This document provides tips for managing consultants and campaigns for land use approvals. It outlines five fundamentals for an effective campaign: 1) Agree upon a clear campaign goal; 2) Conduct thorough political due diligence; 3) Use campaign management programs to keep the team organized; 4) Set up a campaign database to track supporters and opponents; 5) Establish metrics to monitor progress towards the goal and gauge consultant effectiveness. Following these fundamentals provides focus, accountability and the ability to adapt to changing conditions.

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Managing Land Use Campaigns
Tips for Managing the Unmanageable
Patrick Fox
Every commercial real estate development team is made up of
experts from a variety of disciplines. Managing them and the
roller coaster-like permitting process is not for the faint of heart.
With some team members, their role is clear and you can easily manage
them and chart their progress. For example, the traffic engineer completes
a traffic study. His mission is clear. We can see it in various stages and
gauge the quality and speed at which the work is being done. When his
work is finished, you can hold it in your hands and point to it. It is not so
easy to manage the campaign consultants whose job is winning approvals
whether it’s a referendum or a vote of a local board.
How do you track progress? How do you know if your strategy is working
and how effective your consultants are being? When you get to the end of
the process and lose the vote, it’s too late to fix it and all the time and
money it took to get you there are lost.
Some will tell you it is the difference between an art (politics) and science
(engineering) but that’s not entirely true. Don’t be distracted by the
mysterious voodoo that they do. Campaign professionals are a dime a
dozen. Anyone can hang out a shingle and claim this expertise and the
problem is, many do. Politics, public relations, advertising, survey research,
branding, social media, salesmanship, organizational management,
database management and a myriad of other skills are part of the mix and
broad experience is essential.
Hiring the guy who knows a guy will not cut it. Whether it’s a full-fledged
referendum vote, moving swing board votes with constituent pressure or
simply providing political support so officials won’t be faced with political
suicide by supporting your project in the face of NIMBY hoards, you need to
be able to manage and execute a comprehensive political strategy.

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Campaign Essentials
There is a basic foundation to an effective campaign and if you understand
some simple principles, you will know the right questions to ask, how to
chart your progress and how to manage those unmanageable consultants.
More time and money gets wasted in land use political campaigns than you
know. An old saying in advertising says, “I know half of my budget is being
wasted. I just don’t know which half.” The same can be said of most
political and land use campaigns. If you can’t measure it, you cannot
manage it.
On every campaign there are a thousand things you could do but only a
handful you must do. Every campaign is essentially a math problem. We
need to identify our voters and get them out to vote in the case of an
election or referendum. We need to identify supporters and actively
engage them to demonstrate support and generate constituent pressure in
the case of a hearing or commission vote.
Five Campaign Fundamentals
There are a limitless number of elements and tools you can build into your
campaign plan but make sure you include these five campaign fundamentals
first and everything else will fall into place.
1. Agree Upon a Campaign Goal
Examples
 Win the board vote.
 Win the referendum.
Make sure everyone understands what the ultimate goal is and that they
stay focused on it. Mission creep is common and consultants are always
looking to do more. Reign them in by refocusing them on the objective.
Keep asking, “How does this help us achieve our campaign goal?”
Every element of your campaign must be judged on its effectiveness in
meeting the campaign goal. Time and resources are limited and if it does
not move us toward that goal, we don’t do it. Ideas get thrown around all
the time and there are too many good ones to do them all. We need to
prioritize and choose based on cost effective achievement of our goal.

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It can get crazy in the war room. The ground can shift beneath you pretty
quickly and you need to be able to act and react to changing dynamics.
Agreeing on a clear goal provides focus and clarity of thought for decision
making throughout the campaign.
Try this exercise. Ask your campaign consultant to tell you in one simple
line: “What is our goal?”
2. Conduct a Thorough Political Due Diligence
Do not ever walk blind into a municipal hearing and do not take anyone’s
word for it that “Everything will be okay”. Good projects die every day
because developers ignored the politics and believed they would be able to
slide it through. In this age of social media and the internet where everyone
thinks they can fight city hall and win that happens less and less.
We have seen clients spend millions on development projects when they did
not know that the Speaker of the House’s mother lives across the street or
that the Mayor is in a blood feud with their lawyer over a project from three
years ago or that the entire board was just elected on a “no-growth”
platform and there is no way they are voting yes on anything. You need to
know what you are getting into and yes, some fights are just not winnable.
Find out early and make an informed decision about the resources it will
take to win and if you are willing to take that on.
Do not accept the reassurances of locals or a wink from your lawyer. Verify
all assumptions with a third party, someone from outside who can walk
around town and ask the right questions. Review the local newspaper for
the last year and know the local players and issues. What was the last big
project proposed in town? What happened to it and who opposed it?
3. Use Campaign Management Programs
Campaign management systems help keep the entire team on the same
page. Everyone on the team can access the web based system and input
documents, drafts and updates so that everyone stays up to date and there
is less likely to be duplication of effort, missed deadlines or dropped balls.

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4. Set up a Campaign Database
Regardless of the type of campaign we are running, we are always trying to
identify supporters and opponents. A campaign database is the central
depository for this information. This is the heart of the campaign. We can
keep running totals of who is with us and who opposes, as well as more
detailed micro targeting data that will help us with canvassing, generating
targeted outreach and other highly effective campaign tools. All data gets
funneled into this database from phone calls, meeting attendees,
correspondence, web and social media signups and any other forum.
When you look at internet and social media strategies (a necessary and
integral part of any effective campaign today), remember your campaign
goal and keep asking how these elements help you achieve it. Most
campaigns build web sites and set up Twitter and Facebook channels just to
have them. They often serve no real purpose and are not properly
integrated into the campaign. All internet and social media must be set up
first and foremost to capture supporters and add them to our campaign
database. When utilized correctly, they are very powerful tools.
With a campaign database, we can build metrics to chart progress and
monitor campaign performance. It also gives us the ability to scale up if
needed and adapt the campaign quickly to changing dynamics.
5. Metrics
If we can’t measure it, we can’t manage it they told us in business school
and they were right. Put the right metrics in place and review them weekly
or twice monthly to keep everyone laser focused on campaign goals and
gauge effectiveness of what is and is not working. Keep the list short and
focused. Typical campaign metrics might include:
 Total number of identified supporters
 Total number of identified supporters this week (or month)
 Total number of petition signatures gathered
 Total number of citizen support letters gathered
 Total number of supporters committed to attend hearing
 Total number of supporters promising to speak at hearing
Tracking these key metrics will ensure you know when the campaign is
losing momentum or when the political landscape is shifting around you.

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You will be able to track the effectiveness of your campaign staff and hold
them accountable.
Every campaign is an attempt to organize chaos and the fatal flaw in most is
a lack of focus. Starting with these campaign fundamentals should give
clarity to your strategy, the ability to adapt and react quickly to changing
conditions and a dashboard to monitor and ensure progress towards your
goal.