 Good afternoon. Thank you so much. We're really excited about our next panel. I wanted to introduce Dr. Brian Gervais. He's going to head, he's going to moderate our next panel, which is entitled The World of Political Communications. So Dr. Brian Gervais is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Geography at UTSA. He earned his PhD in MA in government and politics from the University of Maryland and his BA in political science from the University of Massachusetts and Hearst. He specializes in political communications and political psychology. Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Brian Gervais and the rest of our panelists. Well, thank you all for being here. I think this is probably, and I'm not biased or anything, but the most exciting panel of today. And that's because we're in the midst of a presidential election. I think perhaps one of the most unique elections in years, if not in a generation. And what we can say about this presidential election is that political messaging still matters. I think that's probably the one constant we can say about elections over time. As new technologies emerge and disrupt and change the old way of doing things, as norms and traditions die out and are replaced by new ones, as political parties evolve and are reimagined and are made up of new interest groups. The one thing that still matters is the crafting of political messaging, or with the attempts to craft effective political messaging. And we are really lucky today because we are being treated to a group of individuals, all of whom are very experienced with crafting political messaging. And hopefully we can learn a lot from their insight today. So let me introduce our excellent panel. We have Dr. Laura Barberina, the owner and consultant of VivaPolitics. Sherri Sylvester, who's a political consultant with Texas for Lawsuit Reform. And James Aldry, president and creative director of Messaging Audience and Presentation. I also understand that you're with the Texas Freedom Network, which I heard was in the news this morning and yesterday, so maybe we can talk about that at some point as well. So what I'd like to start talking about is how each of you got your start in political communication. We have lots of individuals here that are hoping to perhaps have a career in public service. I think it's always helpful to know how people who are successful on the field got there in the first place. So maybe we can start with Sherri. How did you get your start in political communication? Good morning. Thank you all for coming. It's great to see you here. And this is a great time, as Brian says, to talk about this. I have always been in politics. I'm a native Oklahoman. My father was the mayor of the small town. I was born in Oylton. He served between the years. He's finally defeated. My mother ran for city council. She served several terms. So I have never not done this. I was on the student senate at Oklahoma State University. I was very far on the left among my first political, first big political campaigns I worked on was Geraldine Ferraro. First woman ever to run for vice president on a major party ticket. And by the time she was running was in the early 90s. I worked on that campaign in New York, worked for Mayor David Dinkins, did some congressional races, and then shifted to the Republican Party over three or four years. So I have a master's degree in political management from GW, my undergrad in communications from Oklahoma State. And one of the things that I'm excited about being here is that I feel very strongly about the professionalization of political operatives. Being in Texas, I know that Dr. Lauer and James have this too. I'm often competing with somebody who won a judges race in East Poduk County. And I moved to Austin and opened an office and they think they're a genius and they're charging some poor smug candidate, $10,000 a month. And you're kind of going, well, you got lucky. So I think it is, this is something we need to study, we need to do professionally, we need to act with integrity. And so that's why I'm glad to see you all here because I know you're interested in doing it. So exact opposite was not political at all growing up. In fact, I was going to be a filmmaker. I was going to make movies. I was going to be Robert Rodriguez. I was Robert Rodriguez before he was even Robert Rodriguez. I actually went to film school at UT Austin. That's where I got my undergraduate degree. So kind of one of those, I made the wrong turn in Albuquerque kind of things, literally. I was going to build my reel because I was going to be this great filmmaker, right? I was going to build my reel. So I went to work for a Hispanic ad agency in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And the gentleman who started the agency actually had had some political background. He actually had a PhD in political science, had been a speech writer for Jesse Jackson. And through his connections, lo and behold, here I am. At that time, the agency primarily focused on automotive industry. So I was doing a lot of commercials on buying cars. And lo and behold, we get a call. And next thing you know, I'm working on the Clinton Gore 96 race and producing all of Clinton Gore's television, radio, newspaper for the presidential run. So my first campaign that I ever really worked on was actually a presidential, which is completely the opposite of what most people do. Most people kind of start off and work their way up. I actually kind of went up and then went down and luckily have had the opportunity to go back up and down throughout my career. And largely because of this gentleman who's sitting next to me, James Alderete. When I moved back to Texas, I was so fortunate enough to meet him through friends that I had met working on the presidential campaign and was given the opportunity to work for his agency. And it was amazing. He's one of the smartest people I know, extremely talented, and gave me an opportunity to kind of showcase my skills with his firm. The day I left his firm, I literally cried. We were at Taco Cabana. I was like, I don't want to go. But I wanted to go back to school. So I went back and got my masters here in St. Mary's University. And I actually got it in, what is this, one of those, very quickly. I wanted to get it done very quickly. And so then I actually applied for UT Austin actually in the journalism department because I thought I wanted to study media and politics. And I actually got denied, I got turned down from the journalism department to which I was thoroughly depressed. And then thought, okay, things happen for a reason. So the next year I applied to communication studies and realized, hey, this is where I was supposed to be. So my first few years at the University of Texas at Austin, I had the privilege of working at the Annette Strauss Institute, which is an amazing place to be. If you're interested in politics, and it's just a phenomenal organization and they do everything from research to engagement. And so it was quite a wonderful experience. I finally finished my PhD, which I'm really excited about. I'm newly christened. So I just actually defended my dissertation a month ago, so I'm really excited. So hearing this doctor stuff is kind of cool, I have to admit. It took me 10 years to get this doctor. 10 brief years to do it. A gradual degree. Exactly, not a graduate degree. And so then, but throughout working through the PhD, I've been working in politics and working on campaigns and being fortunate enough to collaborate with actually both people up here on the stage. We've had a chance to work on campaigns together, and they've been incredible teachers, and I've learned quite a lot from both of them, and so that's kind of how I got started. Fantastic. Okay. I'd say similar to Cher, I grew up in a political family. My dad was an early lieutenant in the American GI Forum movement, which was a civil rights movement that started off when you had post-World War II. You had a young private that had served in the Pacific arena out of Three Rivers, Texas. It was killed, but the only funeral home in town wouldn't serve them. So LBJ was the Senate Majority Leader at the time, and now Private Felix Longoria is buried at Arlington Cemetery. The movement started by Dr. Hector Garcia out of Corpus, and a lot of young GIs, including my dad, kind of became part of that. So I always kind of grew up in hearing the Mexican American civil rights stories, my family's from different parts of the border. And I had this mindset that if I was going to get into politics, I had to go to law school. So finally at UT Austin, Kathleen Hall Jamison, one of the leaders in political communication was chairing the speech department at the time, and I had enough flexibility in my program to kind of take some communication courses out of government, and I credit her for saving me from law school. So to get into really the communications part of it and get more directly into the campaign part of it, there's a lot of lawyers that are in politics that no longer do anything close to law, but carry that level of debt. So that aspect to kind of get involved, and then eventually went from my masters in communications at UT as well. And my first job, you know, while I had internships and other things, a nice exposure and always was involved, my first full job was with the Ann Richards campaign. And I was interviewing with Glenn Smith, like chair, a former reporter. He used to head up the Houston Bureau, but then was heading up hobbyist office and was the first campaign manager for Ann Richards. And I said, I want to do press. And he goes, that's great. Can you do correspondence? Can you do thank you letters? I'm like, yeah, yes, but I really want to do press. And he goes, that's fine, but can you do thank you letters? And then he kind of told me like 90% of what I do is campaign manager is, you know, politely grunt work still. So partly just when you get into the campaign aspect, there's, you know, more to it than the glamour aspect of crafting messages and what it takes to kind of get people collaborating into a sense of a cohesive team. But nonetheless, every bit of work, including thank you letters, teaches you along the way. Right. So I was talking to Miss Sylvester earlier before the panel, and I heard Dr. Barberina say something similar, that you were interested by the idea perhaps writing for a sitcom, right? And Dr. Barberina was interested in film school. I wonder, is that part of what your job involves? Is it writing stories? Is it selling narratives? Is it sort of a similar approach to what somebody would do who's writing a, you know, a movie script or writing a script for an ongoing, you know, sitcom? Are you selling a story, so to speak? Well, and of course that's the trick of it. Not that it's a trick, but that's exactly what you're doing. I mean, I think when you are in the piece of it that James and Laura and I are in, well, let me say something about it. And we had this in the East. In the East, campaigns are more clearly divided between field and communications. When I was on campaigns out there, I would be the campaign director, which is not a title we use here, and the campaign director handles all communications, and the campaign manager handles all fields. And so it's kind of split, but if you're specializing on the communications piece, you have to have the story, and that's a process. You get that from the candidate, you pull every line of it, every line of that story to find out, because the trick is, okay, here's my principle. Voters are interested in four things, but it's not balanced. Half of what, 50% of what voters are looking for in a candidate is, does he understand my life? Is she empathetic? 50%. We see that, I'm not even going where we're seeing that, but we see that. That empathy will transcend the other three, honesty, competence, honesty and commitment. People are looking for those things, but what they mostly want is a candidate that understands their life. And we see this all the time when we elect crooks, but at least there are crooks. So that's the piece of the story. You've got to be able to bring your candidate's life, so that's why you hear so many narratives, if I started out my life as a Porsche air cropper and a lot of people did. That's why you get that story. That's why Marco Rubio tells you every time he talks that his father was a bartender of mine. He tells that every time he talks. That's important. And we do not hear from Donald Trump that his father was a billionaire. So because he's looking at a different kind of story, he's starting his story somewhere else. Hillary doesn't tell you she married a governor. She tells you about her story so that you can find a connection. I'll let the filmmaker take it. That's kind of the best thing. Definitely. Campaign is all about telling the story and finding that narrative arc. And then to just kind of jump off what you were saying before, new technologies have really changed the way we're telling that story. Before we could do it through mail and television. Now we have the advent of cable, social media. And so now we've got to learn to tell the story in different ways and telling that same story in a way that resonates with niche audiences. What I was able to do on a national level was be able to find my niche with Latino electorate. So producing materials in Spanish language. And so being able to tell that larger narrative to the niche audience of Spanish speakers. But I definitely think in terms of what you all want to know and learn from us in terms of what skill set you need to be successful in this industry. First and foremost, and James taught me this, you need to be a good writer. You have to know how to write. It's amazing how many people don't know how to write and write in a way that you're a good storyteller. And James is a master at that. But really the number one skill I think you need in this business is you've got to be able to write. If you don't have that, there's nothing else. Also within this industry, it's not just about... You know, everybody wants to talk about TV, because it's TV, it's sexy, it's all this stuff. But now we have rarely specialized areas. So for instance, you could become the email person on a campaign. So all you do is you're in charge of just doing email correspondence to voters. You could do just simply fundraising, and all the communication that goes around fundraising. And then again, field. All the communication that goes around field and then social media and all of those things. I always love when I introduce myself to people and I say, what do you do? And I say, I'm a political consultant, communication consultant. And they're like, ooh. And I'm like, no, it's not that sexy. Trust me. Like I'm in sweats, tennies, meeting sign guys in the parking lot, exchanging checks. But we do have a joke that, you know, Albania is hard to rhyme. Have you all ever seen Wag the Dog? A movie? A must-see film, if you're interested in political communications, Wag the Dog is a great movie, because as we try to tell these stories, we often come up with challenges on how we can get past certain roadblocks of how we tell the story. And it's just a fabulous narrative about that challenge that we face. And just to add a few things. Stories are basically, you know, how we connect with each other. It's how we remember things. Every family has their stories, and you'll find that they're very common to other family stories, even though there's going to be nuances and color differences. So it is a way of kind of connection. It's how we organize, you know, the different ideas. We don't talk to each other in talking points or just in statistics. You know, the cliche of Hollywood would be, you know, what's my motivation? But really, our job is to make sure that people do understand a candidate's motivation. And at various points, that's what builds trust. You don't know where they're coming from, you know, what are they trying to get out of it, because increasingly we're very cynical about politicians, especially, I think that's part of the Trump movement. When you're cynical about politicians, it's even more incumbent to express what your motivation is in an incredible way. You know, the buzzword, it's silly, of the moment is authenticity. So now authenticity is now a buzzword, making it slightly less authentic. But a dear friend of mine, back in the Ann Richards days, no longer with us, but Lena Garedo was this feisty state representative. And she played a large role in Ann Richards' campaign. And then in vacancy on the railroad commission, all of a sudden she got big East Texas hair, pearls came on, and her power kind of read, you know, dresses. And it was just, she became slightly something that she wasn't. And unfortunately, in the course of the campaign, you know, the knocks on her story when she talked about her own graduation was kind of reflective of not necessarily being herself. So you're trying to always kind of make that connection of who you are. But again, you put it into a larger story because it's more critical that you really tell people why you're doing things, so to get over trust issues. Can I follow up on that just a second? Of course. But I think there's been a shift, and I'm not sure what you're thinking is about it. But when I got to Texas, as James mentioned, I worked at the express news for a while and I wanted to be a reporter maybe instead of doing politics, but I didn't. And about that time, Dewhurst, David Dewhurst was getting into politics. And how he did that was with money. And he bought his way in, and he was elected land commissioner, and he had millions of dollars, and he was elected lieutenant governor. And he said policy long is a great guy, no comment there on that. But that's how he got in. He was able to blanket the state with television ads, and present people with a story self-made up from the bottom, made all this money. Writing on horse? Writing on horse, doing all that, all of the non-native text, I don't think. But maybe he was. But now, but then when Ted Cruz came along and beat him, by that time we had the Tea Party movement. So we have 175 Tea Party groups in the state. And that campaign went on for like 400 years. But all of those candidates had to, they couldn't do it with that. They had to go to every one of those meetings with people like you and stand there for an hour and answer questions. They had to be authentic, authentically authentic. And that kind of communication, I think, and that's what you also saw was in Iowa. That's of course what they do in Iowa. That's what happened, that the caucus is in Nevada. You really, that personal communication now becomes... And that year, because of redistricting lawsuits, you had those delayed run-offs, and the delayed election part of it, which really changed the rules for Dewhurst, gave Cruz really a chance to run a movement campaign. And so when the rules aren't in your favor, you look for ways to change it, and now it's the Dewhurst that can't compete in this new area. Yeah. And with the advent of social media, money's always important in campaigns. I'm not going to lie. It's always important. But we just finished working on a race, this last election cycle for a judicial candidate. It's the 408 here in San Antonio on the Democratic side. And we were outspent. I think he had, he spent maybe $160,000, and we spent maybe $50, and we ended up in the run-off, and he didn't. So while money does matter, you also have to be strategic in how you do it, and you have to be telling a story, as James mentioned, that really connects to voters, that they understand. And social media allows you to do it in a more economical way, to be able to reach voters. In fact, I'll sit with the first-time candidate, and they'll be like, oh, we don't want to do Facebook, because that's where all the young people are. And I'm like, yeah, right. Like the medium age of Facebook now is 55. You young people, y'all aren't on Facebook anymore. Y'all have moved on, right? Y'all are Instagram, Snapchat. Y'all are totally moved on. But as we know, the electorate is older. And so the reality is, Facebook is a really great way to say, I mean, as soon as my dad got on Facebook, I was like, okay, it's over. It's over. Facebook is now officially part of the electorate communication process. And I will tell you, if you can learn Facebook, you can work on any campaign. Right. Just as soon as I think I've mastered Facebook, they change the rules. Now they get to the little heart. I'm like, wow, where did the heart come from? In the angry face. In the angry face. I'm like, yeah, this is, you know. But they're always changing the ad sizes. But learning Facebook, in terms of what a live ad versus a dark ad, there's all kinds of stuff within the realm of social media and political communications that I think is yet to be discovered. And you guys are just poised to do it because most people think that's where y'all live. Well, I think it's interesting. Sherry and James talked a little bit about the personal communication, a lot of what we see happening in caucuses, candidates meeting face to face, talking directly to voters. And Laura, you're talking about social media. So is social media, can it be as effective as personal communication? And in some ways, does the advent of social media and of digital platforms more generally doesn't make your jobs more difficult? It's constantly changing. There's a lot to keep up. I understand that's a double barrel question. Yeah. Well, you know, it's difficult because, you know, sometimes I have a client who is more concerned about how many likes they have on Facebook than how many positive voters they have in the field program. And that could be a little frustrating because, you know, Facebook is a great tool to use, but it's not the only tool to use by any means. You know, I think you do have to be careful with Facebook because it can consume a candidate's time. It can be like, it's like a gambling addiction, right? I just posted this. How many likes did I get? Well, I only got 50. All right, let me post something else. Oh, I got 160 likes. And so then it becomes this cycle where everything they post, they want to get more and more likes. And we don't know whether or not, you know, that's actually connecting with the voter. What my approach and my company's approach is always about using social media as a way to engage in a conversation. You want to have engagement on social media. You want people commenting. You want to be having a conversation with voters. And then also being able to show the authenticity, which is what I love about social media is periscoping and the voyeurism of online videos, right? Where we can show things behind the scenes so voters can see this authentic candidate. So it's not maybe a fancy slick commercial that we spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars showing them riding a horse. But rather, in fact, it's, you know, following the candidate while they're shaking hands and letting voters sort of see that aspect of the candidate that they wouldn't normally see on TV. It wouldn't be covered by a news. It wouldn't be covered on earned media. But that social media allows that sort of window of a peeping Tom, if you will, to look and see what the candidate's doing. Well, I mean, I want to say something about that, unless you're, I have every candidate that I deal with, I put them in front of a camera and they can talk so that I can see what they look like. And you have to, you can't bring, and every time I do it, every other consultant wants to be in the room because they don't want their candidates saying anything and they're very invested in the content what the person is actually saying. I'm not. I want to know if the person makes eye contact, if they stand up, if they speak with authority and confidence, because that's what people are looking for. Because I think that that when you go out and you're raising that money and you reach out there to shake your hand or you've got to go to your local, whatever it is, and talk to people, that's the key. That is the bedrock. And I don't care if you're running for governor or you're running for the 406th judicial court. So how your candidate presents themselves if they've got a tick, if they've got bad breath, if for some reason they're just not likeable, Ted Cruz. If. It's going to be, that's a challenge. That's a challenge. And he's in second place. So he's overcome some challenges that he's faced with that are pretty natural. But if you're just, and you might say the same thing about Hillary, if you're just not likeable, that's very hard to transcend. And so I want to see that. And if I can tell a candidate, open your eyes, look forward, stop talking, stop talking. Just, you know, the smartest candidates in my experience are absolutely the worst to work with. So they know too much. So would a candidate like, let's say Ted Cruz or Hillary Clinton, would they be more effective if their campaigns were more digitally run? They did more social media, less time in front of a camera and making an argument, look, it's the content of my message that matters, right? It's a substance of the policies I'm pushing forth, which is certainly, I think, something that Ted Cruz would argue, right? He is the orthodox conservative. He's the guy who's putting forth issues and policies important to conservatives. But he loses the sort of game in the debates in front of the cameras. So would it be better for him to do less personal appearances and try to run his campaign more digitally? I'd say, I think there's already a huge digital aspect to his campaign. And I don't think that was his ability to raise money. What he is is largely a movement guy. And social media, I think, works on two ends. I think it could be slightly overplayed. I agree that, you know, you're not going to have anyone with a following that's not a likable person who hasn't, who isn't known whatsoever. So it really all is all about integration and not kind of one or the other. But when you can tap into other communities and so those communities on the evangelical side already exist. Those communities on what you want to call the occupy or the income and the quality part of it on the left already exist. So what they've been able to do is kind of tap and then they continue to build trust. So it's an integrated campaign, but you kind of go to where the voters are and they've developed their base. And I think more ideological people are going to be more easy to tap online. I think I would just kind of argue or nuance your words because it's not really an issue-based and substance-based. It's going to be intensity and ideology that I think are the key factors. Sure. And one thing I'd like to add just with respect to Ted Cruz because he did bring up an issue with respect to political communications that I thought was very interesting and the press didn't really pick up on it too much. But he's really involved his two daughters a lot in his commercials, right? And we saw this video that was leaked of the B-roll footage of him doing multiple takes at the prayer, et cetera. And then what we saw then... And then the commercials where they actually appeared. And then there was a cartoon that showed Ted Cruz and he had the two daughters and they looked like performing monkeys. And he came back very hard and said, you can't attack my daughters, you can't attack my daughters. And I thought, you know, we didn't really have a good dialogue afterwards about that. The cartoon was sort of taken down and it just sort of went away. But I think there's an interesting debate here to say, you know, he politicized them, one could argue, by putting them in the commercial, therefore making them fair game, right? Or you could say, well, he made that decision. They shouldn't even be the product or the topic of satire because it wasn't their decision, it was their father's decision. So, you know, in political communications, we deal with sort of these kind of ethical issues all the time. Do we bring the children in? Do we use the children? Do I use the fact that my candidate's wife has MS? Do I make that part of the messaging? And so we have these ethical issues that we have to deal with in political comm all the time. So, where do you get your news? How do you stay informed? Well, I feel very strongly about that. I feel like you have to vary your news diet. You know, so I work on the conservative Republican side. So I watch an hour of box news every day. I need to do that. If I do that, I watch an hour of public television. On the left side. For your soul. If you don't do that. And I switch it off, you know, if I read the New York Times editorial page every morning and I read the Wall Street Journal. If you don't, you'll lose your perspective. You've got to know the big narrative. And when I have a sister who's very much on the liberal Democratic side and she'll say, did you see such and such? Like everybody has seen this. I am. And the same thing we'll have, we'll say, well, did you read this indictment of Hillary? Oh no, she didn't see that. And just let me say one more thing. It's not enough to get the clips that the people in your tribe are carrying. I used to be quite amazed that the Daily Show and Limbaugh are the same show. Limbaugh comes up every day. He says, I've got this giant stack of stuff and he reads you liberal outrageous from the news. And the Daily Show would come on and they have a giant stack of stuff and they will read you conservative outrageous from the news. That is not a varied news diet. Go in, judge for yourself. And I find at the end of the day, it makes you smarter. You walk away and you'll go, well, you know, they actually had a point. That doesn't happen every day. But they actually had a point or that's a good point, you know. But if you don't do that, then you're a partisan hack. And we don't need partisan hacks in the communication business. We need people that can see the entire narrative and see where you fit in. So I have a digital subscription to the San Antonio Express News. So I wake up every morning and this is true. I wake up at 5.30 in the morning waiting for the email to come through and I'm ready. So the first thing I do is I read the paper, front to back, first thing I do. Because that's going to keep me apprised of what's going on here in my hometown. And if you don't have a digital subscription, I highly recommend it for a variety of reasons. One, because when you work in politics, you want to be one day ahead of the story. And oftentimes you have access to the stories that are going to be printed the next day. So I know what's going to be coming up and I can prepare for it from a communications perspective. I also, you know, if you're in this business, it's all about the tweets. You know, you've got to stay up to speed with Twitter. It's where, you know, it's what things are happening. Yes, I saw somebody just nudge someone. Are you a Twitter hater? Do you hate the tweet? Okay, yeah. And unfortunately, I kind of hate it too. But it really is, that's where the media are. The media are on Twitter and the conversations that are going on about... Dan's just tweeting right now. Yeah, he's tweeting right now. That's what he's doing. He's literally tweeting right now. Yeah, yeah. And if you need a tweet, you know, selfish plug. I'm Biva Politics, by the way, on Twitter. Biva Politics. Anyway. So, but yeah, so you definitely want to look at Twitter. And then my other news consumption is I subscribe to a lot of news aggregate emails. So I get an email like every day that kind of says these are the stories that are going on. So that I kind of get just a quick overview of everything. I wish I read the New York Times editorial every day. I should and I don't. But I try to pick up the Texas Tribune, I mean, digitally obviously and look at that to see kind of what's going on. And then after I have my cup of coffee, then I watch the local news. So I watch the, here's what you got to know for today on the number one news station here. Then I go into my Good Morning America. I watch the first 30 minutes. And then I start flipping over to CNN, Fox, and the various news channels. And that's literally how I get my day started every day. And then by nine o'clock I'm ready to get my day started. So that's what I do. I'd say unlike most liberals, I don't even watch MSNBC. I don't really get much out of cable, television at all. I think Nate Silver's, the title of Nate Silver's book, you know, the signal from the noise is a good one. You really kind of want to look for what's substantive. So yeah, I do read the Times and Wall Street Journal kind of on a daily thing. I think having a sense of how other thinkers even from the other side are looking at things is definitely very informative. It doesn't, I don't think, broaden my perspective, but maybe deepens my perspective on things. And there are plenty of kind of news aggregators, I agree. Like New Stock was one, so I kind of keep up on Latino and immigration ones. My Facebook feed will really tell me what all my liberal friends are outrageous about. And I don't even have to go to Huffington Post because it's going to be right there in front of me. I think you're always looking really for more long format for more insightful parts of it and to try to kind of get off just the hot thing of the day. Right. So my final question I teach you, and then we can open up to the floor, is to craft an effective political message to some extent you need to understand human psychology. So do you consciously think about when you're creating a political ad, a political message of what emotions you're trying to induce? Do you have a particular emotion in mind or when you're thinking about, you know, how you're going to impact a targeted audience? Yes. Is the simple answer. Absolutely. Yeah. I think the first thing is as you look at the different mediums you may be writing for, people take it in differently. So television still for the most part is your best medium because people take it in passively. They're looking to be entertained for the most part of it. Everything else, if you're like writing direct mail pieces, people are sorting through, they have their defenses on it because no one wants to be really persuaded on anything. And so you have to kind of break that barrier but you know that on a direct mail piece, they're going to be a little bit more cynical. You know, on TV that you can hit, you know, the score of music behind it to give it an emotional feel, that you can make it more entertaining, you have audio and visual kind of combination part of it. Radio to a certain extent is passive as well because typically you're driving. If you're actually listening to radio, you know, a lot more money is even going on Pandora to catch people really at work or more leisure hours and how you get those ads there too. But you're always looking for a connection, you know, that people aren't going to accept it unless it goes back to Sherry's original point, unless there's a point of trust. You know, unless you can kind of put people's natural defenses down, you don't get there. So yeah, I think there's lots to be learned really from open mic nights, from stand-up comedy on how people kind of break that silence of what jokes work and what jokes don't. You know, even just from a humor and a performance aspect, and those are kind of quick ones, you find where they have that human moment, sometimes it's a back door and then it opens it up to a broader point. So I'm going to disagree, despite my total respect for Sherry, in saying John Stewart is not Rush Limbaugh. And his insightful commentary would really kind of go way beyond those points to find that human aspect and tell something very intellectual and very deep. And he could get a very intellectual show through a bit of humor. And yes, often it was a bit of outrage, but then it would kind of come down a notch and you'd see that modulation. And I don't personally see that modulation on the Limbaugh part of it. Well, and then oftentimes too, we spend hours like literally writing a commercial, a radio commercial, a TV commercial. And I recall the story, James and I, I had the privilege of working with James when he had the Obama contract in 08. And so we'd spent hours on this radio spot. I mean, we must have had, I don't know, how many meetings on this radio spot. And it was President Obama, he was going to be speaking Spanish. So we finished the spot and I take it home to my mom, because I'm thinking, you know, focus group, my mom. See what she says. So I play it for my mom and I'm like, oh, mom, what do you think? She goes, I didn't know Obama spoke Spanish. And I was like, oh. And I thought, wait a minute, that's a good thing. Like, you know, we spent all this time like trying to craft the message and ultimately her takeaway was that Obama spoke Spanish. And I thought, well, yes, we got her. This is good. But so, you know, it's funny because we do spend a lot of time trying to craft the message and trying to connect the voters. And sometimes it's the things you don't expect that actually do end up making that connection. Yeah, it's at 55% that first seven seconds, the impression before they open their mouth. I think a lot of, in telling the stories, we kind of look at what we're doing with candidates. We're filling empty heads. We've got an unknown candidate. And we're activating latent partisans. Those are the things that we're doing in terms of political speech. This guy's on your team. And we have all kinds of code in which we do that. We're almost never persuading. Because that is the hardest thing to do in communication. For me to try to convince James that Limbaugh is as intellectual as Stuart, that's a hard thing. I'm not going to go for that. I'm not going to win that argument. So what we're mostly doing is getting that empathy, telling that story, which again is why Mario's father, with a bartender, why they tell you Mario's father, and why Ted is using that, those kinds of stories more so that you can understand what people's lies are like. Thank you. So I think we can open up the floor now. I have some questions. Yes, sir. Hi, my name's Sean. Hi, Sean. We're all here from ACC up in Austin Community College. So you mentioned a couple things throughout the panel discussion, and I wanted to kind of link the two specific issues that I was questioning. You mentioned social media use in campaigns and how that's affected how your job works. So with Jeff Bush, he was barely active with social media and very, very open and candid about what he was doing, where he was doing and how things worked behind the lines. With that degree and level of communication, he still lacked that connection. So I guess my question is, that part was obvious. So my question is, what could he have done differently with the use of social media so that he wouldn't have had to do that? You know, I don't know. He was carrying a very old brand. So he had, and you could see how he was trying to do that with the rainbow exclamation point. He was trying to create a new brand. So he was in the persuasion piece. He had to persuade you that what you already believed about a Bush was not true, and that he was somebody different. So he had a harder challenge than Sarah Cruz, who nobody knew, with your mark. I think, I would probably go back to mine, James May and Laura might have an idea about how to do it, but I would go back to mine as your principal product, I hate that word, is the candidate. And I would have advised Jeb differently. Jeb had a campaign since 2002. So that's like 400 years ago. So he had no really, no expertise. As a Democrat in Texas, you know, we never took much pride that George W. Bush came from here. But we always said that Jeb was a smart one, and now we're questioning that part of it. You know, I don't know that it was a social media thing that he could have done differently. I think that timespan that Sherry talks about was huge, that he was out of step with where the Republican Party is right now. In 2008, his name is not coming to me at the moment, but the chief pollster for Hillary Clinton got the wrap for not catching that it truly was a change election. And it wasn't an experienced election. You know, if you go back last summer, you know, even as Trump was coming up, and I was asked on the panel, you know, who would I think? I said, in the end, patterns were reinforced themselves, and I still predicted it was Bush, and how wrong, pathetically, I was on that prediction. But the fact that there is that level of antitrust and in the coalition and where that intensity is, what you're looking for right now, and I think social media adds to this, on general market media, Sherry's right, we kind of fill in a thing, and we can make it, you know, an emotional connection. Really, on social media, to the large extent, you're increasing and reinforcing intensity. And on that part of it, you know, where the Republican primary is now, he was just out of step and uncomfortable as a campaigner, which I don't know that you can compensate for in social media tactics. Although the brilliant Mr. Al Grettinger might have had it, Jeff, the smart one. He could have gone that way. Yes, sir? One or two candidates that used the media the best, what would they be, and more importantly, what about their campaign and use of media so far in the main event? It's hard to judge, because it's always really about your strategic objectives and kind of the position that you're in. I'll say right now, while I'm working on the Hillary campaign, the Bernie Sanders campaign is putting out some very powerful stuff. The logic stand is because they're a movement campaign. And so if you saw the Erika Garner story, they get to do a long format part of it. They get to tell kind of long, really beautiful stories. And then how that's bringing in and making a connection with people that are less politically involved. So while he is not necessarily camera-friendly, he is, in that sense, very kind of authentic and is a movement person. My argument would be that he hasn't put enough skin in the game and there's a reason he can be that consistent. But if you're talking about media aspects to it, I think their campaign is doing some amazing stuff. I'm going to talk a little bit more about maybe the messaging, not so much the media portion of it. But I think Ted Cruz has done an excellent job and part of that is because he's using technology. I don't know if you all know this, but there's such thing as a Ted Cruz app, right? There's an app for that. So when you like him, you get the app and they ask you a series of questions. And essentially what they're doing is they're creating a psychological profile of you. So once you've gotten into the system, well, it's actually even more scary than that. Not only are you in their system and they know your psychological profile, so they know what kind of Republican or what kind of conservative you are. So they know, okay, when it comes to the gun message, I need to word it in this way if you're this kind of a Republican. But if you're this kind of Republican, we'll tweak the messaging on guns for you in this way. But what's even more interesting is what he's doing. It's once you've signed on onto the app, essentially what you're also doing is you're giving them access to your cell phone. So all the data on your cell phone, they're able to have access to. So they're really using technology in a way that's allowing them to really zero in on that message, really targeting. It's not just that it's a gun message, but it's a specific gun message about the kind of conservative that you call yourself and think of yourself. So I think they've done an excellent job in utilizing technology in that respect with the messaging. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that Ted has really pushed the envelope. But I think the people that we deal with here, I mean, I think the governor's good. The governor has a huge operation, huge communications operation. And it's interesting to watch his strategy. The 10th governor is very good, but the 10th governor is a professional communications person. He's did television and radio for years. And that makes him atypical among politicians. But when you watch him speak, you know, he stands up and he knows exactly what he's doing and he knows time. And most candidates, you have to tell him what three minutes is in one minute. All I hate is he's got that down. And the governor, I think, has been doing it for so long. They have good, good operations. There's just some candidates who have that je ne sais toi, right? They just, they got it, man. I don't know, it's just, like, I remember one time I was working with Henry C. Snettles, who's like the master of communications. So I was doing a commercial with Henry and I didn't have a teleprompter. So I had the script written out and I said, secretary, I don't remember just secretary at that time, but Mr. Secretary, here's the script. And, you know, we don't have a teleprompter. All right, okay, I'm ready. And I'm like, you know we don't have a teleprompter. Yeah, I'm ready. Okay, he freaking got it in one take. One take. I mean, he's just unnatural. They're just some people who have that gift. And that's not to say that if you have a candidate, it doesn't have that gift. You can't teach them and get them the skills to get there. But they're just some candidates who innately just know. They're just good communicators. And that makes my job a lot easier. And I think we'll see more and more of that because as you watched the presidential field on the Republican side win, I mean, on the Democratic side, both Hillary and Bernie are good communicators. But, you know, we lost, what's his name? Who was that? Oh, Malley. Oh, Malley. We lost him. And who was that early governor who was going to win from Michigan? John? Scott Walker. Yeah, Scott Walker. Yeah, I mean, you know, and he gets up there and he's there in the headlights and this thing's gone. Hi, my name is Rebecca and I am a middle school teacher in Austin and currently working on a congressional campaign as well. My question for you is in regards to the different types of political communication. Is there a different way that you communicate with people who you want to vote for your candidate and people who you want to volunteer for your candidate? And if so, how are the strategies different and how does that make them effective? You know, I live in Travis County on every Democratic list. I don't sign up for it. You just kind of get spammed and they're asking you to volunteer every time. Like it just kind of comes out. And so people do just, I think, kind of fill up a lot of that email, especially aspect of it, without building that level of trust. So on the volunteer aspect of it, I don't know, it's kind of what you're trying for a voter but on crack. And unless you have connection, connection, connection, and you have to make sure that not every communication isn't asked. And sometimes there's a give and sometimes there's just a share and they don't always have to be, you know, a thesis but then you need some short things that just kind of keep them, you know, up to speed. And then you're looking for any way that adds personalization. You know, when you still, after even donating or whatever, if you get your friend or you don't even get a personal, you know, first name in there and it's just kind of an automated part of it, you're losing that ability. I think overall, even with voter persuasion, I think there will be continued movement towards personalization on the volunteer aspect unless you're feeling, unless you feel both connected and then appreciated, you're not going to be there. Yeah. And to kind of add to that and the personalization and volunteers, we kind of like to shame them. Shaming always works. So say for instance your candidate has a teacher's union endorsement. So then we'll start targeting, we'll do a volunteer push for teachers to say, you know, this candidate has fought for you, this candidate has done all these things for you, now they need you to step up for them. So, you know, you kind of tailor the message in that way so you're actually building off of relationships that they have and sort of that connection, right, with a specific group that may have endorsed your candidate. And that's always a good way to go. It kind of sounds tacky to say shame, but it works. I just, one last comment, Sergio, you always have to remind them why it matters and not assume that they remember why it matters. Right, this person voted this way during the legislature or blocked this bill and they've stood up for you, now they need you to stand up and then ask them to volunteer. And I've always found too that when you ask very specifically what it is you want them to do, not make a general ask, they'll say, just come volunteer. It's like, well, what the hell does that mean? But if you say, hey, come, we're going to be labeling postcards and we need you this Saturday from 2 to 5 or we need you to block walk for one hour and just come, we'll give you a t-shirt and water. So actually making a specific ask for the volunteer I think also helps because it takes off that what are they going to make me do? I don't feel comfortable speaking on behalf of this client, on this candidate. I don't know them that well. So kind of giving them that kind of specifics helps. And put the whole message in the subject line. Somebody's going to read it. And my friends do not send me emails and say dear friend. So don't do that. I think we have time for one last question in the back. I'd say I go back to often at least. And this is just a writing thing. I go back often to George Orwell and politics in the English language. So that's pretty much a standby for me. I think if you're really looking for, you know, on my side I think it's always you're looking to inspire. I think liberals or those to the left are looking for that inspiration and that larger sense of community. I think frankly there's any JFK stuff but Ted Sortsen, you know, are stand-bys. And I frankly even say that there's unique ways of listening to the current pope. And I learned I integrate that as well because he just has a new way of changing an old brand and connecting with folks that's pretty amazing to watch. I don't have this poster next to my computer but you know the poster with a little cat hanging in there? I read on the onion that he actually let go. So I thought that was kind of funny. Actually the one quote that I kind of go to, it's not even a speech, you know, but it's something that I kind of cynically live my life by and that is a quote from to kill a mockingbird and that is showing real courage is fighting even when you know you're going to lose. And sometimes on the liberal side we feel that way, you know. We know we're going to lose but you fight the fight anyway because you know it has to be done. I have a couple of things. One of them is don't believe you're on the press. Another is, and that's really important, the only relevant question in politics is compared to what? It shifts every time. A candidate that lost badly will win again. And I do have, and I have a sign over my computer that says what does God want me to do and often I look at that almost every day and it's like too tough a question. So just get back to the email but I do think you have to, it's too tough to answer but I mean I think you really do have to focus on what's driving you to do this work and see the bigger picture. And I also try to surround myself with people who love to do this work. I would much rather work with someone who's not as talented but enjoys doing the work and is fun and enthusiastic about doing it and I'll do a shout out to Pat Wallace in the back who works with me, wave your hand Pat. We laugh, we spend so much time laughing and we just love what we do and being around people that love what you do and I surround myself with people who don't have the same politics as me but we have great conversations and we respect each other but we really love the world of politics. Well this was fantastic and I think I could sit here all day and listen to your stories and your insight. I learned a lot and I hope you all did too. Please give our panelists a big round of applause. Thank you so much. We had a great time listening to the panel on political communications. We're going to break for lunch now. So if we can, we're getting the rest of the sandwiches here set up. We've got box lunches for you. If you will, please, when you finish your lunch, if you'll break your boxes down before you throw it in the trash, it'll help us coordinate that a little bit better. You're welcome to sit out in the student lounge.