Bill Hillsman
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William Gerard Hillsman, Jr. (born August 14, 1953 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American political consultant and advertising executive best known for his offbeat, populist political ads. He works and lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A graduate of Carleton College, Hillsman worked for various ad agencies until founding his own, North Woods Advertising, in 1985. After initially working only for commercial clients, he rose to prominence in 1990 when he became media director for Democrat Paul Wellstone's campaign for the United States Senate.
[edit] Career
Hillsman's work for Wellstone, whose total campaign budget was a comparatively-minuscule $1 million, earned him the Grand EFFIE Award from the American Marketing Association. His ads, most noticeably "Fast Paul," in which Wellstone zipped across the screen from locale to locale while providing his resumé, and "Looking for Rudy," in which the candidate sought out incumbent Senator Rudy Boschwitz and attempted to debate him in a pastiche of the film Roger & Me, were replayed dozens of times by news shows, maximizing the value of the small amount Wellstone paid to air the ads. This would subsequently become Hillsman's trademark when handling political clients.
After his success with Wellstone, Hillsman worked mainly with Minnesota candidates. In late 1992, however, he was contacted by representatives of Independent presidential candidate Ross Perot. Hillsman authored copy for two Perot ads, which were never produced. In 1993, Hillsman became media director for Sharon Sayles Belton in her then-struggling campaign to become mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Sayles Belton's unexpected victory was partially attributed to Hillsman's work. However, the following year, Hillsman directed the media strategy of Democrat John Marty's post-primary campaign for Governor (Hillsman has earlier worked for one of Marty's opponents), which lost to incumbent Arne Carlson by a record-setting margin.
In 1998, Hillsman again made headlines when, in mid-October, he was hired as media director for the third-party gubernatorial campaign of former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura. Hillsman's ads for Ventura, which posed him as Rodin's The Thinker, hawked a Ventura action figure, compared the candidate to Abraham Lincoln, and parodied the theme song to Shaft, were seen as a major driving force behind Ventura's unexpected victory, in which the candidate carried almost every demographic in the state.
The following year, Hillsman briefly counseled Academy Award-winning actor/director Warren Beatty, whom he advised to run for President as either a Democrat or a Reformer. In 2000, he joined his first campaign outside of Minnesota, creating ads for Green Party presidential nominee Ralph Nader. Both of the TV ads created for Nader were rated by many experts as the best of the campaign, and one led to added publicity when MasterCard, whose slogan had been parodied, filed a lawsuit against the campaign.
After the conclusion of Nader's campaign, Hillsman returned to Minnesota. In 2002, he was named a Resident Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. That fall, he served briefly as director of communications for interim Senator Dean Barkley, a former Ventura campaign manager who was appointed to fill Wellstone's seat upon his death.
In 2003, Hillsman briefly worked for columnist and author Arianna Huffington during the gubernatorial recall election, until she dropped out of the race. He then went to work for Denver, Colorado mayoral candidate John Hickenlooper, a political neophyte who eventually won by the biggest margin of victory ever in a Denver mayoral election.
In 2004, Hillsman authored Run The Other Way: Fixing theTwo-Party System, One Campaign at a Time, which was published by Simon & Schuster. That year, he also worked briefly for Illinois Republican U.S. Senate nominee Jack Ryan, before the candidate left the race over a sex scandal. The following year, during Virginia's off-year gubernatorial election, he created ads for State Senator Russ Potts' Independent campaign.
During the 2006 election, Hillsman served as media director for country music singer/mystery author Kinky Friedman's Independent campaign for Governor of Texas. He has also created advertisements for Independent Christy Mihos, who ran for Governor of Massachusetts, and Connecticut Democrat Ned Lamont in his successful primary campaign against incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman and unsuccessful general election campaign, also against Lieberman. In California, he produced an ad for proponents of Proposition 89, entitled "Pounding."
Starting in August of 2007, the group Physicians for a National Health Program began airing ads, created by Hillsman, in which ordinary citizens grill cardboard cutouts of Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama over their lack of leadership on the issue of universal health care. The ads are entitled "Speechless."
Other political clients of Northwoods Advertising have included St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman in his campaign for Congress, noted Minnesota attorney Mike Ciresi in his 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate, the Working Assets telephone company, the Center for a Sustainable Economy, former Minneapolis Chief of Police Tony Bouza and Minnesota State Senator Doug Johnson in their 1994 and 1998 campaigns for the DFL gubernatorial nomination, and former Florida State Representative Willie Logan in his Independent campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2000.
Hillsman's non-political clients have included the Mall of America, the Air Line Pilots Association, International, the Minnesota Twins, the Pew Wilderness Center, the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, the Minnesota North Stars, and Julian Loscalzo in his campaign for Baseball Commissioner.
He is the founder of Independent Voters of America.
