IPI CEO John Tillman. President of the village of Golf, Illinois and go-to guy for Chicago reporters.
The Illinois Policy Institute is a right-wing anti-union front group for the Illinois Republican Party Tea Party branch, parading as a think tank.
During the Chicago teachers strike you couldn’t turn on your television without seeing the guy who owns IPI, CEO John Tillman on a panel or being interviewed. Even more than the Mayor or CPS board President David Vitale (or the invisible CEO JC Brizard), Tillman became the voice of the other side.
How?
The IPI played the Chicago reporters like a cheap piano.
A social media marketing blog, The Frontier Lab, reports.
Over the past month, IPI had been aggressively using social media to capitalize on a local story that garnered national attention: the Chicago Teachers Union strike.
Ryan Green, IPI’s Director of Digital Strategy, said that as a result of their activity during this period, they have been able to maintain a 40 percent increase in web traffic and an additional 2,000 followers on their organization’s twitter account. Perhaps even more important, many of the additional followers are, according to Green, “outside the echo chamber.”
Rather than simply pointing to policy papers, Green pursued an aggressive and carefully crafted strategy to harness the news cycle, he employed a tactic called “day parting,” where different content is delivered at various times throughout the day. “It’s the way people naturally consume content,” according to Green. “In the mornings, we went for lighter, more positive content, but nighttime, or 8pm to 11pm, was the best during the strike. I looked for highly retweetable content and delivered what the media wasn’t.”
It turns out, the media was paying attention at that time as well. “The media caught on, and we learned that they were retweeting at that time–and that same content was making its way into news stories the next day.”
IPI CEO Tillman doesn’t live in Chicago, of course. He is “President” of Golf, Illinois, and former head of Americans for Limited Government.
After all, I’m the president of Golf, a very small village north of Chicago with 453 people, 171 homes and a volunteer government, We have a police force, a part-time village administrator, and well, that’s about it.
What an obvious go-to guy for any reporter who is interested in good Chicago schools.
Fred Klonsky 
The piano that sits in the parlor of the political whore house named “Chicago Politics.”
Thanks for posting this. I’ve become very involved with my son’s school, over the past couple years and supported the teachers during the strike. I was out there on the picket lines every day and considered it a great honor to get to know so many teachers. At first, we just wanted to teach our kids about how the teachers were standing up for their rights and the students rights and to witness non-violent protest. I had no idea how strongly I would react to the teacher bashing going around.
During the strike, I created a design to lift the spirits of the teachers at Pulaski, our neighborhood school. I have since realized that the anti-teacher union and anti-public school rhetoric is here to stay (at least for now.) I wanted to do something to show a visible sign of our solidarity with teachers. I have created t-shirts and mugs (more items are on the way) with the symbol I created during the strike. I really want to turn the tide. In addition, I’ll be donating a portion of each sale to our neighborhood school. Count me as another one of your regular readers.
You can see my designs here.
http://www.zazzle.com/solidaritees*
Thanks,
Matthew
Dear Mr. CEO (of what I’m still not sure), Chicago teachers work very hard for a living ,and operate in an actual government, aka not volunteer, so your input counts for ______? Regarding a media strategy when somethng works it works, and can be done in kind.
Great contribution Matthew, will post it onto my social media pages.
Golf … what a perfect setting for astro-turf caddies …
I wonder if IPI has any “links” with Michigan’s Mackinac Center for PP …
Yes, everyone should Google Golf, Illinois. I used to carpool with someone who lived in Golf (conveniently located next to an exclusive “No Trespassing” country club which, I assume, has its own, exclusive “no trespassing” golf course {when you Google Golf, check out the origin of its name!}) Needless to say, exclusive country clubs, exclusive homes (three figure
worth and up to the millions). NO residents at or below poverty income (!)
However, a 2010 survey listed the unemployment rate at 10.8.
This would be due to retirees & stay-at-home Moms or Dads, I reckon.
Oh wow, they tweeted. And at nighttime too! These guys must be really, really bad news. And the head of the organization went on TV to present a different opinion? This is out of bounds. I am with Matthew. Let’s rid ourselves of this whole “free speech” thing once and for all. That way we can impose our will without all this trouble.
Your rather hysterical response suggests you miss the point of my post. I didn’t suggest that the media savvy IPI or it’s owner, John Tillman, should be denied freedom of speech. My criticism was directed at the reporters who are so easily manipulated. I’m just acting in the interest of transparency. You’re don’t have a problem with that? Do you, Frank?
Ironic, because I thought your entire blog post was hysterical.
I didn’t know someone could “own” a non-profit. I always thought there had to be a board or something. Can you tell us more about owning a 501(c)3 non-profit? I’d like to start my own.
So when Karen Lewis was on T.V. was she “manipulating” the media too? Is Karen Lewis the “owner” of the Chicago Teachers Union?
I know CTU has a twitter https://twitter.com/CTULocal1 and facebook account http://www.facebook.com/pages/Chicago-Teachers-Union/137764189586887.
It look like IPI has a slightly bigger twitter following https://twitter.com/illinoispolicy but CTU has a MUCH bigger facebook following compared to IPI http://www.facebook.com/illinoispolicy.
Both seemed to be very active during the CTU strike. Does this mean that CTU was trying to “manipulate” the media too?
Perhaps, Union members and leaders should be ignored by the media during a strike because of “manipulation”, as you suggest they should do for IPI?
Perhaps I missed your blog post on how manipulative CTU was during the strike, or maybe you are just biased towards union monopolies of public employees? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Or is there?
Oh, and I didn’t know IPI was a right wing front group. I seem to remember them working with Democrat Sen. Rev. James Meeks and Democrat Speaker Mike Madigan on school choice opportunity scholarships for Chicago kids in failing public schools. The bill passed in the Democratic-controlled Senate but ultimately failed because of a lack of Republican support for the bill in the House.
I guess IPI must be a right wing group at odds with the right wing in Illinois, working with left wing politicians to promote school choice for the benefit of parents and kids in Chicago. Interesting.
Cheers.
Yes. I am biased towards unions and public employees. Somebody has to do it.
While I can disagree with your point of view, I’ll at least give you credit for some honesty. Kudos.
All this “school choice” is BS. We pay taxes in-turn we expect certain services ie. schools. roads etc. If the education schools provide is lacking, fix what is lacking. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel and DON’T play a shell game with tax dollars under the guise of “school reform” or “school choice.” If we have inadequate people in positions of leadership, be it schools or government then remove them and replace them with people that can take the responsibility of leadership. This does not have to be complicated. The general public has to stop falling into one of two camps; those that don’t give a shit and those that are pissed as hell. There are those in leadership whose main mode of operation is to cater to one of those two extremes and that’s how we end up with the crap we have now. Sorry for the crude terminology but I’m tired of this.