Post written by Andrew Brush, panelist for the 2010 Ohio Growth Summit’s “Personal Branding for Fun and Profit” panel.
When I was 19, I became the youngest person ever elected to the Delaware City Council, and was one of the youngest politicians in the country. I bested 5 opponents – all well over twice my age – in a hotly contested election. Personal branding had a lot to do with my success, but Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. had nothing to do with it.
I did have a website. In fact, I was the very first candidate for any office in all of Delaware County to have a campaign website. I also had a Facebook group; my campaign predated the current ‘page’ setup Facebook has implemented. But I built my personal brand in a much more powerful way: through a months-long effort to connect in person with as many voters as possible.
Winning a local election takes a lot of hard work and organization – effective fundraising never hurts either – but it’s not generally very complicated. In Ohio, it’s a matter of public record who the registered voters are, where they live, which party’s primary they vote in if any, and a list of the past ten elections they have voted in. I got my hands on this data and compiled a list of 4th Ward voters likely to show up to the polls in this off-year, non-partisan election – around 2,000 of them spread over around 1,200 households – and then I went out on foot and systematically visited almost all of them. About 98% of the voters on that list got a personal visit from me and either chatted with me on their front porch or received literature and a brief handwritten note asking them for their vote.
Obviously, it took more than just showing up on voters’ doorsteps. I also had a strong command of the issues, had an agenda that resonated with the voters, and demonstrated that despite my young age I had the passion, conviction, and most importantly interpersonal and speaking skills necessary to effectively advocate for my constituents on the City Council.
But I am willing to bet that on election day a fair number of voters showed up at the polls, saw a list of six names, and had met only one of them. And in most cases, I was the one they had met.
