Paying the Pipers
by Brian Whitmore

BusinessReview. November, 1999 v.7, n.10

In recent years political consulting and image making has blossomed into a multimillion dollar industry (with exerpts).

While politicians are counting their votes after December's parliamentary elections, Russia's political consultants will be counting their money.

For a new class of spin doctors and image makers — the people who teach the politicians how to win voters' hearts and minds by telling them how to act, what to wear and what to say — election season is boom time.

And while firms like Nikkolo M may not be household names for the general public, for Russia's political class they are recognized as leaders in the high-stakes game of getting candidates elected to public office — for a price.

"As a general rule, to be competitive in any election, a candidate needs to spend from $1 to $2 per voter," said Sergei Markov, director of the Center for Political Studies.

To win a seat in December's State Duma elections can cost a candidate anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million, most industry insiders said.

Gubernatorial elections are even more expensive. St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev reportedly spent $15 million on his successful 1996 campaign.

And to win the coveted keys to the Kremlin? It cost $500 million to get President Boris Yeltsin re-elected in 1996, press reports and sources close to the campaign said.

In other words, in the decade that Russia has held competitive elections, political consulting has blossomed into a multimillion dollar industry.

So what do consultants do to earn all that money?

Some of the services are banal: advising a candidate on clothing and hairstyle decisions, deciding what kind of tone they should take in interviews and instructing candidates on how to cock their head or furrow their brow to appear sincere before the voters.

But polishing a candidate's external image just scratches the surface.

Igor Mintusov, the head of Nikkolo M, said his company has separate departments dealing with research and polling, psychology, public relations, electorate analysis and campaign tactics.

Nikkolo M is an industry heavyweight, with a staff of 50 full-time and 150 part-time employees. They worked on President Boris Yeltsin's 1996 re-election, Our Home Is Russia's 1995 State Duma campaign and nine gubernatorial elections — eight of which were won by their clients. About 20 percent of the State Duma's current lawmakers were at onetime Nikkolo M clients.

Mintusov said that in December's Duma race his company will run the campaigns of "over 50 candidates" from different parties "excluding the Communists." A full fledged campaign will cost a candidate "from $300,000 and up."

"We have more people who want to use our services than we are able to accept," Mintusov said.

To win a seat in the Duma, a candidate could spend as much as $1 million or more.

That Nikkolo M is not short of clients is clear. On the sofas in the lobby outside of Mintusov's modest but tastefully decorated downtown office, a small crowd of prospective clients patiently waited for appointments.

Educated as an economist, Mintusov later began dabbling in sociology. During perestroika, he started a public opinion polling department at the newspaper Moskovskiye Novosti. He got in trouble with the authorities in 1988 when one of his polls showed that only 41 percent of the population would vote for the Soviet Communist Party in free elections.

A year later, in 1989, contested elections became a reality and Mintusov helped manage the campaigns of some candidates for the Soviet Union's first elected parliament.

Three years later, in 1992, he helped form Nikkolo M.

…political consultants tend to have humanities and social sciences backgrounds, while some also enter the profession from the ranks of journalism. And, as would be expected, there are some alumni from that beacon of agitation and propaganda, the KGB. A typical campaign staff usually consists of pollsters, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, media advisers and lawyers.

Consultants assist candidates in assembling a campaign staff, identifying their target electorate, fine-tuning their message and organising the campaign's rhythm and tempo.

In addition to firms like Nikkolo M that take on a whole campaign themselves, there are also many subcontractors who are recruited for specialised tasks.