Jackson Jambalaya

Roll Call recently published a feature story on political consultant Casey Phillips.  Mr. Phillips is the owner of Red Print Strategies, a D.C.-based firm.  Mr. Phillips ran Dilbert's campaigns as well as several others in Mississippi.  Roll Call reports:

"Phillips has no formal filmmaking training, so he read textbooks and attended film expos and even the Sundance Film Festival. He bought a high-powered RED Scarlet camera, and he’s currently working on a screenplay as an exercise to improve the dialogue in his ad scripts.

“I’m not some sort of genius by any stretch of the imagination,” Phillips said. “I’m a country boy from South Dakota. I think that I understand politics a little bit and I’ve certainly paid my dues in the trenches, but these ads are huge team efforts, and a lot of people are involved.”

Phillips relied on strategic partnerships, including with 8112 Studios, which is known for music videos, not political work. The partnership fit into Phillips’ effort to stand out. In that vein, he’s also hoping to help the GOP reach the next generation of voters, which Phillips believes is fundamental to its problem attracting minority voters.

“We have a marketing problem, which is something that I want to try to fix and I’m excited about,” Phillips said. “Because politics of division just don’t work anymore. And it’s too bad that they ever did.”

When he wasn’t on the road, Phillips worked out of a bedroom in his Arlington, Va., apartment. The lack of overhead helped the fledgling firm stay “light and nimble,” he said, but he’s looking to open an office and get some of the “bells and whistles” of a traditional media firm....

RedPrint’s first ad ever, in 2011, was for a Mississippi agriculture commissioner candidate. It earned the firm a Pollie Award, which led to work for the NRCC and Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., Phillips’ home-state congresswoman.

The Jeep made a cameo in an NRCC ad against Rep.-elect Steven Horsford, D-Nev. An actor playing Horsford crashed a car into the Jeep and then drove off, part of an ad campaign arguing that Horsford played by his own rules.

Another NRCC ad Phillips produced against a few California Democrats riffed on John Hancock ads that featured no talking — just people texting or chatting online to convey the message. The format allowed Phillips to shoot the ad before the Supreme Court ruled on the health care law in June, then slide in the text based on whatever happened. The court upheld the law on a Thursday, Phillips finished the ads in a few hours, and the NRCC launched the inexpensive campaign the following Monday.

“In a world that’s filled with consultants and vendors, he’s found a way to stick out amongst the crowd very quickly,” said Brian O. Walsh, president of the American Action Network and a friend of Phillips. “He’s part of this universe of the next generation of folks that are stepping into the marketplace.” Article

This one went viral last season:


This one ran in several states: