While there has been a lot of hype that says Democrats have the 2016 Presidential Election in the bag and the electoral map is stacked in our favor, a simple look in the history book says otherwise. In the history of the modern presidency, after being in power for two terms, the party in power has flipped more often than not, with a couple notable exceptions.

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we’re always on the lookout for innovative direct mail and marketing campaigns to inspire our creativity. We often look to the commercial world for ideas that could translate to the political or advocacy direct mail world. Here are three campaigns we love:

A campaign logo is something that many candidates obsess about. The color, the font, the stressing of the first vs. the last name, incorporating a candidate photo or a sprit animal, we’ve heard it all. I like a good campaign logo, but this is a time in which many first-time candidates get taken advantage of. Yes, the campaign’s brand is undoubtedly important and it is worth some conversation, but it should not be a long, arduous, drawn-out process. With that said, here are a few important items to consider when you’re designing your campaign logo.

Here at The Campaign Workshop, we do a fair amount of member communication. Whether it be for labor unions or advocacy organizations, there are some basic do’s and don’ts we try to follow. Here are some tips:

There is a lot of talk these days about programmatic buying and how digital advertisers use it as the primary way to buy digital advertising.

It was a great year to go to Vegas for BISC's Road Ahead conference. It’s always a good time to visit Vegas when its 12 degrees in DC. As we leave BISC, it is clear that progressive campaigns have some real challenges. While proactive ballot measures are an important tool to help change the dialogue on issues we care about, they are only one part of a broader set of tactics that progressive campaigns need to engage in.

Advocacy polling is an important foundation for campaigns that are, more often than not, a long haul. They require long-term planning and commitment, and ideally, they have the benefit of staff that has extensive knowledge and policy experience in a particular issue area. That deep knowledge of an issue is incredibly valuable, but it can also create some message obscurity if you’re not careful. In other words, there can be a huge temptation to explain, in minute detail, the many nuances of the issue you’re working on, but that detail (counter-intuitive as it may be) can often be a turnoff for your average supporter.

We have written a lot about political fundraising but not on advocacy fundraising, so here we go. Whether it is for advocacy or for political campaigns, fundraising is largely similar and shares a number of characteristics. For both, the ask is a core component of your fundraising technique. Below is a look as some of these shared characteristics.

Maintaining message discipline is critical to advocacy message campaigns. If your organization doesn’t have a advocacy message document, or even a mission statement, it’s time you create one. The statement should be specific to your work, but broad enough that all of your campaigns are able to fit comfortably under it, That way, you can continue to maintain overall organizational message discipline over the life of a specific advocacy campaign. It should also be brief—no more than a couple lines on a page, two sentences max.

Staying up to date on a campaign dictionary can be exhausting, so we have compiled a list of useful campaign terms to keep your lingo up-to-date, enjoy!