Survive and Thrive: How Political Business Owners Will Adapt in the Age of AI
It’s 2025 and the world is rapidly evolving around us. The political consulting industry — long known for its reliance on traditional playbooks — is fully feeling the effects of the seismic technology shifts that are transforming how we live, communicate and do business.
As we take time to appreciate the rich history of our industry and the amazing advancements that have brought us to the present moment, now is the time to look to the future. The next wave of change is already here and it’s rewriting the rules in real time.
The advent of artificial intelligence is upending the way people work across all sectors. Though campaigns are often late adopters of new tech compared to the corporate world, the pace of change has quickened. New AI-driven tools are automating data cleaning, voter segmentation, content-related tasks and strategic testing. Augmented by AI, once laborious tasks can now be done much more efficiently. This is good news for consultants and business owners willing to adapt.
As AI and automation continue to take on more of the repetitive, manual workload that once consumed hours of staff time, political firms have a unique opportunity to reallocate their most valuable resource: human energy. With less time spent on “grunt work,” more human bandwidth can be devoted to higher-level strategy work.
This shift isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about reinvesting time into the kinds of creative, high-level thinking that only experienced humans can deliver. For business owners and campaign teams alike, the best allocation of this newly gained time is to focus on developing sharper strategy, finding ways to think weeks and months ahead instead of just reacting to the chaos of the moment.
Political strategy itself is also going to evolve quickly. The best practices of the past are going to need to make way for new tactics, and those who readjust the fastest are going to have a competitive edge.
Of course, along with the thrilling new possibilities of full AI integration into campaign life come some major drawbacks. Trust in the media is already at an all-time low, and this year brought the advent of tools that put the ability to create realistic deepfake photos, videos and voices into the hands of anyone with a phone. Political candidates and consultants are going to find themselves spending precious time and energy defending the veracity of the sounds and images they create, as well as countering fraudulent attacks that will become increasingly difficult to disprove.
Paradoxically, this digital uncertainty may lead to a renewed emphasis on analog tactics. Field work, which in some places has found itself under-prioritized in the digital rush, is poised for a renaissance. In-person rallies, direct contact and experiential campaign events will regain value, not just for persuasion, but for authentication. The trend of filling ever-larger arenas for what used to be parking lot stump speeches will continue to become more popular and widely adopted, spreading to the statewide and possibly even local levels.
Consulting firms that want to stay ahead would be wise to reexamine their service offerings. What are you automating and where are you innovating? How are you balancing your digital tools with human creativity? My advice: Put real time and money into creating these efficiencies to free up your mental capacity so you can plan for what’s next.
Here’s an exercise for political business owners: Take a couple of days with your partners or the key members of your leadership team to assess how you have integrated AI into your operation. Has it mostly been used for client-facing work? What’s your mechanism for tracking any efficiencies that have resulted from changes to your workflow? If you have quantified those, how are you deciding how to reallocate that time? Most importantly, have you spent enough time thinking about how technological advances can help with the (often tedious) work of running your firm? Finding efficiencies here will not only result in better operational decisionmaking, but will pay dividends for your clients, too.
This cycle presents a rare moment for first-mover advantage, both in terms of AI integration and in creating physical experiences that ground campaigns in something real. And of course, choosing clients who play well in real life will be key to ongoing success. The ongoing challenge isn’t just about adopting new tools. It’s about rethinking the very nature of campaigning. In a time of such accelerated change, the only real mistake is standing still. The future won’t wait for anyone, but it will reward those brave enough to shape it.
Michelle Coyle, a small business expert, entrepreneur and trainer is the CEO of The Political Business Institute.
