BEHIND EVERY VICTORY
THERE IS A STRATEGY
The difference is strategy
About our firm
The Strategy Group was founded in Chicago in 1989 by progressive campaign professionals committed to the idea that strategy makes the difference between winning and losing. Since our founding, we have grown into a national firm with offices in four cities (Cleveland, Washington DC, Chicago, and Los Angeles) and an unparalleled record of success.
Our team served as sole direct mail strategists to then-State Senator Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, along with his Presidential primary campaign in 2008. We reprised the role in the President’s re-election campaign in 2012, with Strategy Group partners embedded in the campaign’s senior leadership, overseeing all national direct mail testing and production.
In 2020, The Strategy Group helped elect Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to Congress – fully 2/3 of all new Democratic seats picked up – while guiding NC Gov. Roy Cooper and frontline Congressional clients like Elissa Slotkin, Conor Lamb, and Andy Kim through challenging re-election campaigns.
We played a role in 4 of the 8 Democratic gubernatorial pickups (ME, IL, MI, NC) in 2016 and 2018, helped hold Democratic governorships in CA and RI and helped elect 3 of the 6 female Democratic Governors serving in 2020. We also helped Democrats take back Congress, working in 12 House pickup races, including 5 in districts won by Trump and in 2 of the top 3 upsets in the country, according to the New York Times.
During that same time period, we also guided a variety of diverse candidates through primaries and generals – ranging from U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Tammy Baldwin to legislative and municipal candidates across the country. Finally, we helped organizations ranging from AFSCME, EMILY’s List, Sierra Club, LCV, House Majority PAC and Senate Majority PAC realize their goals up and down the ballot.
Our strategic approach to campaigns
The cornerstone of our firm’s philosophy is that direct mail isn’t something that you can just purchase “off-the-rack.” That’s why we work with every campaign to engage with the issue at hand and build a strategic program long before it’s time to produce the first piece of mail.
We’ve developed a thorough, sequential process designed to match the right mail with the right message for the right targets to achieve our clients’ goals. Our approach has been honed through 30 years of campaign experience in nearly every state across the country.
writing a plan
The hallmark of our approach is the development of a detailed mail plan.
The mail plan is an analysis of the political environment based on current polling. The plan presents our theory of the campaign by bringing together targeting data, election history and polling to layout messaging, targeting, and our proposed mail pieces – and showing how the mail fits into the campaign’s overall communications program.
Persuasive Storytelling
Our mail employs original photography and creative designs to present a compelling narrative that stands on its own and complements the other communication channels
Original Photography
We work with photojournalists from across the country for our campaigns. A Strategy Group team member will be on-the-ground to direct the shoot, and we pass all travel and photographer fees through at-cost, with no upcharge.
Creative – And Effective – Design
Throughout our work with the Obama campaign, we redefined how to test political mail creative design—designing the most detailed and rigorous mail testing program in political history.
Amongst competitors, our mail placed more top-testing pieces in every category tested—Medicare, the economy, women’s health, and education.
Since the Obama campaign, our firm has continued to play a leading role in testing mail, participating in dozens of Experiment-Informed-Programs that measure everything from overall persuasion impact on an electorate to design best practices and the impact of layering channels.
Our Record Of Moving Voters And Winning Elections Is Tough To Beat
67%
of the time in presidential online testing, mail produced by The Strategy Group moved more voters than the competition.