With over three-fourths of states gaveling in next year’s legislative session in January, successful teams don’t wait until the new year to prepare. Planning starts now for a successful 2026 legislative session.
Just like how football season does not really start with the first regular season game. Weeks before, teams meet, strategize and practice — often in a dedicated, sole-focus training camp environment.
The Case For Now
Just like with professional training camps, companies need to start preparation through coordinating all stakeholders, testing narratives and starting to beat the drum of their issues to raise awareness. This is particularly heightened when complex issues are involved.
Coordinating all stakeholders: Teams need time to develop cohesive thinking. Early alignment calls help contract lobbyists, communication professionals, subject-matter experts and government affairs team members learn how each person thinks and works. We often use the phrase ‘building the plane while flying it.’ Starting early with communication allows the controls of the plane to be set before it’s needed in the air.
Testing narratives: You don’t want ineffective talking points to waste your session time, either through traditional polling methods or split-testing with digital advertising. Starting early helps you see how different audiences — general public, legislators and media – respond to different messages.
Raise awareness: Especially with complex issues, raising awareness with the same set of audiences takes time. Our recommendation, composed from a few different studies, is that someone must see your ad three times before they recall it, five times before it moves the needle and over eight times before you achieve significant impact. To flip it on its head: a legislator has to become a quick expert on multiple competing issues. You want time to educate that legislator.
There is an undeniable competitive advantage of deepening relationships in the interim. Lobbyists know this, and it’s time that political communicators do as well.
The Blue Chip Legislator Approach
While the training camp approach emphasizes comprehensive preparation, successful teams also know where to focus their most intensive efforts. This is where the “blue chip legislator” strategy becomes your competitive advantage.
Much like a blue chip stock, a legislator of the same caliber is a longstanding, politically safe member to start influencing. Without a competitive campaign, they will almost certainly serve after election day and through the legislative session.
Targeting them now proves cost-effective and fruitful during the legislative session. By working with on-the-ground lobbyists to identify these members, seasoned communication professionals can deploy the following tactics:
- Pitching stories in their local newspaper
- Creating specific collateral for use in their district
- Driving awareness through digital advertising, direct mail and other means
In particular, we find utilizing advance targeting to reach their sphere of influence can successfully reach their inner circle through word-of-mouth. This type of digital advertising finds the ~2,000 closest individuals to the target — professional associates, donors, staff, neighbors, fellow churchgoers and others. Reaching these individuals with ads at a high frequency can successfully insert your message into the echo chamber surrounding the members.
We’ve seen success for our clients through having a neighbor or other associate informally bring up our issue to the member and drawing attention to an advertisement with the member’s face and name. With little paid media, we’ve successfully made the member feel like there is a large-scale pressure campaign targeting them.
Recommendations
Each organization and company has different needs and resources to accomplish those goals. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to issue advocacy. However, there are applicable levels that can fit with every organization type and size:
- Cost Effective
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- Educating Journalists: When armed with a proper narrative and talking points, reaching out to relevant journalists to position the organization as a subject matter expert can lead to inclusion in future articles.
- Collateral: Although face-to-face meetings remain irreplaceable, collateral plays an important role in providing additional context, like reinforcing ideas through a one-page document.
- Resource Intensive
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- Influencer Sphere: Just like the prior example, running a paid digital media campaign to reach the people closest to a target member can successfully insert your message into their conversations.
- Geolocation Targeting: Again, through paid media, targeting the right locations such as interim hearing locations, capitol complex or large events can get your message in front of the member and a key audience.
- Local Media Sponsorship: Partnering with local publications to host events around your issue can help raise awareness and position your employees as subject matter experts.
- Year Round Engagement
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- Supporter Program: Cultivating and growing an email or text based supporter database throughout the year means you have an active and educated audience to drive advocacy into legislative offices when needed.
- Pre-Session Alert: Another successful tactic we’ve employed for clients is to have supporters drive advocacy into legislators’ offices during the first week of session about the issue to put them on “alert”. While no action can be taken by a legislator, it often reminds them that there is a force watching what they do around a topic.
- Aligning Coalition Partners: When the session starts, everyone is prioritizing their own policies. The time to align coalition partners for mutual support is before everyone gets busy.
While we preach the preference for year round engagement for the most successful campaign, we recognize that not every organization or company has those resources. The next best time to start is now.
