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/

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.

Independent candidates are poised to run serious campaigns for governor in at least a half-dozen states, a development that threatens Democratic fortunes in some of the bluest and most progressive-minded states in the nation.

In New Jersey, where Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine is seeking a second term in November, polls suggest an independent candidate is carving a sizable portion of voters out of his hide.

In two other reliably Democratic states, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, well-known politicians running as independents could significantly undermine Democratic chances in 2010, if not flat-out win. Credible third-party candidates are also mulling over bids in a handful of other states that have open seat governor’s races next year — including Minnesota and Maine, both of which have a recent history of electing third-party governors.

November will provide the first test of whether these candidates are getting traction. That’s when New Jersey voters will go to the polls to choose among Corzine, Republican Chris Christie and independent Chris Daggett, a moderate former Republican who once worked as deputy chief of staff to Gov. Tom Kean.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey released last week, Daggett is trailing in third place with 13 percent of the vote — well behind the two major party nominees but a significant portion for a non-major party candidate.

More important, the survey found that Daggett is capturing 15 percent of the Democratic vote, compared with just 7 percent of the GOP vote, in a race where the embattled Corzine can’t afford to lose much Democratic support.

“It’s Democrats who are disgusted with Corzine but who can’t quite bring themselves to vote for Christie,” noted Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling.

Daggett attributes his showing at least in part to frustration with both the Democratic and Republican parties.

“The level of distrust of both parties is very high,” Daggett told POLITICO. “You’ve got an opportunity for an independent candidate to run a different kind of campaign.”

The volatile political environment, some strategists say, is fertile ground for nontraditional candidacies.

“My guess is when there is a pox on all of your houses, people in some states are more willing to vote for an independent,” said one top Democratic strategist who is a veteran of governors’ races. “It’s a piss-poor environment, and a number of people are looking for someone new.”

The unique contour of the current election landscape is another reason for the spate of viable third-party candidacies. Vermont GOP Gov. Jim Douglas’s recent decision not to seek a fifth term in 2010 means that more than half of the 39 governorships up for election this year and next will be open-seat races with no incumbent running.

For Democrats, who must defend 21 of their 28 governorships, the problem is especially concentrated. They are defending more governorships than Republicans, against the backdrop of a midterm election — and midterms are historically more hostile to the party in power.

Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman from Minnesota who failed in a 2002 Independence Party bid for governor, said that independent candidates have special appeal in left-leaning states that are unhappy with their Democratic choices but unwilling to vote for a Republican.

“It seems that there is some disaffection among people who would normally think of themselves as Democrats,” said Penny, who compared the situation this election cycle with 1992, when independent Ross Perot siphoned off Republican voters in the presidential race, enabling Democrat Bill Clinton to defeat incumbent George H.W. Bush. “I think you’re going to see independent candidates being a threat to Democratic incumbents.”

For Democrats in Rhode Island, where the party has been shut out of the governor’s office for 14 years, the independent candidacy of former Sen. Lincoln Chafee is viewed as a serious blow to their chances of winning the open governor’s seat.

Chafee, a former Republican senator running in a state Barack Obama won in a landslide, has been critical of both parties — even going so far as to take a shot at President Obama, whom he endorsed in the 2008 presidential race, for not reaching out to congressional Republicans.

Since entering the race earlier this year, Chafee, a persistent thorn in the side of the GOP since he bolted in 2007, has aggressively portrayed himself as a candidate who offers a fresh “third way” approach to politics.

“There’s real opportunity for a new way,” Chafee told POLITICO.

Emily DeRose, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Governors Association, dismissed Daggett and Chafee as little more than Republicans masquerading as something different and said they would have little ability to draw Democratic votes on Election Day.

“These GOP candidates are disguising themselves as independents because the Republican brand is still so toxic,” said DeRose. “They can’t hide their records, though.”

In strongly Democratic Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat facing a tough reelection battle, the serious third-party challenge comes in the shape of a former party colleague — state Treasurer Tim Cahill.

Cahill, who switched to become an independent earlier this year, hasn’t been shy about singling out Patrick for blame over the state’s dire fiscal situation.

“I’ve been sounding the alarm for 18 months about revenues,” Cahill told a group of business leaders in Boston earlier this month. “Unfortunately, the message has not been heard on Beacon Hill or by the executive branch.”

While Cahill ran second to Patrick in a recent poll and could conceivably defeat him in a general election, it’s also possible that his centrist positioning could end up inadvertently assisting the governor by providing a way station for disaffected Democrats who might otherwise have voted Republican.

Cahill’s odds of winning are long — no independent candidate has ever been elected governor of Massachusetts. But the same cannot be said of three other states, where independent and third-party candidates have had a recent record of success.

In Maine, Minnesota and Vermont, all with wide-open governor’s races, insiders expect viable third-party candidates to make bids.

In Minnesota, where Dean Barkley served as the chairman of Jesse Ventura’s successful 1998 Reform Party campaign for governor, there is talk of a Barkley candidacy in 2010. In the 2008 Senate race, Barkley won 15 percent while running on the Independence Party line.

In Maine, where independent Angus King won two terms as governor in 1994 and 1998, Peter Vigue, a prominent construction company executive, is talking up a prospective independent bid. Nearby Vermont could see a repeat bid by Anthony Pollina, running on the Progressive ticket. Pollina won 22 percent in his 2008 run for governor — and captured more votes than the Democratic nominee.

The last time heavily Democratic Vermont had an open governor’s race in 2002, an independent candidate played a significant role in the outcome — a GOP victory — by winning 10 percent of the vote.

“I think all states are unique to a certain degree, but some states are more unique than others,” said Bill Hillsman, a strategist for Daggett who also worked on Ventura’s successful campaign in Minnesota.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27634.html#ixzz0SPuOaRVG

Adweek

Back in 1980, after spending time at small shops on ignominious accounts, Bill Hillsman landed a job at Bozell & Jacobs, Minneapolis. There, cd Tom McElligott asked Hillsman to help him prove that the better the creative, the less air time would be needed to achieve good results. Weeks later, McElligott, along with vp and art director Nancy Rice, quit to open Fallon McElligott Rice. The headline in their announcement, recalls Hillsman: “Finally, an agency for those who’d rather outsmart than outspend.”

Hillsman’s behind-the-scenes contribution to that statement resulted in regular lunches with McElligott, who, he says with a laugh, “kept asking about people he should hire — and it was never me.”

Regardless, the lesson he learned from McElligott has resonated throughout his career. (More about that later.) And Hillsman found his own path, opening North Woods Advertising in Minneapolis in 1985, positioning him for an entirely new, and unexpected, challenge: political advertising.

He entered the fray in 1989, when a professor at Carleton College — from which Hillsman had graduated 14 years earlier — decided to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The professor, who happened to be Paul Wellstone, contacted his former student, the only person he knew in advertising, for help.

“I set the ground rules,” recalls Hillsman. “We were going to do ads that didn’t look like political ads. We had little money, so he was in no position to disagree.”

The now 55-year-old says he had Wellstone, who went on to serve two terms before dying in a plane crash, say lines under the guise of shooting B-roll. The offbeat results became renowned for their effectiveness. The work included “Fast Paul,” a 30-second, Monty Pythonesque skit in which Wellstone sped through a list of political promises — “Unlike my opponent I don’t have six million dollars, so I’m going to have to talk fast” — while introducing his family and showing the house he grew up in. At first, many in the campaign, including Wellstone, thought the spots were a joke.

Despite being outspent 6-to-1, Hillsman recalls, Wellstone won. “Fast Paul,” he says, transformed the soon-to-be senator from an unknown to someone mobbed by fans on the streets of Minneapolis.

Other election campaigns came calling. Among those requesting Hillsman’s services: former Notre Dame all-American and ex-Viking Alan Page, who became a judge on the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1992; pro wrestler Jesse Ventura, who became governor of Minnesota in 1998; Ralph Nader, for his presidential run in 2000; and John Hickenlooper, for his 2003 mayoral upset in Denver.

Though he’s worked mostly with Democrats and independents, Hillsman runs an equal-opportunity agency — to a point. In 2004 he helped Chicago neophyte pol Jack Ryan win the Illinois Republican Senate primary, but, he says, “I told him I wouldn’t do the general election. It would cost me too much business on the other side.”

This election season Hillsman’s at it again, creating ads for Democrat Alan Grayson in his run against incumbent Republican Ric Keller for U.S. Congress (Florida), and for Democrat Jim Slattery in his senatorial campaign against Republican Pat Roberts (Kansas).

Hillsman created ads for both that suggest they’re G-men at the end of a drug bust. Grayson stands in an airplane hangar and rails about spending on the war in Iraq, noting that the money wasted could fill an airplane hangar. Slattery, in a different hangar, shows a briefcase — “This is a million dollars!” — and accuses Roberts of political graft.

“I’m too ornery to get out of the political game,” Hillsman says. “But someday I would like to speak out for the plurality of independent voters.”

Non-political clients include Malt-O-Meal, and Hillsman says he sees similarities between selling pols and cereal. “If voters were treated more like consumers, they’d be treated with more respect,” he says.

The secret to any successful advertising, he adds, has a lot to do, it turns out, with the lesson he learned from McElligott: “Do something people notice, talk about and comprehend so that you can spend less and have more impact.”