Are you ready?
Democracy needs better, bolder, and more diverse voices to fight for our communities. Those voices deserve a competitive edge.
WHO WE ARE
R&J Strategies is a full-service political consultancy in New York City
Based in the Bronx, R&J Strategies empowers Democratic and progressive campaigns. We specialize in marketing & consulting services to understand your business, identify problems, strategize solutions, and formulate achievable plans, laying the groundwork for sustainable growth and prosperity. Our goal is to be unique in working with our clients to help deliver on their goals and business aspirations. From local City officials, State officials, Federal candidates, to grassroots startups and specialty causes, we will definitely move the needle and make sure your voice cuts through the noise.
Whether it’s winning elections, encouraging civic engagement, or directing resources to worthy projects we are unafraid to innovate and push the envelope through visionary projects while relying on a strong fundamentals to achieve results.
Our consultancy provides political consulting to candidates and campaigns:
Campaign and communications strategy
Issue and crisis management strategy
Messaging and reputation consulting
Creative direction in the fields of fundraising
Direct mail strategy and execution
Digital advertising campaigns
OUR EXPERTISE
R&J Strategies consultancy…
Has a structure for strategic problem-solving and honorable politics.
Partners with organizations and candidates who share these goals to tackle the greatest challenges we face.
Conducts complex, tailored communications, research, and project management, initiatives for political campaigns, and independent expenditures.
Helps lift up the voices of women, people of color, the working class, LGBTQ community housing crisis, racial justice and quality of life issues.
OUR VALUES
Transparency at Every Level
We offer a superior product at a competitive price, and we are 100% transparent about costs and margins. And our work looks different — it’s not standard political mail and digital ads that get recycled from race to race by simply inserting a different candidate’s name and photo. Creativity is important to us and we purposely don’t use designers who’ve done political work before. We understand that voters have a million things going on in their lives, and if we don’t catch their attention in milliseconds, we’ve lost them.
We also understand that digital advertising is different than other mediums of communication. When sending a piece of direct mail, you send a list of addresses to the printer and expect everyone to get the piece. Digital isn’t that simple or straightforward. Your list is matched to determine who is reachable on various mediums – and in that matching process, a large chunk is deemed unreachable. Worse yet, because of privacy restrictions, you often have no idea who was actually served the ads. Our digital strategies will help to ensure that your digital ads are seen by as many of the people you are targeting as possible. And we ask all of the right questions and constantly optimize to get the most out of our ad dollars.
OUR VALUES
Relationships Matter
We pride ourselves on the strong relationships we’ve built over the years on various races across New York State, those relationships have remained strong because we’re committed to offering the best possible product and being open and honest with those we work with. We don’t just drop your ads for approval and then go away. We stay involved throughout the campaign and become as familiar with the terrain and the race dynamics as possible.
We build all of our businesses slowly by design – it’s more important for us to do it right than to do it fast. We’ve got reliable designers, reliable printers, and a team that is hyper-responsive to your needs.
MEET OUR FOUNDER & PRESIDENT
Robert Barnes
Robert Barnes has over 30 years of professional experience in the political community. Known for being a driven leader who is exceptional at problem-solving he has worked closely with New York State, New York City, and Federal governmental elected officials, as well as the private industry, for and non-for-profits organizations. He also worked on many highly publicized political campaigns throughout the State of New York.
Robert served as the campaign consultant that ran a highly politically contested race for Bronx Borough President campaign where his candidate Vanessa Gibson handily defeated her opponents to become the first (African American) Woman to serve as the Bronx Borough President which is historic. His past political accomplishments were equally historic running and getting elected Darcel D. Clark as the first (African American) Woman not only in the borough of the Bronx but the State of New York as the Bronx District Attorney. As well as numerous State, City, and Federal campaigns, notwithstanding managing campaigns of individuals running Judicial offices in NYS and NYC with great results.
