North Woods Advertising’s President and Chief Creative Officer Bill Hillsman has a commentary up on Minnesota Public Radio’s website concerning Target’s donation to MN Forward and the public backlash. Check out a portion of it here:

Well, you could see this one coming.

On Thursday, Target Corp., a company that prides itself on its ability to be closely attuned to its customers’ whims and desires, apologized profusely for a six-figure donation of its customers’ money to MN Forward, a business group that so far seems to exist to back conservative Republican candidates. Target was facing a boycott and a severe backlash from groups of its customers, particularly gay rights advocates.

There was nothing illegal or untoward about the donation; in fact, it was somewhat pioneering, steeped as it was in the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in January of this year.

That ruling, as you will recall, put corporations on a par with individual citizens by stating that the government cannot ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

But to those of us who have spent decades tailoring advertising and communications messages for corporations as well as for nonprofit causes, advocacy organizations and political candidates, this was a train wreck waiting to happen.

To read the full article, head over to the article at MPR.org

Article link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/08/06/hillsman/

The great irony is that this ruling comes at the exact moment when corporations, and brands, have become more “activist” than ever. As their operations and policies have become more transparent, they have had to become better citizens. Generally, the best corporations and brands have risen to the task, making commitments to social good core to their mission and key to their corporate communications. It’s no longer just tax-beneficial stuff relegated to the sponsorship department.

But these efforts are studiously neutral, rigorously apolitical: support of the environment, of education, of the arts. These corporations and brands — sensitive to a diverse marketplace, responsive to highly communicative customers — may have new rights given to them by Citizens United, but they will never use them. It is terrible HR, disastrous PR and unthinkably bad business.

Head on over to AdAge.com to read the full article

Full article url: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/community/columns/other-columns/e3i6f1a697eee327ba0da5e1421ef470b58

Scott Heidepriem hires North Woods as Media Consultant

The political season is ramping up and 2010 looks to be a productive year for North Woods Advertising.

Scott Heidepriem is running for Governor of South Dakota as an independent Democrat this year, and has decided to work with us in getting out his unique message in his run for Governor. Apart from North Woods handling his tv and radio work, we are also working on his online presence, most notably with the creation and design of the campaign website.

Check out the website that our smart team of people have come up with.

The site has a whole host of features including a webstore where users can purchase campaign gear, a blog Scott uses to record his thoughts during the campaign, and even a video page for visitors to come and watch his latest TV spots.

Wheelan for Congress campaign takes three awards
March 29, 2010, 4:00PM

2009 was a successful year for North Woods Advertising.  The American Association of Political Consultants recognized this fact by awarding us nine separate Pollie awards.  The Pollies, an annual award show regarded as the “Oscars of Political Advertising,” recognizes thos engaged in the business of politics.  Each year a panel of theirpeer judges representing the industry’s best campaigning experts decide the most creative, innovative and unique work in political consulting and public affairs.

Our “Underwater” ad for Charlie Wheelan for U.S. Congress took home the top prize (gold) in the Overall Campaigns – Television category.  The “Bright Knight Webtoon” took gold as well in Candidate Campaigns – Internet Web Video/Animation.

For a full list of the 2010 Pollie award winners, click here.

To read more about the AAPC, click here.

National Nurses United and the Registered Nurse Response Network have been working tirelesly to send the aid and support of qualified nurses down to the disaster relief effort in Haiti. Nearly 7,500 registered nurses have now signed up to volunteer for Haiti disaster relief, believed to be the largest outpouring of RN volunteers in U.S. history.

NNU, the largest union and professional organization of U.S. nurses, which has also sent hundreds of volunteers on past disaster relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina, the South Asia tsunami, and Southern California wildfires, is presently organizing the first team of nurses for deployment.

North Woods Advertising joined NNU in creating the SendANurse.org public service announcement that drives donations towards NNU’s relief work. Famous actor James Gandolphini and journalist Carl Ginsburg, along with New York post-production house Park Avenue Post, were also among those who aided in the PSA’s production.

Please Visit SendANurse.org to donate

“Change” :30	“Pit Stop” :30	“Suit” :30	“Singing The Blues” :60 Radio

Hickenlooper enters governor’s race
By Lynn Bartels | The Denver Post – January 12, 2010
Link to article

Mayor John Hickenlooper announced his gubernatorial bid this afternoon, saying “I love Colorado every bit as much as I love Denver.”

Hickenlooper said his agenda is going to be about jobs, and that he knows first-hand what a souring economy can do. His geology career that took him around the state in the 1980s ended with the crash of industry back then.

The packed news conference on the west side of the state Capitol attracted top Democratic leaders and Denver movers and shakers.

Hickenlooper talked about being mayor and the measures he has helped push.

“We went to the voters every single time so we could decide what kind of city they could live in,” he said.

Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter, whose unexpected decision to drop his re-election bid set off a gubernatorial scramble, was part of a crowd that stood behind the mayor as he talked.

“I think he is a person who very much has a vision about how this state should move forward,” Ritter said earlier. “He’s a person who’s very solution oriented and very future-oriented.”

Hickenlooper met with a potential rival, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, Monday night and again on Tuesday, fueling speculation that Romanoff was considering abandoning his U.S. Senate bid or that the mayor was trying to bring him into the fold.

Asked about the meetings Tuesday, Hickenlooper declined to say what was discussed but said, “I haven’t offered him any jobs or tried to do a deal. He in no way ever tried to dissuade me from doing this.”

Romanoff spokesman John Schroyer didn’t return calls requesting comment Tuesday, but Romanoff said in appearances over the weekend that he had no plans to divert from the race for U.S. Senate.

The mayor quickly drew endorsements from some of the state’s top Democratic leaders, including most of the state’s congressional delegation.

Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet both said they fully supported Hickenlooper’s candidacy,while Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, who early on mulled a run, cited the mayor’s record on education reform in announcing his support.

Congressman Ed Perlmutter, D- Golden, another potential contender, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Rep. John Salazar, D-Manassa, who earlier had urged his brother, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to return to Colorado and make a run, called Hickenlooper “a wonderful human being who will bring common sense and strong leadership to Colorado as our next governor.”

U.S. Reps. Betsy Markey, D-Fort Collins, and Diana DeGette, D-Denver, both endorsed the mayor as well.

“As the mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper has been a innovative leader for Colorado’s largest city,” DeGette said in a release. “His extensive business background and experience as an effective mayor will serve him well as the next Chief Executive of our state.”

Hickenlooper timed his announcement to occur before the opening of the Colorado General Assembly on Wednesday and Ritter’s State of the State address on Thursday.

Hickenlooper is expected to hold a formal kickoff with events statewide after he returns from the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors that begins Jan. 20 in Washington.

Last week Hickenlooper told The Denver Post editorial board that he likely would stay on as mayor if he were to run for governor,and he reiterated his remarks today. He said a special election would be costly and chaotic as the city tried to deal with a historic budget deficit.

“The risk obviously is I am going to be in La Junta or Buena Vista and there is going to be some issue that happens in the city and I’m going to have to immediately come back,” Hickenlooper told the Post.

“Some political consultant is going to say that will connect you too closely to the city and there’s a resentment between the rural areas and the city. That is what it is.”

Hickenlooper and Ritter met Monday night at the governor’s mansion, and have been in constant contact all week, sources said.

Hickenlooper on Monday also informed political consultant David Kenney, who had been running Ritter’s re-election effort, that he’d wouldn’t be working on his campaign.

“He said he did not want me to have a formal role in his campaign,” Kenney confirmed. “He said he was concerned that I’m a lobbyist, but I’m not a registered lobbyist.”

Kenney said he was stunned at the news, particularly because he was part of the inner circle that swept Hickenlooper to victory in the 2003 Denver mayor’s race and he has already spent two years working on Ritter’s campaign.

“David is very good and talented and creative and he was doing a great job for the governor,” said Ritter’s chief of staff, Jim Carpenter. “But candidates make their own decision.”

Kenney showed up at Capitol to offer his support to Hickenlooper.

Since Ritter dropped out, saying public life was taking a toll on his family, Democrats have scrambled to choose a candidate to take on the likely GOP gubernatorial nominee, former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis.

Salazar, the Interior secretary, declined to enter the race and issued a statement supporting Hickenlooper. President Barack Obama called Hickenlooper last Friday to encourage him to run.

Fox 9 Investigates - Stop The Petters Scam Story

“Where’s the Money” ads ran in Strib and PiPress”

MINNEAPOLIS – Now that Tom Petters is convicted of running a $3.5 billion investment scheme, many are wondering what happen to all the money and if investors will get it back.

Open up the Pioneer Press and you’ll see the quarter page ad, ‘Where’s the Money? Part eleven.

The “where’s the money” ads were created by Bill Hillsman, who says no one is following the money trail.

“A lot of money ends up in the coffers of government and the professionals but very little money getsback to the people who were really victimized in these situations,” Hillsman said.

“Where’s the money refers to where’s the 3.5 billion dollars that they government says went out the window,” says Garrett Vail.

Vail is a bankruptcy attorney who’s the front man behind the Petters Scam ads, but he won’t say who’s paying for the ads or a slick website, laying out the complicated web of key players in the Petters drama. Including Doug Kelley, the court appointed receiver in charge of selling Petters assets and raising money for victims.Kelley is keeping a book with the ads so he can follow what’s being said.

“I think they are riddled with lies and false innuendos,” Kelley told Fox 9.

The ads question how Kelley, a former assistant U.S. attorney got so much power in deciding how Petters’ assets are distributed.

Allegations also made in a lawsuit filed by Ritchie Capital Management, a Chicago-based hedge fund that lost $100 million in the Petter’s Ponzi scheme. The endgame is who will be first in line to get Petters assets, whether they’re big time hedge funds, or the small investors.

Kelley says regardless, they’re all in for a long wait.

“This has been a transparent receivership and we have done right by them and we’re not finished yet and we ask for their patience.” Kelley said.

AN advertising award honoring results, as well as creativity, has been presented for an unusual series of humorous ads that achieved the ultimate result in politics: They helped a candidate for the United States Senate win election.

The New York chapter of the American Marketing Association last night presented its Grand Effie Award, for the most effective advertising of 1990, to the Wellstone for Senate campaign (that’s campaign as in series of ads, not as in stump for office). The chapter is calling the award — previously won by product-selling pitches for Absolut vodka, Quaker oatmeal, Pizza Hut and other consumer marketers — the first such national honor bestowed on political advertising.

“It really was a masterful campaign,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. “That level of creativity is something we ought to be rewarding.” Most impressive, she added, was the advertising’s ability to be “effective without being deceptive.”

She admires the campaign’s television spots for avoiding the prevailing practice in political advertising of doing what the consultants call “going negative.” For instance, a two-minute commercial dubbed “Looking for Rudy” showed a folksy Paul D. Wellstone roaming the state in a futile attempt to find Rudy Boschwitz, the Republican incumbent, and debate him. “Saying ‘My opponent won’t debate me’ is a perfectly legitimate argument,” she said.

The campaign’s print, television and radio ads, which appeared in Minnesota last fall, were created by North Woods Advertising, a volunteer group comprising Minneapolis-area ad professionals from agencies like Fallon McElligott. The group was led by Bill Hillsman, creative director of a small Minneapolis agency, Kauffman Stewart Advertising Inc. The arrangement was noteworthy because it has become far more common for candidates to hire Washington-based political consultants than to rely on locally based advertising executives to produce their image-crafting ads.

The campaign made a star of Mr. Wellstone, a Democratic liberal college professor who was all but written off when he began his race against Senator Boschwitz. When Mr. Wellstone edged out the two-term Republican in November, he was the only challenger in the country to defeat an incumbent senator.

Political analysts gave a good deal of the credit to his ads, which used whimsical humor as a weapon to persuade voters to turn out Senator Boschwitz.

Other factors also assisted Mr. Wellstone in his come-from-behind victory, the analysts noted, like a public backlash against a negative Boschwitz ad that injected religious issues into the campaign, as well as turmoil within the Republican Party in Minnesota because of a sex scandal that affected the gubernatorial race.

Still, the analysts predicted that by softening negative advertising with a smile, the Wellstone strategy could become popular among candidates in the 1992 elections.

The premise of a 30-second spot called “Fast-Paced Paul” was that Mr. Wellstone, who spent less than $500,000 on his advertising, could not afford to match Mr. Boschwitz’s war chest of $7 million. The result: quickly cut camera shots were used to jam detailed information about Mr. Wellstone’s background and record into the commercial. Ms. Jamieson praised that effort as “technically innovative” for using MTV production values to condense into a single spot material that normally would fill several.

In honoring the Wellstone campaign, the advertising community is “sending a message” to the political community, Ms. Jamieson said, adding, “They are saying, ‘There is fair and accurate political advertising, so don’t condemn us for everything else.’ ”

The Grand Effie was the highlight of the 23d annual presentation of the Effies, at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan. A total of 130 gold, silver and bronze Effies were presented, in 43 categories.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 13, 1991, on page D22 of the New York edition.

Two new polls — one by the Washington Post, the other by Pew — shows an increase in the number of people identifying as independents, a data point that is sure to lead to speculation about the possibility of the emergence of a third party (and third party candidate) in the runup to the 2012 presidential race.

The latest Post poll shows 42 percent of the sample describing themselves as independents, more than double the number who called themselves Republicans (20 percent) and even far ahead of the 33 percent who referred to themselves as Democrats. While three of the last four Post surveys have shown the independent number over 40 percent, as recently as last year independents comprised just 31 percent.

Pew’s compilation of their 2009 surveys to date showed a similar trend with self-identified independents comprising 35 percent — the highest that group has been in Pew data since 1992 and the rise of Ross Perot. (Pew has put together a terrific chart detailing their party ID back to 1939.)

The power of unaligned voters is also being played out in races for governor of New Jersey and the special election in New York’s 23rd district.

In the former, Independent Chris Daggett has rapidly moved up in polling as Gov. Jon Corzine (D) and former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (R) bash each other day in and day out.

In the latter, Conservative party nominee Doug Hoffman seems to have eclipsed state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R) as the primary challenger to Democrat Bill Owens (D).

Given all of that, the chatter about a viable third party has begun to increase as independent-minded voters seem to have grown increasingly unhappy with Democrats over the first ten months of the year after siding with them over the past two election cycles.

Before we get too far down that road, it’s important to remember that talk of a third party and the reality of it are too far different things.

First, while people like to describe themselves as independents, there are actually very few people who are entirely unaligned politically.

The Post polling team — Jon “JC” Cohen and Jennifer “J-Bug” Agiesta — did a detailed study of independents a few years back that showed deep divisions within those who describe themselves as independents.

That study showed that less than one in five (18 percent) of all independents are truly engaged, swing voters while the remainder are “disguised partisans” (24 percent), “disengaged” (24 percent), “disillusioned” (18 percent) or “dislocated” (16 percent).

That means that the vast majority of independents — roughly eight in ten — are not in fact the sort of people who would be building blocks for the creation of a third party.

Second, the institutional hurdles to the creation of a new party — or even running a third party candidacy for president — are massive.

The most basic challenges are from a financial and organizational standpoint where each national party has spent decades honing their approaches and have deeply entrenched advantages that would take years for a new party to learn.

The only answer to that problem is, as is often the case in politics, money. As Perot proved a decade and a half ago, a candidate willing to spend millions (and millions) of dollars can spend his (or her) way into credibility. (Paging Mike Bloomberg!)

Yet, even if a third party candidate does emerge in 2012 or 2016 there is no guarantee that such a candidacy would lead to the creation of a legitimate third party (Perot’s candidacies, for example, did not serve as the jumping-off point for another political party.)

The rise of independents is a trend that leaders in both parties are paying close attention to as winning these unaligned voters are critical to Democratic and Republican successes in the 2010 midterms and beyond.

But, be careful not to read too much into it.