(Credit: Adventa Lowe)
It’s been eight years since Howard Dean revolutionized political fundraising by taking it online, five years since Twitter was invented, seven years since Facebook's birth and six years since YouTube started the technology that would allow cute baby videos to travel the world over. In the continuum of political campaigning and advertising, especially when viewed in light of the history of TV and radio campaigning, five or six years of development seems trivial. But in internet time where the lifecycle of startups and memes is equivalent to the flash of a lightening bug, we may as well have seen fifty years of technological development over the last half decade. In the last three years alone, the digital landscape has been completely transformed, and consequently, a viable 2012 campaign strategy will require the creation of a new set of technologies and tactics.
When Barack Obama announced his presidential bid in 2007, there weren’t many indications that he would run the most tech-savvy campaign in history. Twenty months later, his victory solidified the phenomenon. The political world of digital strategy has changed rapidly since then. Republicans once languished behind Democrats who pioneered online political communities and organizing. Now, it’s Republicans who have the upper hand in some digital segments (namely, Facebook and Twitter). Since the 2008 campaign, both sides of the aisle have religiously studied the OFA framework. As a result, the tactical creations of that time – integrated email advocacy and strategic communication on social media -- have now become the norm across the political spectrum.
In short, “new media” isn’t “new” anymore. Rather, digital strategy has become the centerpiece of national political campaigning. Influencing the press, raising money, organizing volunteers -- each of these cannot occur at maximum effectiveness in a presidential campaign without digital tools. Now more so than in 2008, digital strategy forms the heartbeat of any campaign.
It's because of this change in landscape that the 2012 calls for a big change in campaign structure. Former Dodd Internet Director and current SEIU digital guru Tim Tagaris rightly points out that the head of Obama’s digital operation should be a deputy campaign manager. Adjunct or add-on status on a campaign simply won’t do. Elevating digital strategists to senior campaign leadership ensures the adequate flow of information (from online to offline and vice versa). It is the only way to fully maximize (and monetize) the wide array of online tools available to a campaign.
Those online tools include standbys from the 2008 cycle – email, Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter – and several new services like Foursquare and Tumblr. For purposes of this post, I’ll focus on leveraging these services for fundraising (voter persuasion, media influence, and GOTV will be the focus of future posts).
1. Email: Facebook and Twitter may be the sexier twins of online communication, but email still reigns king when it comes to campaign fundraising. While the bulk of a campaign’s funds are still raised offline through big number checks, the ratio of offline to online revenue is shrinking and will continue to shrink through the 2012 campaign. The question for the Obama campaign – and any campaign really – is how to employ fresh email tactics that will capture new donors and encourage repeat contributions. Three years ago, end-of-quarter contests and deadlines were innovative. Today, the parade of emails that click in 72 hours before a deadline is nauseating, especially for hard-core activists and high-information voters who may be on multiple lists. Emails from the DSCC, the DCCC, OFA, issue groups, state candidates and out-of-state races mean that committed Democratic voters will need fresh tactics in addition to the old standby asks to truly feel invested in a campaign.
Part of the innovation that is needed is technical. Do campaigns stick with “letter” type of emails with hyperlinks to donate, or do they branch out to image-based emails (think of retailer emails like Apple or Sephora)? New approaches to email coding lessen the long-held panic that campaign emails would be stuck in a spam folder. What drafting innovation needs to take place in light of the fact that many people read emails on mobile devices (with three or four lines preview)?
Finally, that signature OFA “voice” in email that sang a hopeful tune of empowerment will necessarily have to change. As David Axelrod recently said, 2008's “hope and change may be weathered, or tempered, by hard experience.” It’s still there, but the trigger to convert supporters to donors won’t be as soft as in 2008 and may require a bit more of the “open mic” Obama in email communications, especially in segmented issue-based groups.
2. Facebook: Up until this point, Facebook has largely been a persuasion tool for campaigns. Congressional candidates have had almost zero success raising any real money off the medium for a host of different reasons, including technological and terms of service limitations. New services that have emerged in the last year or so will help campaigns raise more money off of Facebook, but the key to fundraising will be finding a strategy that taps into an inclination for community giving. MyBo revolutionized the concept of the mini-bundler by granting anyone the ability to set a fundraising goal and milk their networks for cash. But with the explosion of Facebook since the 2008 campaign, how much can we expect typical voters to reside in the MyBo network? Directing Facebook friends to offsite giving pages results in inefficiencies and a drop in participation rates, so the key will be discovering how to integrate MyBo tools seamlessly into the Facebook experience. Also, tapping into Facebook Pages will allow the campaign to capitalize off of an existing community structure for fundraising and organization versus relying on primarily on individual users (think “West Wings Fans for Obama”).
3. Twitter: Out of all the social media networks, Twitter holds the most realistic and exciting potential for 2012 fundraising. In 2009, ActBluelaunched its Twitter donation service which allows ActBlue donors to donate to registered campaigns simply by tweeting. After an initial credit card registration, donors can give to a campaign by tweeting out “donate $5 to [campaign]." The service hasn’t really taken off so far, but I suspect that’s more an issue of scale than anything else. With the Obama campaign’s massive email list and social network following, the potential to monetize its Twitter influence is huge.
The beauty of Twitter is that it can better allow for event-based donations. Anyone who has run an email program can tell you that fundraising asks clustered around a specific event (TV appearances, opponent gaffes, etc.) can be the most lucrative. With email, however, there is necessarily a time delay between the event and the subsequent ask. With Twitter, a campaign can take advantage of an event’s national fundraising potential almost instantaneously. Out of all of the digital trends on the horizon, Twitter fundraising will be the one to watch closely in 2012.
4. Mobile: Unlike email, which may have an open rate of 20-40% excluding subsets, text messages have a nearly 100% read rate. That number has campaigns salivating at the prospect of using text messages to raise money. We’ve seen the success of mobile giving with various relief organizations. Why can’t campaigns do the same? Many mobile charity campaigns use mGive but its services are currently limited to 501(c)(3) organizations. Four months ago, the FEC rejected a proposal to allow political campaigns to raise mobile funds, citing a concern that the service would not adequately "separate corporate funds from political contributions.” This doesn’t mean that mobile donations are out of the equation entirely. Some popular methods include texting a fundraising solicitation, then having the person called by someone who takes their credit card or sending a text linked to a donation page. Clunky, to be sure. Apps can and likely will provide a way for the Obama campaign to take advantage of mobile users (i.e. iPhone users who click on a donation link in an email can be directed to the campaign app where all donor data is already stored instead of a web page where they must log in again and start the process over).
But it’s new merchant technologies that truly offer the most exciting prospects for the 2012 campaign. Companies left and right are producing iPhone add-ons that allow the processing of credit cards. In 2008, the Obama campaign made email capture at events the centerpiece of its listbuilding and small donor strategy. With the campaign now having the ability to not only capture emails but also small donations at events in a way far more efficient than before, the potential for converting supporters to donors at thousands of events across the country is huge. In other words, converting online supporters into offline actors has always been a key part of any GOTV effort. Now, a renewed focus on converting offline actors into online donors can secure repeat contributors for a campaign early on in the process.
There’s no question that the Obama campaign has a proven track record of assembling innovative teams who break the mold and leverage new technologies to help pave a path towards victory. The 2012 race will demand even more. As Mike Allen has reported, "Democratic officials said they recognize that Obama for America, the campaign apparatus Axelrod helped build for 2008, was a once-in-a-lifetime masterstroke that cannot be duplicated." The goal for the 2012 race, Allen reported, is to "creat[e] a different kind of magic around a sitting president who is juggling multiple crises, amid a fragile economy and an uncertain national mood."
Creating a "different kind of magic" will first require a refusal to rest on 2008 laurels and tactics. Pablo Picasso noted that that every act of creation is first an act of destruction. By throwing out the 2008 playbook that has been memorized by Republican opponents and experimenting instead with new technologies and campaign structure, the Obama 2012 campaign can create that "different kind of magic" and keep the White House in Democratic hands.
