Image Expert Hopes Presidential Candidates Get the Picture : Government: Doyle Potter plans to send the nominees videotaped messages from operators of O.C. small businesses about their needs.

It is said we’re a visual society these days, dependent on television for most of the news and views that shape our beliefs.

Doyle Potter has made his living for the last decade helping businesses perfect their visual messages. Now he wants to use his video camera to help small businesses send a message to those who seek to occupy the White House for the next four years.

Beginning Aug. 3, Potter, co-owner of Effective Visual Imagery in Irvine, will offer Orange County businesses free 10-minute spots on a video message he plans to send to each presidential nominee and to the news directors at CNN, the 24-hour cable television news network.

“The candidates all say they listen to the small business owner, but we don’t see any signs that they really do,” Potter said. “So we want to provide a forum for business owners to get their messages to the candidates.”

Potter’s requirements are few: He wants owners of businesses that have operated for at least three consecutive years, that have gross annual sales of $500,000 to $10 million and that employ at least five full-time employees. The owner or business spokesperson must also be a registered voter, he said.

He also suggests that participants prepare their remarks and rehearse them beforehand, because he and partner Lee Henseler will be doing the tapings on their own time and at their own expense.

“If people come in and are prepared, we can get this done effectively.” Potter said.

Business owners’ messages won’t be edited, he said, but Potter’s company will add a title card before each segment, identifying the speaker and the business.

Potter said tapings will be done at his office from 5 to 7 p.m. so that the program doesn’t interfere with normal business.

By mid-September, or when he feels he has a sufficiently weighty package to send to candidates George Bush, Bill Clinton and, most likely, Ross Perot, Potter will ship videocassettes to each candidate and to CNN.

He said he has no idea how many companies will take him up on his offer--or what people will have to say--but believes that seeing and hearing real people in an unedited tape on their own television screens will have an impact on the candidates.

Business owners who want to schedule a taping session, he said, should call Effective Visual Imagery at (714) 727-3111.

As for himself, Potter said his own message is simple: “The federal government needs to cooperate with small business. We need (federal) tax breaks to help offset the costs of all the state and federal programs--like health insurance, unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation--that we have to pay for and that make it impossible for some of us to stay in business.”