Looking for inspiration and insights with regard to leveraging customer intelligence? Look no further than the current presidential campaigns. Really. One thing that makes a political campaign so intense and revealing is the definitive impact of the final vote. Come November, you either win or you lose. You get four (more) years or you get nothing. Rarely are the results of one’s actions as clear and as quick in the world of business (yes, even when you factor in the ambiguities and delays of the occasional recount).

With that in mind, I was fascinated by an article last month by Jon Gertner in the New York Times Magazine (“The Very, Very Personal Is the Political”) that explored the extraordinary power of leading edge marketing gurus in presidential electioneering. Whether it’s Karl Rove for Bush-Cheney or Michael Whouley for Kerry-Brokaw (?!?), new era political strategists with sophisticated market analysis and direct marketing backgrounds are now central to campaign success.

“Forget about TV commercials, forget about radio, forget about debates, forget about the ups and downs of the news cycle,” writes Gertner. “Think voters -- just voters. And don't think only in terms of big demographic groups like senior citizens, middle-class white men or young single women; don't think about them only in terms of geographical areas like districts or precincts or even neighborhoods. Think about what they like, what they do, what they consume. Think about them one by one.”

Republican direct marketing guru Richard Viguerie even suggests that such efforts increasingly will go beyond the individual campaign to the "lifetime value" of the political donor and the cultivation of "an active constituency for the exertion of power."

I'm not sure about the implications of such trends. Gertner’s story actually raises some scare scenarios -- suggesting politicians might spend more and more time "under the radar" and make themselves less and less available for public scrutiny. Who wants to fend off the likes of Tim Russert or Bill O'Reilly when political success depends on courting a few "swing voters" – on a one-to-one basis, of course – in a few key battleground states?