What makes 80-20 effective

How 80-20 single-handedly forced a political TV ad that fanned the fear of “yellow peril” off the air in one day.

On 10/27/00, at 9 a.m. EDT, 80-20 became aware of a New York Times article reporting that a conservative wing of the Republican Party was airing a TV ad in small towns in the Midwest (i.e. avoiding areas with significant APA population) fanning “yellow peril” in order to get people to vote for Bush. By noon, an 80-20 e-mail was sent to our 230,000 supporters urging them to phone, fax, and/or e-mail the headquarters of the Bush campaign and The Republican National Committee (RNC) to demand “to pull that ad immediately.” That e-mail is shown below as Exhibit Ia.

S.B. Woo called Jim Nicholson, Chairman of RNC, without reaching him. SB left a message urging Nicholson to get the TV-ad off the air immediately or face 80-20’s wrath.

80-20 also e-mailed a list of 350 mainstream and ethnic reporters urging them to make inquiries to Bush and the RNC headquarters asking how the GOP could possibly tolerate such a “hate” ad? Many reporters made this inquiry.

To the best of our knowledge, no other APA organization took action on this TV ad. S.B. phoned the national presidents of two large APA organizations around noon that day to invite them to take joint action. Those leaders declined. Similarly, 80-20 was not aware of a single non-APA organization wanting to force the ad off the air, although some criticized the Republican Party for it.

Huge numbers of faxes, phone calls and e-mails from 80-20’s supporters went into the Bush camp and the RNC that same day. Some posted a copy to S.B. A selected few are shown below as Exhibit Ib.

One day later, on 10/28/00, the Republican Party announced that it has persuaded that particular Republican group to pull the TV ad explaining that the reason of the withdrawal was "to not hurt Bush's campaign".

Note that the reason for pulling off the ad was not that it was wrong but “to not hurt Bush's campaign". 80-20 understands how politicians think. Therefore, it knows how to push the “right” political buttons. See the last 3 paragraphs of Exhibit I on how 80-20 went straight to what would make the Bush campaign sit up and take notice – asking APAs to spread the word and vote against Bush in the contested states.

80-20 also has the grass-roots support and a lightening communication network to buttress its political strategy. See Exhibit Ib for how APAs responded to 80-20’s call to action.

Note: Some typos in the original e-mails have been corrected.