TJ Walker breaks down Ted Cruz's 2015 presidential announcement at Liberty University, where students wearing Rand Paul shirts stole the visual narrative. Walker calls it a zero-cost PR win that beat any prepared soundbite, but flags the danger of a captive audience you can't control.
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And the smart PR play of the day goes to a couple of kids who are big Rand Paul supporters. So yesterday, Ted Cruz, the Senator from Texas, announced his bid for the GOP nomination for President. He did it at Liberty University in front of thousands and thousands of students. And this was the backdrop for his campaign. Now, Cruz's speech was fine. He's a great public speaker. Whether you like his politics or not, he is a fantastic speaker. But here's what caught my eye and caught the eye of abc, the Daily show and many, many other networks. Sitting in the crowd were several students wearing Rand Paul sweatshirts or T shirts. And it was in every single newscast it got commented on. That's the PR play of the day. Because Ted Cruz had to spend, presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars, all the details needed to orchestrate a big public announcement like this, dealing with the media, media contacting the media, setting up everything, Liberty University rehearsals the night before. This was a big production. And yet the Rand Paul campaign gets lots of favorable press mentions in almost every single story about this Ted Cruz announcement. Now here's the thing. Media training experts like me, we love to talk about sound bites and messaging and all of that stuff. And that is important. But sometimes it's just having a well placed visual that generates tremendous news. So it isn't just wearing a Rand Paul T shirt. It's going to get lots of publicity any day of the week. It's because it was at the Ted Cruz event and it was in camera shot and it was eye catching. That's the beauty of it. I don't know if these students planned this in a way where they specifically thought they would get a lot of news coverage. I don't know, but they get the credit for it nonetheless. What was the total cost of this million dollar plus PR bonanza for the campaign? Zero. It didn't cost the Rand Paul campaign anything. Presumably they already had the T shirts, so there was no cost. It was simply thinking, being strategic. They probably had to get there early to get the good seats that were at the lower level. So I give them credit for this. There is a time when you have to make plans, preparation, hire staff, certainly if you're a candidate. But there are times when you can get publicity just by being smart and essentially leeching on being a parasite off of other people's PR events. This is a classic, classic example of it. And I take my hat off to them, by the way, in case you think they're just being rude and obnoxious. These students were forced to be there. Liberty University forced the students to come because it was a part of a larger weekly gathering, and if they didn't come, they'd have to pay a $10 fine. So you can't necessarily blame the students. It's not as if they lied and said they were Ted Cruz fans and showed up and changed clothes. This does show some of the risk of Ted Cruz's strategy. He went for the strategy of big event, big place, thousands and thousands of students. He might not have been able to generate that crowd just with Ted Cruz supporters. So he essentially bought his audience from Liberty University. I'm not condemning that. Politicians in all parties do that occasionally, but it does come risk when they're not your own supporters. You end up with surprises. You lose controlling the visuals. The next thing you know, Rand Paul T shirts are popping out. That was the PR play of the day.
