November.
Hillsman: I do think so. The rules really don’t apply anymore. Here’s what I’d say to a campaign: Go out and get the money, and this is particularly true if it’s a non-federal race, but go out and get the money where you want it and put your message up. If somebody doesn’t like it say, “Take us to court over it.” I also think people are looking at the Citizens United decision a bit one-sidedly; everybody’s looking at it as the fear of corporations being able to be out there with money, but it cuts the other way, too. If I were a union, I’d go and openly endorse whatever candidate I wanted to and run whatever advertising I wanted.
C&E: When it comes to deciding whom to work for, what are your criteria?
Hillsman: We aren’t tight with either of the two parties, and we aren’t really the type of firm that incumbents are looking to hire. So it goes back to what you were saying before: This is a pretty good cycle for us. What we’re really about are outsider candidates. We are most interested in opening up the system and giving people more choices. That could mean independents, it could mean third party candidates or it could mean challengers within the two party system in a primary—much like we did with Ned Lamont in Connecticut in 2006 and to a certain degree with Jack Ryan in the Republican Senate primary in 2004 in Illinois.
C&E: In your book “Run the Other Way,” here’s what you say about consultants: “The overwhelming majority of political consultants are a craven and narrow-minded bunch who would be failures in nearly every other field. They are hired guns with no soul and an inability to shoot straight, both ethically and functionally.” So, you’re not a big fan of consultants?
Hillsman: Well, I’m talking mostly about the industry in Washington, D.C. I think there are the occasional consultants who work in specific states, and I’m thinking a state like California in particular, where they are so surrounded by better marketing and better advertising that they haven’t had a choice but to raise their game. But by and large, if you look at what’s coming out of the Washington political consultancies, it’s the same tired strategies that we’ve seen for decades now. What passes for creativity in the D.C. consulting sphere is stuff that would be laughed out of the room in a commercial marketing setting.
C&E: Is there something in particular that you see over and over again in political media that drives you nuts?
Hillsman: Everybody feels like they have to do a bio ad that talks about the candidate’s background and all of that stuff. What I try to convey to my candidates is that the world is not waiting for another commercial of another white guy in a suit talking to the camera about something. And the industry’s way of overcoming the reluctance of anyone with half a brain to watch that type of message is to run more of it.
I just don’t believe you’re doing a service by trying to annoy people into voting for your candidate. We found out that doesn’t work in product advertising.
C&E: Then why do you think we see the same thing over and over? It’s not as though all the consultants who make those ads just keep losing races.
Hillsman: Well, the good part of being a defined Republican or defined Democratic candidate is that as long as there are only two choices in an election, you have to win a certain percentage of the time. It’s not hard for consultants to make the argument that they’ve got “X” number of winners. Of course, nobody actually talks about their winning percentage or figures out how many losers they’ve had. But that’s part of the equation right there until the industry gets opened up a little bit more and voters have more choices. The people who are aligned with one party or the other are always going to have a significant number of winners. But I really think … I should probably stop, there actually.
C&E: No, please go on.
Hillsman: OK, I’ll say one other thing. There’s such a closed mindset on a lot of this stuff. It’s a risk-averse mindset, and because of it the parties say, “We know how to do these races. We’ve been doing these races for a long time.” They’re very resistant to change when someone is winning using a certain formula. And both parties use pretty much the same formula. It’s to go out and raise as much money as you can and then run this particular playbook. The one thing that they haven’t really been looking at is that
the winning margins keep getting lower and lower. That should tell you something. But the parties designate the consultants, and there’s a revolving door between the consultants and the parties.
C&E: What are your relationships with people in the political consulting community like?
Hillsman: Well, I have been a member of the AAPC since 1990 and I haven’t necessarily been low profile. I’m sure there are people that can’t stand me, but there are many people in the industry that I consider to be friends. I also think there are people who don’t
really have an axe to grind anymore and have lived through many election cycles—someone like Ray Strother who may not have really liked or believed what I have been saying for years, but now tells me, “Boy, you were right about a lot of this stuff.”