Leonard W. Hall Quotes

TV ads are great for broadcasting, but voter turnout is about narrow-casting. And not all messengers are created equal.

In campaigns we concentrate on the differences [between the candidates.]

The 1934 Republican response to the Upton Sinclair campaign for California Governor marked a stunning advance in the art of public relations, in which advertising men now believed they could sell or destroy political candidates as they sold one brand of soap and defamed its competitor. In another twenty years, these techniques would spread East, achieve a new refinement, and begin to dominate the politics of the nation.

I'm not against T.V. advertising for campaigns, but we need to emphasize field campaigning much more than we do.

Campaigns are about adjustments.

In terms of the ability to go out and win - this is why you have campaigns. You go out, and you take your issues to voters, and you put them out there, and people respond, or they don't.

The public relations phases of this campaign call for the same careful planning and strategy as you and your staff employed in setting up the invasion of Normandy, and the same careful planning that we, in our business, employ in order to insure the successful introduction to the public of a new product or service.

Madison Avenue’s advertising men are going to run much of the show and ‘sell’ the candidates with the same compelling advertising techniques that they use to sell carloads of toothpaste, cigarettes and soap.

Eisenhower was willing to experiment with television to promote his candidacy, his Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson was less inclined to do so. Fearful that the election might become a simple decision between “Ivory soap vs. Palmolive,” Stevenson shunned short, televised commercials and opted instead to talk sense to the American people with more substantive speeches.

I have serious doubts about the value of debates in a presidential election. They tend to be a test of reaction time rather than a genuine exposition of the participants' philosophies and programs

All presidential elections will ultimately be a fight for the middle.

In the 1972 election campaign the citizen would be the victim of the most sophisticated sales blizzard ever inflicted on any voting population anywhere.

Americans no longer gather in the streets to hear candidates; television is the new focal point of politics.

It will help your campaign tremendously to have the energy of young people on your side to canvas voters, gain supporters, spread news, and make you look good.

When Republicans went to college and studied business, they took a course in marketing and found out how people really think. Progressives need to take a lesson from that.

Since the rise of television in the 1950s, the media have become the central forum for American politicking, and increasingly today that role is being played by the blogosphere. With the blogger and the viewer replacing the pamphleteer and the parader, politicians focus on marketing themselves and their causes to passive consumers rather than mobilizing passionate soldiers. The new language of politics sounds like this: Spin doctors stage photo ops as pollsters survey voter preferences, spawning celebrity candidates.

I think film promotion has become really important in today's time. PM Narendra Modi also felt the need to do campaigning. If he doesn't do that, then nobody will give vote to him.

A lot of times, with campaigns or parties, things are cyclical. We need a long-term strategy on how we continue to engage that goes beyond chair to chair. Always, you are balancing resources with your strategy because you have to win elections.

Campaigns are conducted specifically because of the Electoral College, and people accept it and they understand it. Whether they know it or not, they accept it.

Promotion and perception are synonymous twins of art marketing.

Presidential election campaigns offer a unique opportunity to educate the public and engage in an intelligent dialogue on issues of national importance.

I would love to be a mentor to many people who want to go into the political arena, teach them the art of winning elections.

There's no question that the marketing and advertising world is ahead of the political marketing the political communications world.

The main influence on voters should be a series of robust debates among the candidates. It's a free country, so this is a tough problem to solve, but I'd love to see an election season with zero political ads, and all voters had to decide based on watching four national debates over the two months leading to election day.

Pre-poll and exit polls have now become a commercial proposition. No longer are they viewed as means for a debate or means for enriching the voters and improving the quality of political campaigns. They have become yet another way of manipulation.