Business of Politics

Louisiana firm behind Trump’s TV campaign

by Jeremy Alford, LaPolitics

Photo Illustration from caricature by DonkeyHotey and photo by Takkk/Wikimedia

The Mandeville-based Innovative Advertising, led by partner Jay Connaughton, oversaw 45 percent of the total media buys for President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign this year.

In all, Connaughton and his Louisiana team produced 30 television commercials for Trump, of which eight made it to the air nationally. Innovative was one of three firms working on Trump’s media.

Connaughton already had a professional relationship with Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway before the long shot presidential bid took off. She asked him to pitch for the job in New York following the Republican convention.

“I started working in Trump Tower around Labor Day and only got to come back to Louisiana twice,” Connaughton said.

And he’s not coming back any time soon. Connaughton is sticking around to help with advocacy and policy issues during the transition.

“I think we’ll play a pretty significant role in that process,” he added.

Also getting some national attention is Bill Skelly of Metairie, partner and co-founder of Causeway Solutions.

Skelly and his team at Causeway managed data operations and voter contacts for the Republican National Committee this cycle. It was part of a $175 million overhaul and the RNC leaned heavily upon Skelly’s predictive modeling — he ran 9.6 million predictions across 20 battleground states.

The next move for Skelly will be to bring his system further down ballot, which he has already done in Kentucky, where the state House was flipped.

“We’re going to expand it,” he said.