Jamestown Launches New Website

After a historic 2016 election cycle, when Jamestown helped elect President Trump and many other talented Republicans around the country, we thought it was time for a website refresh.
 
JamestownAssociates.com tells you all about one of the nation's most successful political and public affairs consulting firms. You can find out more about our leadership, services, success stories, and catch up on the latest news about the agency. Watch Jamestown's sizzle reel, featuring highlights from our TV and video work, and our demo reel, featuring a compilation of some of our best spots.

"Our updated website gives everyone a good idea about what makes Jamestown unique – our passion, originality, and meticulous attention to our clients. I'm especially proud to share our work from the 2016 elections. Take a moment and watch our brand new sizzle reel. It'll give you a good glimpse into the work we do to help our clients win tough campaigns," said Larry Weitzner, Jamestown Associates CEO.

Creative Director Len Khodorkovsky added: "JamestownAssociates.com has seen a spike in traffic over the last few years, so we revamped the site to accommodate the growing interest in the firm. It's sleek, informative, and easy to navigate. Visit us. We'd love to reintroduce ourselves to you."


Contact Jamestown Associates to see how we can help you win.

Jamestown Wins 10 Awards

Jamestown Associates is proud to announce that the agency has received 7 Reed and 3 Pollie Awards for its work in the 2016 election cycle. The highlights included our work for President Trump, which was honored with the Best Ad For Republican Presidential Candidate Reed Award and a Pollie for the Best Overall Television Campaign.

Jamestown’s Sayegh, Konkus, Dorr, and Henning Join Trump Administration

After a historic presidential campaign, during which Jamestown Associates was President Trump’s lead ad agency in the general election, several people from Jamestown have been appointed to positions in the Trump administration. And even though we’ve always known our team was second to none, these exceptional political pros’ departure is still bittersweet.

Tony Sayegh

Tony’s relationship with Jamestown Associates began as a client. He later joined Jamestown as an EVP, bringing a bright spotlight to the firm through his work with Fox News. Tony's creative campaigns have received prominent industry recognition. This week, he was named by the president as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Treasury Department.

John Konkus

As an EVP at Jamestown, John opened our Florida office and helped extend our reach to the Sunshine State. During the final stretch of the election, John worked on the ground tirelessly to help President Trump win Florida. He handled media relations for EPA Director Scott Pruitt during the transition.

Kaelan Dorr

Tough, smart, dogged, Kaelan always found a way to get the impossible done. At Jamestown, he was the Deputy to Jason Miller, the firm’s partner and EVP, who went on to serve the Trump campaign as the Senior Communications Advisor and the transition team as Communications Director. In his role, Kaelan was instrumental in developing media strategies, conducting opposition research, and maintaining budgets for dozens of political candidates and advocacy groups across the country. His talents were noted by the incoming administration, which he joined as the White House Strategic Communications Advisor and Special Projects Manager.

Alexa Henning

Alexa was Jamestown’s Director of Media Booking. In her role, she prepared clients for interviews, drafted press releases, shaped messages, and maintained a vast network of press contacts. She did her job so well, President Trump appointed Alexa as the White House Director of Broadcast Media.

We're sorry to see members of the Jamestown family depart, but we're happy for all of them. Best of luck shaping history!

Jamestown Associates Wins 7 Reed Awards for Best Political Ads

The Most of Any Firm for the Second Consecutive Year

Jamestown Associates is proud to announce that the agency has received seven prestigious Reed Awards at a February 17th ceremony in Las Vegas.

“We are proud of the ads we produced this year on behalf of all our clients, including President Trump. It’s gratifying to be recognized for the work with so many Reeds,” said Larry Weitzner, Jamestown Associates CEO.

For the second year in a row, Jamestown has won the most Reed Awards of any political firm, and has now won 17 in three years. The streak underscores the team’s exceptional creative prowess and reaffirms Jamestown as one of the best media agencies in the business.

The Reed Awards, bestowed annually by Campaigns & Elections magazine, recognize excellence in campaign management, political consulting and political design.

Click below to check out some of our award-winning work.

Best Ad for Republican Presidential Candidate

Best Ad for Independent Expenditure Campaign

Most Effective Comparative Television Advertisement

Best Ad for Public Affairs/Issue Advocacy Campaign

Other Jamestown Associates winning entries include:

  • Best Direct Mail Piece for Republican Presidential Campaign
  • Best Comparative Mail Piece
  • Best Mail Piece That Never Saw the Light of Day

Nothing About the Way Team Trump Made TV Ads was Normal

Larry Weitzner shared insights about the Trump campaign’s ad strategy with Chris Cillizza, author of The Fix, Washington Post’s political blog.

Donald Trump ran one of the most unorthodox – and successful – political campaigns in modern history.  One aspect of the campaign that hasn’t received much attention is the Trump ad strategy: How did the Trump media team sell one of the best known and least traditional candidates in history to a skeptical public? GOP media consultant Larry Weitzner was at the center of that effort. The CEO of GOP ad firm Jamestown Associates, Weitzner crafted the Trump TV message. Weitzner and I exchanged emails earlier this week and he agreed to an interview. Our conversation, conducted via email and lightly edited, is below.

FIX: Donald Trump is a very, very unorthodox candidate. And a very famous one. What challenges did that pose in terms of running ads about him?

 Weitzner: President-elect Trump was not a typical political candidate and he did not want typical political ads. There’s no way he would walk through a factory talking to camera while reading lines from a TelePrompTer. Mr. Trump wanted high-energy, high-impact ads that fit his message, and that is what we gave him. He instantly rejected ads he deemed “boring.”

This ad particularly satisfied Mr. Trump’s desire for high-energy, high-impact, non-boring communication. [Trump campaign chairman] Steve Bannon and [campaign manager] KellyAnne Conway told me we needed an ad capturing the fact that Mr. Trump started “a movement, not a campaign.”  The ad isn’t issue-oriented, but it captures the feeling everyone on the Trump campaign, everyone at his rallies, and everyone supporting his candidacy saw as great enthusiasm for his “movement.”

Mr. Trump is also a pro when it comes to production and lighting. We had to make sure lighting and set-ups were perfect on production shoots. I even hired crew that previously lit him on “The Apprentice.” Once Mr. Trump was confident we knew what we were doing, everything went very smoothly.

Submitting spots for review was another unorthodox aspect of the campaign. Bannon, [Trump son-in-law] Jared Kushner and [Trump digital director] Brad Parscale directed me to produce spots for review without approving scripts—they wanted to see our vision. I loved that. It gave us a chance to do some interesting ads without idly waiting around for script approval. One of the closing ads, “Choice” was the result of a brainstorming session at Jamestown Associates’ Philadelphia office, where our team came up with the concept of uniquely focusing on one American voter and the choice she was tasked with making. Another ad, “Change” clearly illustrated the change Mr. Trump would bring to DC versus Hillary Clinton’s “more of the same.”

Finally, the closing ad, “Argument for America” was originally produced as a two-minute web video. After seeing it and sharing it with the Trump team, Parscale—who gets credit for the idea—told me, “Everyone loves it, we are putting it on TV.” Now, that is unorthodox. Two-minute political commercials don’t usually air nationwide. It blew up on social media, with more than eight million hits, greater than any TV ad produced by either campaign. So many people have told us that ad was the turning point in deciding to vote for President-elect Trump.

FIX: Hillary Clinton was outspending Trump on TV in most swing states throughout the fall. How did you combat that spending disadvantage?

Weitzner: We had to grin and bear it. We tried to be smart with where and how we spent money on TV, and we had a very robust earned and digital media campaign. We tried to produce impactful spots with a little bit of edge to cut through the political noise.

FIX: What ad or ads that you guys did really cut through the clutter? And, why?

Weitzner: When Hillary Clinton said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters resided in a “basket of deplorables” we knew we’d been handed a gift. The “deplorables” comment was her “47 percent” moment, truly revealing her disdain for millions of hard-working people in this country. The moment her “deplorables” comment was reported, I spoke to my partner, Jason Miller, who served as head of communications for the campaign, about how big a game-changer this could be. We instantly got to work on an ad. We produced it over the weekend and Jason showed it to Mr. Trump who loved it. Mr. Trump had two great recommendations: first, include more of Hillary speaking about all the “deplorables,” next; sharpen the closing line of the script to emphasize Hillary’s elitism. The edits turned a good ad into a great ad, and was followed by this ad that drove the point home.

FIX: What ad that Clinton did hurt you guys the most? Why?

 Weitzner: The Clinton campaign produced uniformly excellent negative ads. They hurt. What was missing was a message that gave swing voters something to vote for, rather than against. They tried, but could never really connect because their messenger was not believable or relatable.

FIX: Finish this sentence: “The single biggest untold story of the Trump ad campaign is __________.” Now, explain.

Weitzner: Donald Trump is a brilliant man, who more than anyone, understood American voters yearned for change and hope that someone could “Make America Great Again.”

The original article appears here.

Jamestown Associates Congratulates Our 2016 Winners

Over 22 million pieces of mail.
398 TV, radio, and web ads.
9 Pollies and 8 Reed Awards.
4 straight years of helping to elect governors.

Those are just some of the numbers that went into, yet another, successful cycle here at Jamestown Associates. Among our accomplishments:

  • Helping Donald Trump win a shocking victory over Hillary Clinton in the race for President.
  • Chris Sununu became the first Republican to win New Hampshire’s Governor’s race since 2002.
  • Jamestown has now helped elect a Republican Governor in four states in four years: 2013 – Chris Christie (NJ); 2014 – Charlie Baker (MA); 2015 – Matt Bevin (KY); and 2016 – Chris Sununu (NH). In three out of the four states our clients flipped the seat from Democrat control.
  • Producing the winning TV ads that helped flip the Kentucky State House to Republican control for the first time in 95 years.
  • Businessman Warren Davidson won a 20-candidate special election in Ohio’s 8th Congressional District to replace Speaker John Boehner.

On behalf of our entire team at Jamestown Associates, we would like to congratulate our clients and all of our winners on a successful 2016!

Click below to see some of our work.

Jamestown Associates Congratulates: 

President-elect Donald Trump
Governor-elect Chris Sununu
Sen. Rob Portman (Concerned Veterans for America / Freedom Partners)
Sen. Pat Toomey (Republican Jewish Coalition / Club for Growth Action / Concerned Veterans for America)
Sen. Rand Paul (Concerned American Voters)
Sen. Marco Rubio (Concerned Veterans for America)
Rep. Ron DeSantis (FL-6)
Rep. Dennis Ross (FL-15)
Rep. Jim Banks (IN-3, House Freedom Fund)
Rep.-elect Trey Hollingsworth (IN-9)
Rep. Jamie Comer (KY-1)
Rep. Fred Upton (MI-6)
Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-7)
Rep. Leonard Lance (NJ-7)
Rep. Warren Davidson (OH-8)
Rep. Charlie Dent (PA-15)
Rep. Sam Johnson (TX-3)
Rep. Blake Farenthold (TX-27)
Rep. Dave Brat (VA-7)
Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA-4)

State Legislatures:  
Kentuckians for Strong Leadership
Tom Taylor (FL House)
Jackie Toledo (FL House)
Charlie Stone (FL House)
Mike La Rosa (FL House)
Terri Bryant (IL House)
Broanna Kahle (MI Assembly)
Dan Innis (NH Senate)
Terrence Murphy (NY Senate)
Mark Green (TN Senate)

Local:  
Mike Nerheim (State’s Attorney, Lake County, IL)
Joe Sparacio (Freeholder, Cumberland County, NJ)
Gerry Scharfenberger and Kevin Settembrino (Committee Members, Middletown, NJ)
Zeth Matalucci and Melania Smith (Committee Members, Dennis Township, NJ)
Julie Acton (Freeholder, Salem County, NJ)
Serena DiMaso (Freeholder, Monmouth County, NJ)
Thomas Arnone (Freeholder, Monmouth County, NJ)
Shaun Golden (Sheriff, Monmouth County, NJ)