PRWeek: PR Helps Prevent Tariff Bill Passing
PR Helps Prevent Tariff Bill Passing
Campaigns – Public Affairs – PR Helps Prevent Tariff Bill Passing
December 20, 1999
by CLAIRE ATKINSON
Client: National Knitwear & Sportswear Association (New York)
PR Team: Lucky Star Communications (New York)
Campaign: Fight against US Senate tariff bill
Time Frame: August to October 1999
Budget: Under dollars 10,000
The New York-based National Knitwear & Sports Association (NKSA) is a
trade organization of small to mid-sized apparel companies. The group
hired PR agency Lucky Star to represent it in a fight against a US
Senate bill that would end tariffs on goods made in the Caribbean and
Central America. The companies feared competition from imports and also
having to lay off workers.
Large clothing makers with interests in those regions, such as Sara Lee
and The Gap, wanted to see the bill pass. And one in particular, Fruit
of the Loom, was prepared to donate significant sums of money to
political parties backing the bill. The company confirmed with Time
magazine that it stood to save dollars 25 million to dollars 50 million
if the bill passed.
Strategy
Lucky Star founder Jeff Barge informed his clients that few journalists
would be interested in potential job losses at small clothing firms,
particularly at a time of economic prosperity.
He decided that a story centered around political finance reform would
be a much easier sell. But Barge had little experience on Capitol Hill -
his clients are mostly authors and web sites. He looked into Fruit of
the Loom’s campaign donations and found they were much larger than rival
companies, even though the underwear maker has been losing money. He
also found that the vast majority of those donations went to the
Republican Party, the bill’s backers. He knew he had a story.
Tactics
Barge told the NKSA to join forces with its own unions to issue a joint
press release about their opposition to the bill. Separately, Barge fed
the media the figures he had found on Fruit of the Loom. According to
The Washington Post, the company gave dollars 350,000 to GOP groups
alone. That put it in the same league as the National Rifle
Association.
Barge ghost-wrote a Los Angeles Times opinion piece for NKSA executive
director Seth Bodner. The article, which was also distributed over the
paper’s wire service, focused on the possible job losses if the import
tariffs from the Caribbean basin nations were lifted.
Results
The issue attracted the attention of some of the most influential media
in the US. Barge worked with Time, which ran a double-page spread on
Fruit of the Loom’s Capitol Hill handouts on November 1 - the week the
bill was to come up for a vote. The Washington Post also published a
piece under the headline ’Ailing underwear maker gives freely as Senate
mulls trade tariff cut.’
The Time story generated further coverage, with the Bloomberg newswire
picking up that Fruit of the Loom made more than dollars 435,000 in soft
money contributions to both parties, most of it to Republicans.
The most significant achievement of the campaign was to delay the bill
through a filibuster conducted by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), who
used the Time material. The filibuster has killed any chances of the
bill being passed, Barge says, although it is possible that it may at
least come up again in January.
The coverage even merited a mention by Senate finance chairman William
Roth Jr. (R-DE), who said the opponents of the bill had done a
’masterful job’ of portraying the measure as a product of campaign
donations benefiting a few clothing companies. Roth is one of the bill’s
supporters.
’It’s rare that a public relations campaign is used as part of a
filibuster,’ Barge says. ’But the client was thrilled and so was I.’
Future
Barge says the campaign was regarded as a great success, but despite
that he is ’not necessarily keen on doing more work in the Beltway. It’s
really nerve-wracking and difficult.’