Showing Your Colors at Community Events

SHOWING YOUR COLORS AT COMMUNITY EVENTS

Popular community events in your district are great opportunities to appear at community events to promote your name, logo and campaign colors.

• Events like July 4th parades draw crowds, many of them voters. Arrange to ride or walk in a parade and have your volunteers ahead of you wearing your campaign tee-shirts and carrying your signs. Ignore parades far outside of your district, because few, if any, onlookers will have your name on their ballots.

• The high school stadium where local football teams play provides opportunities. Before every game assemble with your volunteers at the entrance each holding one of your yard signs. In smaller jurisdictions, you get double exposure when cross-town rival teams play. Show your colors before games, not afterward when fans are headed home or out for pizza. Keep in mind that people going to a game are not in the mood for candidates or what they have to say, so save your literature for more conducive settings. An exception is a post card with your name, campaign logo and colors on one side, and the home team’s season schedule on the other. Hand out the cards, and leave it at that.

• Summer outdoor concerts at local parks provide another venue for you and your volunteers to stand with your signs at entrances or access points before and after. Check with the city parks department to see if display tables are allowed. If so, set up one with your campaign literature on it while you meet and greet nearby.

• Local and regional craft fairs are often well attended, so focus on them to draw attendees from your district. When you and your volunteers wear your campaign T-shirts, you become walking advertisements as you all stroll among the crowd.

Candidate's Supporters Showing Their Colors

Major intersections in your district control thousands of people each day as they wait for traffic lights to change, and that means sign-waving opportunities for you and your volunteers. Take advantage of it during the last two weeks of the campaign for standard poll elections. If all ballots are mailed instead, act about two weeks before they are scheduled to go out.

Ask volunteers and supporters to stand at corners opposite left-turning traffic making them and your signs obvious to all left turners as well as to drivers on the opposing closer street. When volunteers are few, concentrate them at intersections with highest traffic volumes entering or exiting the district and in key neighborhoods.

• Encourage smiles and vitality. Nothing hurts the campaign more than gloomy volunteers holding your signs and standing motionless at an intersection or at the entrance to a football stadium, for example.

• Encourage them to make eye contact with passersby because, when smiles and waves are returned, volunteers’ enthusiasm increases.

• Protect hands from splinters by wrapping duct tape around the bottom third or so of each sign stake and encourage your volunteers to protect their hands from blisters by wearing gloves.

One place not to deploy volunteers with signs is on highway overpasses. Aside from not being a good use of volunteer time and energy, they distract drivers below and have been known to cause traffic jams and collisions.

• A unique event for a candidate is Halloween, an evening when most people answer their doors. It happens at the right time of year, so take advantage of it. When someone answers the door, say,

"This is no trick. I am Jack Smith, candidate for city council who wants to represent you. May I give you this flyer about me and my positions on important issues facing our city? I’d appreciate your vote on Election Day (or on Nov. X). Thank you.”

While some people do not appreciate your visit on Halloween, most go along, some even handing out treats.

The Take Away

So make plans to show your colors at community parades and craft fairs if you believe that enough people from your district will show up to make it worth the time and effort. And deploy sign wavers at key intersections late in the campaign, but skip the overpasses. And if you want a challenge, go ring some doorbells on Halloween night.