Strategic Consulting Group (SCG)

Strategic Consulting Group (SCG)

Overview

* Political consulting firm specializing in the promotion of left-wing organizations, campaigns, and causes


**Established in 1997 by Robert Creamer and some associates, the Strategic Consulting Group (SCG) is a political consulting firm specializing in the promotion of left-wing organizations, campaigns, and causes. Its major services fall under the following headings:

* Public Affairs & Issue Campaigns: Since its inception, SCG has been actively engaged in battles over a host of national, state and local issues. For example, in 2003 the firm managed Fair Taxes for All, a nationwide effort to repeal the tax cuts that President George W. Bush had recently signed into law. Two years later, the Group managed the field program through which Americans United to Protect Social Security—now known as Americans United For Change (AUFC)—waged a successful campaign to defeat Bush’s attempt to partially privatize Social Security. More recently, SCG has served as a consultant to the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, a general consultant to Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and a partner in AUFC’s efforts to promote a broad progressive agenda.

* General Consulting & Planning Election Campaigns: Using polling data as well as information from the National Committee for an Effective Congress, SCG can analyze a given voting district and tailor its various consulting services—e.g., overall strategy, specific tactics, and campaign messaging—accordingly.

* Field Programs: Capable of deploying a team of “tough, experienced” organizers to any state in the union on short notice, SCG’s field programs make use of get-out-the vote (GOTV) campaigns; voter file analysis; targeting of “low-propensity voters”; signature gathering; poster and outdoor advertising programs; leafleting of mass locations; door-to-door canvassing; the staging of large, attention-getting events; radio and television advertising (especially on African-American and Hispanic stations); church-based voter registration and mobilization programs; publicity via earned media; high-intensity vote-by-mail and early-vote campaigns; and training and leadership development.

Particularly vital to SCG’s field programs are its telephone initiatives which can provide both live and automated GOTV and persuasion calls at highly competitive prices. Equipped with cutting-edge technology, SCG utilizes such tools as: (a) automated ID and Poll programs that can obtain up-to-the-minute information on levels of support for a particular candidate or policy in various segments of the electorate; (b) predictive dialing software/hardware that enables paid or volunteer callers to contact three to five times as many people as they otherwise would be able to reach; and (c) an automated, state-of-the-art patch-through call system that can generate thousands of calls to Members of Congress or other government officials.

* Message Development: Using input from focus groups to help craft “high-impact messages” for national and local issue and electoral campaigns, SCG can produce computer-generated, personalized mailings to voters who have been previously identified via door-to-door canvasses, live phone canvasses, or automatic interactive phone programs. Highly skilled at using “the media echo chamber” to “create a media drum beat,” SCG researchers specialize in “dig[ging] up every piece of public information for strategic use.” The Group is also highly adept at organizing press events, demonstrations, television appearances, picket lines, and letter-to-the-editor campaigns.

* Campaign Staffing & Management: SCG has a close working relationship with a large pool of experienced field organizers, managers, fundraisers, researchers, and media experts upon whom it can call, whenever necessary, to work on various projects. Between 2004-14, for instance, the Group hired more than 1,500 staffers for scores of political campaigns.

Over the years, SCG has provided consulting services for such clients as ACORN, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, Americans United for Change, the Campaign for America’s Future, Citizen Action, the Democratic Party (of various states), the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Midwest Academy, NARAL (Oregon), the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Natural Resources Defense CouncilPeople for the American Way, the SEIU, United For a Fair Economy, USAction, and Working Assets.

The firm has also done work for the campaigns of political figures like Elijah Cummings, Howard Dean, Lane Evans, Sheila Jackson Lee, Carol Moseley-Braun, Bobby Rush, and Jan Schakowsky.

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