The Campaign Strategist

Campaigns often know their issues better than they know the people they're trying to reach. Five campaigners explain why stories alone aren't enough, and what works instead.

Kristen Grimm of Spitfire Strategies on why "save democracy" messaging misses most people. Will Robinson on two hospitals that closed four miles apart. Anat Shenker-Osorio on "married filing jointly" versus "love makes a family." Ritti Singh on leading with the frame and putting the details in the middle. And Mark Magaña of GreenLatinos on why "if you hit me just with data, I'm going to get a little blurry," and the same goes for loose stories.

Chapters
0:00 Intro: are stories really enough?
0:50 Kristen Grimm: how people see their own circumstances
1:36 Will Robinson: two hospitals, no statistics
3:05 Anat Shenker-Osorio: the words people actually use
4:34 Ritti Singh: frame first, details in the middle
5:40 Mark Magaña: story plus evidence
6:25 What it adds up to

The Campaign Strategist on Substack: https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCampaignStrategist

If this was useful, follow The Campaign Strategist wherever you listen, and leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other campaigners find the show.
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky

Campaigns keep pouring money into broadcast TV while their voters are on YouTube, and targeting people too narrowly can backfire. Digital strategist Colin Delany has watched every new political technology arrive since the mid-1990s, and he explains which ones actually changed how campaigns win. 
Colin is the founder of Epolitics.com and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World. We cover the three shifts that mattered most (online video, data-driven field and targeted advertising), why "you can microtarget yourself to death," what AI really changes, why trusted messengers beat disinformation, and how to convince donors to fund infrastructure a year out instead of at the last minute. 
CHAPTERS 00:00 Cold open: why the money still goes to TV 
02:19 Which technologies actually changed campaigns 
07:04 You can microtarget yourself to death 
11:11 What Obama's field operation knew that 2016 forgot 
17:37 Inertia plus incentive: the broadcast TV problem 
21:03 What AI really changes (and what's overhyped) 
26:40 Trusted messengers and relational organizing 
34:57 Funders like to fund shiny things 
41:29 Reward people for giving you time 
49:08 Making the case for infrastructure 
54:35 What political pros still misunderstand 
58:20 Advice for people starting out 
LINKS 
Show notes and video: https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com/p/colin-delany-microtarget-yourself-to-death 
Epolitics.com: https://www.epolitics.com 
The Campaign Strategist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCampaignStrategist 
The Campaign Strategist features conversations with the people shaping advocacy and electoral strategy. 
Subscribe free at https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com, and if the show is useful to you, a rating or review on Apple Podcasts helps other strategists find it. 
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky

Someone with 1,500 followers who reliably gets 250 people engaging is a person who can move 250 people — and a door knocker isn't reaching that many in an hour. Narrative strategist Ritti Singh explains how New York's tenant movement built a surround sound communications machine, and what any advocacy organization can take from it.

Ritti led communications for Housing Justice for All and the New York State Tenant Bloc, including the Freeze the Rent campaign in New York City's 2025 mayoral race. She talks with Pete Altman about why debunking the right's squatter narrative failed, why message discipline has to start in your own internal meetings, how "tenants are the majority" turned a policy demand into an identity, and her four-step framework: map, seed, echo, invite.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
00:25 Introducing Ritti Singh
01:54 Communications is organizing
05:07 How the right runs surround sound
08:05 The squatter story: when debunking fails
12:35 Message discipline starts inside
14:25 Tenants are the majority
17:15 From wonk-speak to plain language
20:17 Mapping where people actually get information
23:02 Seeding content: WhatsApp forwards and trusted messengers
23:55 Making the ask
28:50 The $2.5 million moment
32:56 Where to start: map, seed, echo, invite
39:42 What you only learn by doing it
44:50 Authenticity vs. message discipline
50:26 Why comms and organizing can't be separate departments
52:56 Career advice

LINKS
Full episode and show notes: https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com/p/ritti-singh-surround-sound-communications
Ritti's essay, Surround Sound Communications: https://convergencemag.com/articles/surround-sound-communications-how-to-build-a-narrative-machine/
Pete's essay "The System We Haven't Built" which cites Ritti and others: https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com/p/the-system-we-havent-built?r=49slwa&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheCampaignStrategist

If this episode was useful, follow The Campaign Strategist wherever you get your podcasts — and if you're on Apple Podcasts, a quick rating or review helps other campaigners find the show.
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky

Will Robinson has made ads for Democrats for forty years. He opens this conversation by calling his own profession parasitic.

We start with what artificial intelligence has done to political communication since late 2025. Voters searching for a candidate increasingly get a synthesized paragraph instead of a list of links, and only about one percent click through to a source. Will searched himself and found out he is a Republican state representative from Florida. His conclusion: thirty years of message discipline now points the wrong way. The rule was never repeat the attack, but if the denial is not published somewhere a machine can read it, the denial does not exist.

From there: why the Democratic Party cannot adapt, and what Blockbuster and Sears have to do with it. Why broadcast is down to nineteen percent of video viewing while campaigns still spend like it is 2004. Why a college-educated woman from Bryn Mawr, one from Ohio State and one from Liberty are three different audiences, not one demographic. Why a story beats a bag full of facts. And what he would build with one hundred million dollars, which is not ads.

Will Robinson is co-founder of the New Media Firm and writes Will Robinson's Newsletter on Substack.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open
00:20 Introduction
02:17 AI has changed politics, and it does not know what is true
06:23 Why never repeat the attack is now backwards
10:10 The two questions every campaign should start with
13:18 The innovator's dilemma, from Blockbuster to the Democratic Party
17:12 Consultants, profit, and the case for programmatic
20:50 Why campaign managers cannot push back
23:36 Audience-first: Bryn Mawr, Ohio State, Liberty
26:51 Culture crushes credentials
29:00 Why a story beats a bag full of facts
34:08 Two hospitals close, and a woman sobbing at the pharmacy
37:20 What Abdul El-Sayed's win actually shows
41:06 The fire hose of falsehood
45:59 If I had one hundred million dollars, I would train
50:01 Leadership, Tip O'Neill, and what is going on on the ground
55:41 We cannot rent attention, we cannot rent allegiances
58:48 Career advice: you have not lost enough elections

LINKS
Will Robinson's Newsletter: https://willrobinson.substack.com
The post on the two questions: https://willrobinson.substack.com/p/im-a-media-consultant-who-tells-clients
The Rob Stein conversation: https://willrobinson.substack.com/p/a-legacy-of-strategy-what-rob-stein
The New Media Firm: https://thenewmediafirm.com
GAIN Power: https://www.gainpower.org
This episode: https://thecampaignstrategist.substack.com/p/will-robinson-consultants-are-parasites

The Campaign Strategist is produced by Prismatic Strategies. Hosted by Pete Altman. Music by Andrea Perry and Pete Altman.

New episodes at https://substack.tcspod.com

If this episode was useful, a rating and review on Apple Podcasts genuinely helps other people find the show.
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky

The tactics most campaigns were built on are quietly breaking, and the reason isn't messaging — it's trust. Host Pete Altman talks with Amanda Brink, executive director of The Empower Project, whose recent essay "The Rules of Engagement Have Changed" argues that real persuasion now happens in the group chats, DMs, and comment sections where people decide who to believe. Amanda makes the case that we're organizing in an environment where credibility travels through people rather than institutions: "I really feel like trust scales through people now. It no longer scales through institutions, which also makes me sad, but I think that is the reality that we are living in." She walks through what friend-to-friend organizing looks like at scale — 47,000 community mobilizers in 2024, three million names, nine million conversations — and why the app is never the answer: "In the same way you can't build a house with just a hammer, a tool is not enough." She's also blunt about why the left is behind, from status quo bias to a movement that is "literally letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." For anyone rethinking how their organization reaches people in 2026, this is a practical conversation about building power instead of perfecting copy.
LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE
The Empower Project: https://empowerproject.us/
Amanda Brink on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brinkamandal/
Amanda's bio: https://empowerproject.us/amanda-brink
Amanda's essay, "The Rules of Engagement Have Changed": https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rules-engagement-have-changed-amanda-brink-krfgc/
Marquette Law School Poll on trust, July 2026: https://law.marquette.edu/poll/2026/07/07/marquette-law-school-poll-finds-a-steady-decline-by-age-in-trust-in-other-people/
Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why, by Steve Martin and Joseph Marks — the trusted-messenger research Amanda cites
More episodes at substack.tcspod.com
Find and subscribe:
Substack and your favorite platforms.
Contact: Contact@PrismaticStrategiesLLC.com
Find us on LinkedIn and Bluesky