Employee Spotlight: Jeff Sadosky, Head of Public Affairs Agency Partnerships at Applecart
Jeff Sadosky, Applecart's Head of Public Affairs Agency Partnerships, comes to Applecart after over eight years as a Partner at Forbes Tate Partners, one of Washington D.C.'s leading public affairs and lobbying firms. Prior to that, Jeff served in senior communications and leadership roles for three U.S. Senators and a number of presidential, gubernatorial and senate campaigns and a leading trade association within the healthcare industry.
Tell us about what you did prior to joining Applecart:
More than a few lucky breaks in the year or two post-graduation led me from a small media tracking firm to a job on President Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004. That kicked off about 10 years spent moving between the Senate and more campaigns than my wife would care to remember, some more successful than others. After helping lead Rob Portman’s first Senate campaign and being lucky enough to work with him during his first few years in the Senate, along with some time working with a healthcare trade association, I joined Forbes Tate Partners, sitting at the intersection of their federal GR, state GR and Public Affairs practices. Being able to build campaigns that married some or all of those skillsets and employing the strategies that they provide taught me the value of a holistic and comprehensive approach to solving problems within the public policy space.
Why did you decide to join Applecart?
For years, I had been frustrated by the fact that most digital targeting strategies just didn’t work for most Public Affairs campaigns. And frankly, it shouldn’t be a surprise, those tools were built to do something fundamentally different, whether that be to help win the “Coke vs Pepsi” fight, build awareness of a product among some specific subset of the population, or persuade, motivate or turn out some large swath of American voters.
So while there were some campaigns, where we needed to build and activate a wide base of grassroots voices, where we could tap into those targeting strategies, but more often than not, we were using a sledgehammer when a scalpel was called for.
- Geofencing the entire Capitol when there were ten members of one committee that mattered, which meant the other side of the debate, and my kids’ school field trip to Congress were just as likely to see the message as my clients’ targets were.
- Hitting politically active professionals interested in tax policy in Austin, TX via a digital campaign, which meant hitting most every CPA and CFO while hoping we got to the 100 or so people who truly were playing a role in a policy fight.
When I heard about Applecart, I realized someone had finally built a targeting platform that could get to the people my clients needed to reach.
What is your favorite Applecart use-case?
I didn’t know Applecart was involved in driving it, but while at my old firm, we were involved in a healthcare policy fight in Congress, but weren’t doing the digital or mail. One of the other firms was leveraging Applecart’s targeting to do both, and a member of the Senate held up one of the pieces of mail on the Senate floor talking about how everyone in their state was talking about this issue… when it had ultimately only gone to a few hundred of their constituents. Just so happens…Applecart’s targeting meant it was going to the RIGHT few hundred of their constituents. Ultimately, the campaign was successful and the debate ended the way the client had hoped.
What should people outside of Applecart know about Applecart?
As public affairs professionals are becoming savvier about what they’re looking for, and more importantly, solving for, firms and digital agencies employing old targeting tools – bringing that sledgehammer (and the budget required to support it) when a more targeted scalpel has proven to be more effective, both from a results perspective and budget perspective – are going to find themselves on the outside looking in. But it’s fun working with our partners who have seen that not only can smarter targeting help their clients win their policy fights, but it can help their firms win and grow profitably.
Give us your best fun fact:
I don’t know if I want to put the “best” fun fact in writing, so let’s go with… Was able to get to (and really get to, not just some layover at an airport or other cheat) all 50 states before I turned 40. Definitely not on purpose, should have gone long before, but saved one of the best, Hawaii, for last. For whatever reason, campaign planes were much more likely to take us to Ohio, Iowa, and New Hampshire than the Aloha State…
