Customer Reviews

The New Political Targeting

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For far too long campaigns have used outdated targeting methods. While businesses have used statistical modeling for years, too many campaigns and consultants have been reluctant to embrace it, preferring to rely on instinct and rough approximation.

This book is a roadmap to more efficient targeting and for the campaigns that use it, a way to direct valuable communication dollars with laser like precision.

Political targeting is just as much an art as it is a science, and this book clearly demonstrates how to master both aspects. Malchow presents a comprehensive guide on how to help candidates and organizations execute winning direct mail strategies. It has highly-technical sections for voter contact experts and easy-to-learn concepts for beginners. I'm fairly new to the direct mail world and this book helped bring me right up to speed with current standards, new trends, and best practices.

The New Political Targeting is essential to knowing who your target voter is! This book lays out Political Targeting in an unbiased, non-partisan format that's easy to read and understand. The chapter on targeting absentee and early voters was very helpful to me. I didn't think I'd ever understand CHAID analysis until I read Mr. Malchow's explanation. The book even comes with a CD that helps create a persuasion plan and budget! I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how to reach voters in an efficient and cost effective manner.

Malchow is a targeting genius. Political campaigns for too long have been using a "pick and pray" method of targeting voters. Now comes something new--an innovative method that uses statistical modeling to target voters. The methods that Malchow outlines have been in use in the corporate world for years but haven't made the leap to politics because most consultants don't understand them. Malchow clearly does understand them.

There seems to be a trend in marketing nowadays to repackage old products as "new" and "cutting edge". What Hal Malchow sells as "The New Political Targeting" turns out to be the same old thing. In this case, it is the same old thing he has been selling in his consulting business for years. The book reads as more of a marketing piece for his business than a real how-to of political targeting. Early in the book he admits that his method of targeting isn't the best, but that he continues to use because it is the easiest to produce. I was sad to see that this book didn't represent any groundbreaking advances in targeting, but instead just more of the flawed status quo.

Hal Malchow is a true pioneer in direct mail and political targeting. Malchow's approach is helpful, foucused and eye-opening. This book should be on the desk of every campaign operative -right next to the Tums and the bag of Fritos.