Influx

“Our Brand is Crisis” is a fascinating documentary by Rachel Boynton, that takes its viewers into the high stakes world of political consulting.

It follows the team from James Carville’s GCS consulting group as they try to turn around the fortunes of Goni, a presidential candidate in the Bolivian elections.

It’s Account Planning, with a very serious twist.

The film shows the team conducting countless focus groups around Bolivia to test messaging and conducting polls to take the pulse of the nation, you see strategy and positioning presentations recommending Goni builds a campaign around his ability to solve the nation’s crisis(the strategy=crisis).

The team faces an uphill battle to help Goni win, but with some sneaky negative advertising, they manage to turn things around, only to find, a few months later, that things turn nasty.

The documentary exposes the emotional and moral challenges of the political consulting business:

These highly paid strategists are paid to develop spin/marketing packages for candidates who have no intention of following through or living up to the promises. The strategists are merely there to get these candidates elected and appear to have little or no influence on policy.

More significantly, as the film highlights, the decisions they make in these fragile developing economies, have life and death consequences.