After our social values and cognitive work is complete, we use that research to develop novel concepts we call "strategic initiatives" — policy proposals, campaigns, and communication efforts that logically flow from the existing worldviews of our Constituencies of Opportunity. A successful strategic initiative 1) elevates new narratives, metaphors and concepts into contested political space, and 2) taps emerging values trends within the culture.

Strategic Initiatives are developed through a series of workshops with our partners and other key thought leaders who are willing to challenge underlying assumptions and rethink the conventional understandings of an issue. There is an art and a science to creating Strategic Initiatives. The cognitive science and social values research helps us to understand what matters most to Americans and what shapes how they experience the world. The art of brainstorming allows us to imagine and create new realities that start with those values, concerns and worldviews.

These workshops do not seek to answer the traditional advocacy starting point of, "What problem do we want to solve?" Rather, the Strategic Initiative workshops ask, "What matters to our Constituencies of Opportunity and how do we craft political initiatives that speak to them?" By breaking down the barriers of longstanding assumptions and rethinking our goals, we emerge from the workshops with a series of policy initiatives that are logical entailments from existing worldviews.

American Environics Strategies, our political consulting division, provides political campaigns, progressive organizations, and party committees with strategic political consulting services and a set of tools that enable campaigns to use our social values research to develop messages, target voters, and win elections. In races where every vote counts, American Environics Strategies provides our clients with unique insights into how voters think about political choices. Our experience in the political, public policy, and advocacy arenas enables us to provide a broad range of strategic advice to our political clients.

We create a stable political segmentation system based upon the extensive American Values Survey, fielded by American Environics. The political segmentation system groups voters and potential voters by their social values. Working with your pollster, we integrate our values segments into your poll to give you a clear understanding of your base, persuadable voters, and your opponent's base at a level that matters-their values. Knowing what motivates the political decision making of these voters enables you to make better decisions about framing issues, crafting arguments, and targeting voters.

We also fully integrate our values data with your voter file to help your field and voter contact teams identify voters by their values segments. Once you know the values segments you need to reach, and how to communicate with those segments, we give you a Road Map to target the specific voters holding those values. We can also use our segmentation system to better target your mail, telephone and internet fundraising efforts.

Finally, our consulting team has a wealth of experience in communications, issue development, and political strategy. From making early staff decisions to helping with your victory speech, American Environics Strategies will serve as a partner with you at every stage of the campaign.

Learn more about American Environics Strategies.

American Environics is well known for our ability to communicate complex information with simplicity and emotion. We now offer our partners or clients our information design capabilities as a stand-alone service to improve communication objectives even in cases unrelated to AE's research.

AE's information design services aim to communicate concepts, ideas, and stories — not just "facts" or "data." To that end, it is inseparable from the work done by our cognitive science team, our social values researchers, and our political strategists. Utilizing our extensive experience working with large, complex data sets, we employ a systematic process to turn raw data into accurate, beautiful, convincing stories. Our analysts/designers can assess your data and determine the most appropriate statistical analysis techniques, the best type of graphical representation, and format your graphics for different presentation mediums.

American Environics' Information Design Services follow the principles of Yale University's Edward R. Tufte, who has revolutionized information design over the past several decades. His books on explaining information through images, graphs, pictures, and other representations have influenced the way publications from the New York Times to Science present information. Most information graphics are cluttered with what Tufte calls "chart junk" — irrelevant images that do nothing to advance our understanding of the information or the concept (imagine the typical USA Today chart).

AE's work includes the creation of the following:

And as part of this work, AE's information design team creates a range of products, including the following: