Other professional consultants include media personnel, organizers of computerized direct-mail campaigns, and pollsters. Modern political consultants, unlike their party counterparts of the past, usually take no responsibility for governing. After assembling a campaign staff, the candidate must make a series of important decisions about campaign strategy. The primaries present the first problem. One may take strong, ideological positions on the issues and attract the support of ideological activists who loom large in the primary electorate This, as George McGovern found out in 1972, makes it difficult to appeal to independents and members of the party in the general election.
Television is an important factor in modern campaigns.
Paid advertisements, called spots, can be useful, especially in primary elections in which voters do not have large amounts of information from other sources. Visuals, on the other hand, are segments on television newscasts. To get this exposure a candidate must contrive to do something visually interesting, and at a time and place convenient for TV camera crews. Ironically, television newscasts are rarely informative, focusing as they do on campaign hoopla. Paid spots, on the other hand, contain a good deal of issue information that the public sees, remembers, and intelligently evaluates.