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Volunteer or Paid Political Consulting?

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 06:53:29 -0800

My client is late paying me. Plus, I am concerned about how they are (or are not) using the products and services I am providing. Should I stop providing those products and services and send a late notice, or somehow give them the benefit of the doubt for a while longer? I want this client to succeed at their endeavor, but I don't want to be taken advantage of either, whether intentionally or not. I was hired as a consultant by a man who is a declared candidate for a federal office. I made my rates clear at the outset, but offered to charge half that rate since he initially asked me to volunteer. The services I provide are technical, time-consuming and expensive, and I declined to volunteer. He agreed to the half price rate. In addition, I charge no travel or researching (reading) fees; only for the creation of hard products, like campaign artwork, databases, TV and radio commercial development, etc. I also set up interviews, do videotaping and other media related work in support of the candidate. Professional staff in a political campaign, like campaign manager, volunteer coordinator, financial manager and media director are almost always paid positions.

I have found several guides for political campaigns that suggest a path for campaign staff development and campaign strategy progression. I've shared these with the candidate. But as near as I can tell, he has not begun any serious fundraising, or consistent efforts to meet any of his constituencies yet. Partly, I'd guess it's because he is a business owner and spends most of his time running it. Public campaign financing websites show his competitors ahead in donations. He has paid me for two invoice I've already submitted, but is now more than a month late in paying me for the most recent work I've done. Because he isn't raising the funds, he is paying me from his business which he says is having a cumulative effect on him. Also, he has not found (or attracted) a campaign manager or (volunteer coordinator), and campaign staff really need a campaign manager to tell them what strategy to follow. I am a media professional, and I suggest and create basic media for the candidate, logos, lists, etc. But I can't do the work of a campaign manager. In politics, perception is reality and I don't think it is helping him that no one has offered to fill that role.

Campaigns seem to need much more than what you think of everything to be successful; time, money, people, advertising, whatever. And I don't want to burn any bridges. But I have two invoices worth of work that haven't been paid yet and I don't know understand why he isn't following the conventional path by laying the critical groundwork.

How do you justify spending half a million pounds on a logo?

chrismear — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 09:11:43 -0800

Help me understand the marketing/branding industry. The 2012 London Olympics committee just spent £400,000 on this new logo. How does a branding company justify this kind of money to just design a logo? That can't be all there is to it, right? What kind of things actually get delivered and done on a project like this?

Technological Cassandra Complex

lornoss — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:23:20 -0800

The company I work for wants to outsource ownership of all its domains to a third party. Is there any way I can fight this? I work IT for a company that is largely non-technical and they've unfortunately hired a clueless bozo to manage IT. He's wooed management with all the typical consultant-grade hype and is now deep in the process of restructuring our department.

I've already failed to fight this in several areas (including the switch from internally managed postfix to hosted exchange "because it's cheaper"(!)) and I'm going to be out on one of the next rails but I feel like I have this ethical obligation to the company to keep them from making the terrible mistake of giving up ownership of their domain names.

I've tried explaining in a hundred ways that a domain is a piece of property, that the registrant is the legal owner, that despite any contracts the company has with this third party there are myriad ways this can go sour and that there is no legitimate reason to do something like this in the first place. The company should keep ownership of the domain. I'm getting zero traction. Has this happened to anyone else? Is there anything I can do? Am I being unreasonable for caring that they're making this mistake?