Colin Delany's blog

Seven Things about Online Politics We Can Learn from Barack Obama and the 2008 Primary Season

2008-06-22T21:53:23-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

The primaries are dead; long live the primaries! Before we plunge into the inevitable frenzy of the Fall campaign season, let's take a few minutes to draw some conclusions about the world of online politics from the candidates' experiences in the race so far.

1. We're in a social media world, whether you like it or not.

Before we crown Barack Obama the King of internet Politics, let's ask him how he feels about all those Reverend Wright YouTube clips scattered at the base of his throne. Sure, the Democratic nominee-to-be benefited from the 'net in significant and almost certainly decisive ways, but he also got kicked around plenty online. Just about every candidate suffered similarly, from the anti-Hillary "1984" ad and the John Edwards haircut video to that great footage of Rudy Giuliani in a dress. By feeding true believers a steady diet of similar red meat, blogs and online discussion sites helped to spread these and other less-than-flattering tidbits far and wide, with the most "successful" ending up in endless rotation on cable news. Of course, for every "1984" video, someone created a "Yes We Can" — the double-edged sword of social media.

The message is that candidates don't control the discussion and neither do traditional media gatekeepers — both are competing with an army of amateurs. And with tens of millions of monkeys banging away on keyboards, it doesn't take long for some true gems to float to the surface of the resulting sea of schlock. The trick for campaigns is to make it as easy as possible for online supporters to make a candidate or cause's case in whatever online (and real-world) channels they use, while realizing that there's always a chance that a candidate can be blindsided by a citizen creation (or inopportune supporter comment) and thrown off-message for days.

2. Video may be killer, but behind-the-scenes email is poison.

At least, if you're Barack Obama and if that email is accusing you of being a muslim manchurian candidate. Video may have emerged as a powerfully persuasive online communications channel (not surprising considering the effectiveness of television), but don't overlook the staying power of certain first-generation online tools, namely email. Email has helped candidates engage supporters and raise tons of money, and it's been absolutely key in the process of mobilizing volunteers and voters. But it's also sometimes been a river filled with boatloads of lies and distortion. Fighting the viral emails and the whisper campaigns has taken more time and resources than Obama would like, and it's still unclear how many votes they'll sway in the end.

3. Guess what: the internet can be a massive cash machine.

If there's one thing that political professionals have paid attention to in 2008, it's online fundraising. Money is a language these guys know how to speak, and when you start raising $60 million in a month, they start to notice. The really critical factor is how replicable online fundraising success seems to be. I.e., it's not just Obama, since Hillary Clinton also raised sizable amounts online this season, as did Ron Paul. And once he sealed the Republican nomination, even John McCain started bringing in sums that in any other year would be more than respectable. Easy fundraising sites like ActBlue and Slatecard promise to extend online donations to candidates up and down the ladder, a phenomenon already common in the world of online advocacy — nonprofits of all sizes maintain email lists and social networking presences in order to raise money online.

4. Speaking of, online social networks are potent tools, but "walled gardens" are a more risky proposition.

Facebook and MySpace have been critical tools this political season, particularly for campus and other local organizers and as an email replacement. Interestingly, social media sites so far don't seem to have been as effective as mass communications tools as some predicted — they generally seem to work best one-to-one or one-to-a-few. Once again, the onus is on campaigns to arm their supporters with the tools they need to persuade and motivate in the public social networking space, though campaigns can also create their own networks, so-called "walled garden" social sites.

Some analyses have pointed to the MyBarackObama feature as playing a role in Obama's success, and it's certainly true that hundreds of thousands of his supporters have created profiles in his campaign-centered network. I'd be curious to see how much more likely MyBarackObama members were to donate or to volunteer, particularly compared to email list members, numbers that should creep out eventually. But don't forget that this season we've also seen evidence that custom social networks aren't guaranteed to succeed: witness the quick implosion of John McCain's original edition early in 2007 (critical mass is critical indeed!).

5. In any case, how you keep in touch is less important than THAT you keep in touch.

Email vs. social networks as an organizing tool? Who cares! Use whatever works in a given situation — just stay in touch. Email, Facebook, MySpace, RSS widgets, Twitter, blogs, text messages and YouTube all have their places, along with plenty of others I can't remember right now. What matters is that campaigns and organizations actively stay in touch with their supporters to build relationships over time.

Once you're communicating, the next mission is to get people motivated to act, either in the real world or online. As of now, Obama-style integrated communications/volunteer-management is relatively rare, but some CRM (customer/constituent/contact-relations management) systems are beginning to incorporate multiple-channel features, and these should become increasingly common over the next election cycle or two.

6. As for the results, can you say, cult of personali-tay?

Okay, bad joke but serious idea. One thing that's absolutely fascinated me over the past year or so has been the internet's role in the growth of standalone political followings. From Ron Paul to MoveOn to DailyKos, certain people and certain groups are using the 'net to draw supporters together and keep them mobilized and active, often long after the campaign they originally joined to help is over. These movements have broadcast-world counterparts — Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart, Lou Dobbs — but the 'net allows both consumers both action AND absorption, since a follower can DO something to help MoveOn or their candidate of choice rather than just listen and watch. Interaction builds loyalty — and staying power.

Still, most online followings will fade over time, just as any email activist list gradually dies off without an influx of new activists, but some (like MoveOn) will settle into being semi-permanent parts of the landscape. For an example of the longer-term effects, let's say that Obama wins the presidency and serves a term or two. After that, will his personal fan base (maintained and solidified online) lend him a disproportionate voice in the politics of the following decades? "Like Mussolini, and Kennedy/I'm the cult of personality."

What's really fun is when one online cult leader runs head-on into another, as when Obama went around the top-level bloggers to pick off their readers directly this season. Disintermediating the would-be disintermediators!

7. The final lesson: the internet CAN really matter, but it doesn't ALWAYS really matter — yet.

I agree with Mike Cornfield and Sarah Lai Stirland that without the internet, it's very unlikely Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee. But it's also true that without the internet, John McCain almost certainly would be the Republican nominee — if the internet so overpowered other political considerations, Ron Paul ought to be standing in his place. The 'net IS key to modern politics, if only because it's so often the primary way of moving news and opinion these days. But it still isn't the ONLY key, and it may never be — at least, not until we all have wifi chips implanted in our brains and join the hive-mind. Which at this rate should be just in time for the 2020 primary season...scheduled to begin early in 2016.

– cpd

Unveiling the New Online Politics 101

2008-06-19T17:57:08-04:00

The new version of "Online Politics 101: The Tools and Tactics of Online Advocacy" is now ready for reading and/or download, with new chapters on social networks, advertising, political databases and choosing the right mix of tools, plus expanded articles on fundraising, blogs and more. Includes updates based on the 2008 primary campaign experience. The best part — if you disagree with anything, the web version of each chapter takes comments. Read now, or God kills a kitten...

Download Online Politics 101

Winning at Veepstakes Bingo: Jim Webb Answers a Very Special Personal Ad

2008-05-19T00:51:28-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

At the exact instant I opened this email from him, Jim Webb came on the radio, leaving only one obvious question: is a two-fer good enough for "BINGO" in the veepstakes stature game?

On NPR Friday, the Junior Senator from Virginia deflected talk about the Vice Presidency by shifting discussion to the good he could do on the serious issues of the day if he stays where he is. In the process, he compared his preferred style of public service to that of the late J. Patrick Moynihan. The eerily concurrent email message, the first from the Born Fighting Political Action Committee in almost two months, provides a handy cheat sheet to Senator Webb's Completely Inadvertent Weekend o' Media Exposure:

Over the next several days, Senator Jim Webb will appear on a number of TV and radio programs discussing the critical issues facing our nation.

Sunday, May 18: Meet the Press (NBC)

Monday, May 19: CBS Early Morning

Monday, May 19: Fresh Air (NPR)

Monday, May 19: Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)

Tuesday, May 20: Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC)

Tuesday, May 20: Lou Dobbs (CNN)

Check your local listings for the airtime and station broadcasting each show. We hope you can tune in. Thank you for your continued support of Born Fighting PAC.

Oh no, he's just a politically and intellectually ambitious border-state politician and author with a military background, a dollop of good-ole-boy cred and a son who's served in Iraq. Why would he possibly want to draw attention to himself in May of 2008? Update! Wait: Could it be that he's circled a certain very special personal ad?

"ISO rough-hewn MWM/MWF for ticket-sharing and mutual-career-boosting. You: able to offset my key weakness among Southern white voters while also providing welcome government and/or policy experience. Bipartisan bonus points for past service in a Republican administration. Me: serious, reliable, charismatic Midwestern type with a sparkle in my eye, an excellent sense of timing and a mean jump shot. Reply to #3464 to leave a message for Barry."

Can't wait to hear more from these star-crossed lovers!

– cpd

What Tools are YOU Using for Online Politics?

2008-05-12T17:22:54-04:00

Let's help get a better sense of what tools political professionals are using, both for advocacy and to help elect candidates: take the 2008 E-Voter Institute Survey of Political and Advocacy Communications Leaders today.

Has the Internet come of age for political campaigns? Which voters are best motivated using web tools? Are online social networks effective for getting out the vote? Take the 7th Annual Survey of Political and Advocacy Communications Leaders and help E-Voter Institute better understand how campaign dollars are being spent. Take the survey and provide a wider view of the effectiveness of all media used by candidates and advocates.

E-Voter Institute, along with HCD Research, is also conducting the 3rd Annual Survey of Voter Expectations. All research results will be available in mid-July with an eye to helping you make more informed decisions about general election 2008 clients. Watch for notices about the webinar this summer. Go to http://e-voterinstitute.com to download reports from 2006 and 2007.

Remember, the more of us reply by the time the survey wraps up on May 31, the more likely we are to get good results.

– cpd

Republican Social Media Site Tries to Turn "Yes We Can" Back on Obama

2008-05-09T16:23:23-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Interesting new GOP anti-Obama site, via the The Caucus: CanWeAsk.com mixes social media techniques and video to try to undermine Obama's credibility. The social media approach is the most interesting part of the site, since it's soliciting text and video questions for the now-presumed nominee (The Caucus correctly notes that the very existence of the site helps to cement the impression that Obama has crossed the finish line). Participants can upload text questions directly to the site, but the video submission process requests YouTube links instead (free product placement!). The site also has a Donate link and a list of unfavorable GOP news articles about Obama.

To me, the video is the weakest part of the presentation, since it shows Barack in still images that are surely intended to paint him in a bad light, but except for the first one (in which his furrowed brow almost suggests devil horns), to me they actually generally make him look serious and sincere (he's on-screen throughout the whole clip). The video also uses standard negative-ad "concerned" music, and tries to turn an Obama crowd's "Yes We Can" chant into an affirmation of our right to ask the candidate tough questions, but in the end it actually just reminds me of the guy's own message. I have to say, this clip feels like a backfire-in-progress. See what you think:

Update: While I was editing this piece, I let the video run in the background, where I could hear it but not see it, and it felt more effective that way. Still, every time the chant of "Yes We Can" came along, it still seemed to undermine the overall feeling of negativity. Maybe it's just me.

– cpd

Has Facebook Jumped the Shark as a Political Tool?

2008-05-05T11:31:48-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

I hate to risk alienating my new BFF Mark Zuckerberg, but has Facebook's moment in the sun as a hot political tool passed? And if so, what does that tell us about the future of social networking sites for online political organizing, and even about the future of Facebook itself?

We've now seen more than a year of intense use of social networking sites by the U.S. presidential campaigns (and even longer use by issue-advocacy groups), which gives us a solid base of information and experience to judge just how effective Facebook is as a political tool — both for organized political campaigns and advocacy groups and for individual political activists. The verdict? Facebook has not lived up to a lot of its initial political hype, and for reasons that are perfectly natural considering what kind of a site it is. The crux:

Facebook is Not (Yet) a Mass-Communications Tool

What are social networking sites designed to do? Connect people, of course, but connect them in distinctive ways depending on the specific site. LinkedIn, for instance, joins people who want to maintain relationships for professional reasons, while special-interest social networking sites (see MyBarackObama.com) connect people who are passionate about a particular topic.

Looking at Facebook, it's clear that its user model has a definite bias toward connecting people one-on-one or in small groups. Unlike MySpace, which was designed to make it easy for bands to contact fans en masse, Facebook's core functions revolve around individual connections between individual people. Of course, features like Mini-Feeds, the Wall and various Applications create social connections and social spaces, but the mass-messaging features included in Groups and Fan Pages are limited and have the feel of afterthoughts rather than core functions.

Groups and Apps, in turn, actually illustrate what has arisen as a significant problem of using the site for political purposes: clutter. Anecdotal and survey evidence suggests that as soon as Groups and Apps spread widely, Facebook users became overwhelmed by the volume of invitations they received (as an example, I currently have 173 pending requests of some kind — sorry if I didn't install the "what's your stripper name" application you suggested). The experience of advocacy groups on the site is illustrative of the results:

Facebook Advocacy: Too Many Groups, Too Little Attention

How many Facebook Causes have you seen that had raised precisely zero dollars? How many Groups have you joined, only to promptly ignore every message you receive from them? Even the winning campaigns in the recent Facebook Causes Challenge had only a few thousand donors apiece, and none but the top four broke out of the hundreds of donors. To put that in context, I know people who've assembled lists of hundreds of donors for a walk-a-thon simply by bugging their friends and family via email, phone and in person.

By contrast, those groups that have found advocacy success on Facebook tend to adopt an approach that USES the one-on-one nature of the site. As one small example, I spoke to a group of pro-choice activists a few weeks ago, many of whom work with students on college campuses. When I asked how Facebook fit into their work, the overwhelming response was that it was essentially an email replacement — they employed Facebook messages to reach individual supporters or small groups of supporters when they were preparing for events or promoting a particular message. The Genocide Intervention Network demonstrates a much more comprehensive and strategic approach but the same basic idea: as Ivan Boothe wrote last year,

For the Genocide Intervention Network, which is the organization I'm involved with that has been most active in social networking, involvement in the "social web" is really an outgrowth of our entire mission: To form the first anti-genocide constituency, and to empower our members with the tools to prevent and stop genocide.

The words "constituency" and "empower" are key. We're not simply looking for a mailing list or an ATM — we want an educated, active movement of people interested in preventing and stopping genocide. Our members need to be able to think for themselves on the issue — to hold events in their communities, motivate others to take action, press their elected representatives to take stand — not to simply be another name on a list, but to be a hub in an ever-expanding network.

This is really the principle behind the social web: it's all about conversations. And for us, conversations are the perfect way to build a vibrant, effective movement.

Note that Ivan is describing something very different than traditional mass communications: he's talking about working closely (no doubt frequently one-on-one) with people on Facebook and other networking sites over a long period of time to help build a cadre of very committed activists — something that most electoral campaigns (and even most issue advocacy campaigns) simply can't do, whether because of lack of time or lack of resources.

Speaking of electoral campaigns, let's look next at what can we can learn from the current presidential campaign cycle:

The Presidential Experience: Facebook Is Nice To Have, But...

What online technologies that have actually mattered in the political world this year? The most obvious one is fundraising, of course, but we've also seen tremendous results from online video — ask Obama how much he's appreciated those clips of the Reverend Wright — and several candidates have put serious resources into blogger relations and blogger outreach. The killer application, of course, remains email — it's still the most reliable way for candidates to maintain a connection with supporters and encourage them to donate and to volunteer (and one-on-one, it's a damn good way to keep in touch with bloggers and mainstream-media reporters). At heart, Obama and Clinton have broken online fundraising records using email and a website that accepts credit cards, technology that's been widespread for more than a decade.

Social networking? Despite all of the attention paid to it in (occasionally breathless) media coverage, and the dutiful recording of the candidates' soc net numbers by sites like techPresident, Facebook, MySpace, et al have not proven to be terribly effective tools for campaigns. Does anyone really think that the fact that Obama has five times as many Facebook friends as Hillary Clinton has turned out to be significant? Demographically interesting and revealing, sure, but actually relevant to how the Democratic primary process has gone so far?

Campaign professionals have certainly caught on to this dynamic: for instance, when the DNC's Josh McConaha recently listed essential campaign tools, social networking sites were not in the top three. And at last month's Internet Advocacy Roundtable presentation, when an audience member asked a question that posited that the Obama campaign's online success came from social networking outreach, former Edwards staffer Tracy Russo quickly shot down that assumption, saying in essence that the Obama staff themselves wouldn't attribute their online support to the campaigns' use of Facebook or MySpace.

What has been politically interesting on Facebook this year to me, by contrast, is individual PEOPLE using the site for their OWN political purposes — telling their friends to support a candidate, go vote, etc., the same way they might put a bumper sticker on their car or a sign in their yard. Todd Zeigler noted this over a year ago in a quote in an early Post article on presidential online social networking:

"The key point here is that the support for Obama on these social-networking sites is not being driven by the campaign itself. It is something spontaneous as opposed to something the campaign itself is orchestrating."

Exactimundo — and we're right back to Ivan Boothe's point about social networking as conversation.

Elements of a Successful Political Facebook Strategy

Okay, if Facebook isn't really a mass communications tool, how CAN advocacy groups and political campaigns use the site and others like it to help spread their messages and build support? First off, they need to work with rather than against a site's basic structure, and in Facebook's case, that means getting down to the one-on-one: give the supporters the tools, and if they're motivated enough, they'll do the job for you.

A basic social networking presence sure can't hurt. Starting a Facebook Cause or Fan Page (or a MySpace profile) doesn't have to take a whole lot of time, and of course they have the potential to put you in front of people you might not have reached before. If that's all you do, though, you're not likely to get much in the way of results — without aggressive outreach, the vast majority of your potential audience will never see you.
Build a cadre of supporters quickly. Soc net support tends to build exponentially, which is natural in a system based on organic growth, so the faster you can assemble that initial group of friends, the faster you'll see the results. Work with your own staff to get them to reach out to friends and kinfolk, and of course mention it to your existing supporters via advocacy email or newsletter.
Rely on your supporters, and make sure they have the tools to spread the word. People have come up with plenty of good techniques to alert friends about an issue on Facebook, ranging from their Mini-Feeds (combine with Twitter for major geek points) to posted links to status updates ("Colin is...revealing that Facebook has no political clothes") to changing their profile pictures to an "I'm voting for..." image. The trick is, you can't MAKE supporters do anything, so you have to get them motivated enough to act and keep them that way. So if you're going to keep them around for the long term, you'd better figure out a way for them to get some value out of their involvement with your campaign — sure, the sense that they're helping to save the world is great, but recognition, rewards and competition can really get people moving.
Get them on your list. It's been in the Online Politics 101 article on social networking sites since e.politics launched, and for good reason — Facebook Groups and MySpace friend lists generally have abysmal response rates, often a tenth or hundredth that of a comparable email list. Unless you're investing in Ivan's long-term engagement strategy, get your soc net supporters to sign a petition or take some other action that gets them on your email list as fast as possible. The frequent predictions of email's death are still a bit premature.
Integrate your communications. One of the genius features of the Obama campaign this season has been its apparent integration of different online tools into a single communications mechanism. You want to stay in touch via Facebook? Done. Email? Done. Text message? Done — all that matters is that you want to stay in touch. Ultimately, this sort of integrated online communications strategy will become the norm, but for now, it's still out of reach for most advocacy groups and campaigns. Soon, though....

These ideas are just a sketch based on recent experience, and plenty of people will have better and more extensive strategies and techniques, but I bet that they rely on the basic truth that the dedicated social networking sites are exactly that: places for personal connection, not yet for mass communications.

The Future of Facebook

If Facebook hasn't lived up to the initial political hype, what does that tell us about the site's ultimate future? My Silicon Valley crystal ball done broke a long time ago, but I'll hazard a few guesses. First, we've seen plenty of social networking sites come and go over the years (Friendster!), and there's no magic that will keep MySpace and Facebook on top.

When Facebook dipped in the UK over the winter, for instance, plenty of online commenters danced on its grave, but this observation in The Guardian really jumped out at me: "Growth among the big players looks to be more about getting people from their competitors, not attracting new people to social networking." Of course, plenty of the world is un-networked still, but by now, most people in the developed world who want to be on social networking sites already are. So, Facebook will stay a soc net darling if it can continue to offer enough value to users that they don't defect to niche network sites like those created on Ning or to the Next Big Thing. Note that even LinkedIn has posted faster growth than Facebook fairly recently.

And honestly, I'm not sure that the current approach of constantly cramming the site full of new features is exactly the way to go (though that may reflect my advancing years: the research I cited earlier also shows that site clutter annoys older users more than those under 35). One thing I often heard people mention when they were jumping on the Facebook bandwagon a year or so ago was how "clean" the layout was compared with the frequent chaos of the MySpace universe (something that may mesh with the prep vs. nerd demographic breakdown of the two sites). I don't think that distinction applies so much anymore.

But the biggest question facing my new buddy Zuckerberg and the company's even newer COO is whether or not they can turn those tens of millions of users into billions of dollars for advertisers. Facebook's current annual revenue is around $150 million, about 1% of the company's theoretical valuation of $15 billion, and if we learned one thing during the first internet boom, it's that site users' eyeballs only count if you can turn them into dollars. I suspect that it'll take one-on-one social applications to make that conversion happen — traditional advertising hasn't cut it so far.

So, is Facebook jumping the shark? Politically, I think the answer is yes, at least as far as the initial hype goes. More broadly? Insuffient data so far. But if Facebook lines up on the shark tank, the resulting graphs will probably look something like this — and not nearly as exciting as THIS:

– cpd

Obama Supporters Using Wiki to Reach Superdelegates, Text Messages to Reach Your Momma

2008-04-27T14:10:35-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

As the Democratic primary process grinds on, the candidates' supporters are using just about every electronic tool available to swing the race their way. Two cases in point from the Obama side: super.del.egates.us is a wiki-based contact list for voters to use to reach those precious unpledged delegates to the Democratic Convention, while Yrmomma4obama aims to help young voters (and those too young to vote themselves) to use text messages to persuade their friends and family to jump on the Obama bandwagon.

Super.del.egates.us is based on a classic wiki structure, familiar to anyone who's spent time on Wikipedia.org. It collects the contact information for the Democratic superdelegates, including web forms for those congressmembers who don't accept direct emails, with details being entered by volunteers. The site launched last week, and as of this writing it's only partially filled out, but it's a fascinating example of the new kinds of citizen activism the 'net is enabling this year. As with any online effort that requires a critical mass of participants to work, Super.del.egates.us will live and die by promotion — if no one hears about it, it's not likely to do much good.

By contrast, Yrmomma4obama has been around for a couple of months and works as a standalone application. The intended audience is young, so the site has features for both voters and those still unable to cast a ballot. Its core function: the site lets you send a message to your cell phone, which you can then forward to friends and family. Of course, you can also sign up for text alerts for upcoming primaries, and the organizers have also created a Facebook group. A site like this doesn't require the same critical mass to be effective as the wiki above, so it may be useful no matter how many voters it reaches. Online enabling of offline behavior, anyone?

– cpd

Inbox Deathmatch: Obama vs. McCain

2008-04-14T17:03:37-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

It's always fun when dueling campaign emails arrive in the e.politics inbox only minutes apart, particularly when they're so gently massaging the same issues-of-the-moment. Today's edition: Obama vs. McCain. The weapons: "bitter" vs. "out of touch." The immediate stakes: the contents of thousands of wallets. The long-term stakes: the public perception of each man, and ultimately his electoral fate. Today, Barack hit first, fast and jujitsu-style, seeking to define his San Francisco comments as a hymn of love to the great America heartland and his rivals as shady opportunists for trying to take advantage of them:

But our opponents have been spinning the media and peddling fake outrage around the clock. John McCain's campaign, which will continue the George Bush economic policies that have devastated the middle class, called Barack out of touch and elitist. And Hillary Clinton, who is the candidate who said lobbyists represent real people, didn't just echo the Republican candidate's talking points: she actually used the very same words to pile on with more attacks.

Bonus points for the McCain-Clinton combo strike! Four head-spinning minutes later, John McCain went to DefCon One and dropped the E-bomb — the dreaded charge of Democratic Elitism:

If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions - Senator Obama's liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain's faith in the small town values that continue to make America great. John McCain will not forget them or write them off. Neither should Barack Obama.

Who will win this contest of wills, this battle of generational champions, this struggle for the Very Soul of Middle America? Don't touch that dial...

– cpd

Barack Obama Trains Robot Zombie Army for World Conquest

2008-04-03T18:08:34-04:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Okay, it's not exactly a robot zombie army, but it might have a similar effect on the world of political action — an email arrived today from the Obama campaign about a training program they're starting which aims to educate a cadre of activists in the essentials of community organizing. Using Obama's own organizing experience as a hook, the campaign pitches the Obama Organizing Fellowships as "a program that's going to train a new generation of leaders — not only to help us win this election, but to help strengthen our democracy in communities across the country."

The message doesn't say how many Fellows will be trained or where, but it does give you the opportunity to make a donation, to invite a friend to help or even to volunteer to house a Fellow. Obviously the campaign is investing in this project in order to help get Obama elected, and a Fellow's most important job will be to help that task along (note that the program is a tool for the general election at this point, not the primaries), but after that they'll be turned loose to wander the Earth on their own, where some will no doubt use their new-found powers for good or ill.

Seriously, with an unprecedented number of people politically activated this year, and with the campaigns as well as outside groups like my friends at the New Organizing Institute training campaign workers and volunteers in the essentials of political action online and off, I can't help but think that we're going to be left with a ton of new people fired up about politics and armed with the tools to put their ideas to work. Some will fail and others will lose interest, but the rest may just start to change the ways things are done locally and up the political chain. THAT would be robot-zombie-army fun to watch.

– cpd

How Are Candidates Spending Their Money Online?

2008-03-05T15:30:42-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Update from the Politics Online Conference: some quick numbers from Patrick Quinn of PQMedia on how candidates are expected to spend their money online in 2008. First, online spending should total roughly $73 million at all levels in the '08 elections. Second, email marketing is still dominates expenditures, taking up 62% of campaigns' online spending. Web development is next on the list at 27%, with display, search and video ads taking up the remaining 11% of online budgets. For comparison, the 2004 numbers were 74% for email, 19% for web development and 7% for ads.

Quinn attributed the increase in development spending to the growth in both online fundraising and the number of local candidate sites. Email's relative decline (though don't forget that it's still by far the largest piece of the pie) is due in part to a greater emphasis on backend technology for fundraising as well as to email's slow, steady decline as a mass communications tool in the face of deliverability issues. Online advertising suffers, he said, because political communications professionals don't yet see it as a local medium (they clearly haven't fully appreciated the power of geotargeting). Quinn also pointed out that while these numbers are projections, reality has matched PQMedia's predictions through the election cycle to this date.

Also at the panel, Kate Kaye from ClickZ looked specifically at online display (banner) ad buys in the campaign so far: McCain and Romney together have bought roughly 70% of presidential display ads, with the Obama campaign taking up all but a small fraction of the remainder. With that in mind, she raised the question of whether or not an Obama/McCain race in particular could lead to a jump in online ad spending.

As National Journal's Alex Treadway pointed out earlier in the day, though, political professionals will be reluctant to embrace online ads as a tool until the online advertising world finds ways to make it easier for consultants to place ads, particularly when they're dealing with many different sites. I wonder how much the 15% cut of TV ad buys that media consultants often take affects their thinking? A year ago I heard Michael Cornfield make a similar observation, saying that consultants will resist shifting spending to online marketing until they can figure out a business model that lets them make money off of it. For reference, Michael Bassik noted at today's panel that commercial marketers spend closer to 10% of their marketing money online — vastly more than their political counterparts.

– cpd

Grading the Presidential Email Campaigns (Spoiler: Everybody Flunks)

2008-02-28T10:30:16-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Marketer Brent Rosengren has embarked on a journey through the wilds of presidential email campaigns, using commercial email marketing standards and practices as a standard, and guess what: ALL of the top-level campaigns fail the test. Each of them makes critical mistakes that limit the effectiveness of their mass emails, their primary means of communicating with steady supporters and converting them into donors and activists.

Email is a behind-the-scenes medium, so political marketers may not be aware of how much effort goes into testing and measuring email marketing techniques in the commercial world. Businesspeople pay attention to email for the simple reason that it works: as Rosengren notes, "When compared to the ROI of mass media advertising, email continues to dominate; for every dollar spent on email marketing, marketers can expect an estimated $48.29 return." From the signup process to subject lines to message content and landing pages, political email marketers can and should learn from the tools and tactics of our colleagues in the business world.

So what mistakes are Obama, McCain, Clinton, Huckabee and friends making? Some are ludicrous — most campaigns didn't even include forward-to-a-friend link in their messages, something that comes standard on most email marketing software packages. Other campaigns had cumbersome sign-up processes, weak subject lines and overly long messages that buried the ask, problems that user-testing and statistical analysis should be able to correct (i.e., segment your list, run several different subject lines and see which ones work best, something that nonprofit fundraisers and advocacy experts have been doing for years). What's sobering about Rosengren's analysis is how elemental many of the mistakes are, but that also means that they should be relatively easy to correct. If his piece only whets your appetite for good mass mail practices, check out the Online Politics 101 chapter on managing email advocacy.

– cpd

Obama Online Ad Seems Aimed at General Election

2008-02-21T14:03:25-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

The Obama campaign seems to have shifted at least some of its online ad buying towards a general election strategy, at least judging from the display ad below, which I saw on an article on Space.com:

Click for larger version

The ad campaign is being run through Google, so who knows what kind of targeting is involved (by topic? by publication? by reader geography?), but the goal seems clear once you click through to the landing page: long-term support-building. Even on a small screenshot, you can tell that there's no immediate fundraising ask, only an invitation to sign up for "rallies and special events" — which means, join an email list:

Click for larger version

Note the nice video introduction from Barack himself — they know their candidate's strengths and are happy to use them. Only on the follow-on page (screenshot) do they ask for money, this time accompanied by a video montage of the candidate and supporters at a rally.

This strategy looks to be focused on the general election because its goal is long-term support-building rather than short-term persuasion or fundraising — the move of a candidate who's willing to invest at least some online money in expanding the pool of supporters, volunteers and (ultimately) donors for the Fall rather than in trying to win Ohio and Texas in a couple of weeks. It's also running on a nonpolitical publication, so you've got to wonder about the targeting. I checked the ad traffic listed for the two candidates in the Ad of the Day and don't see any mention of this buy, so I'm now curious as to how we can track Google ad campaigns. A good question for today's online advertising discussion.

– cpd

Hillary Clinton's Online Fundraising Ads

2008-02-10T23:17:32-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Interesting development in the Dems' race for online dollars — in the past few days, the Clinton campaign has started advertising for donations on Washington Post online properties, specifically the Post.com and Slate (I haven't spotted them on Newsweek.com yet). The ads I've seen are "pop-unders," those pop-up ads that you don't necessarily see when you're on the page but that are left behind in a small window when you click away. The ads are Flash-based, with a small amount of animated text, and they specifically ask for a $50 donation. The landing page is pure fundraising, with no persuasion or non-monetary list-building to act as a distraction.

The Post online ad serving system is capable of slicing and dicing readers to target by location and (for the registration-requiring Post.com site) demographic, so I can't tell if these are running nationally or only in the DC area. Either strategy is plausible, since ads on Slate and on the Post political section are likely to reach politically interested liberals around the country and perhaps expats (note the link for overseas Democrats), while it's also possible that the campaign is targeting local readers in advance of the Potomac Primary. Since these are specifically fundraising ads, I suspect it's a national or completely open run. Where else are they running?

(Click for larger version.)

– cpd

The Campaign Sites on Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T15:49:11-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Let's take a quick look at the campaign sites today while we're waiting for results (not as interesting as writing a haiku, but what the heck). First, check out the supporters on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's blogs. Intense emotion — more like a general election than a primary? Note that several of these extended online discussions are linked from Obama's site front page, along with that star-studded supporter video.

By contrast, nothing from supporters on MCain's front page (Rudy doesn't count) or Romney's. Huckabee has links to blog posts that feature extended discussion tucked down in the bottom right of his front page, and but there appears to be no conversation on Ron Paul's official site at all — no doubt one of those things the campaign didn't have to build, because the supporters did it for them on their own.

Though all the sites offer basic help-the-candidate tools — note McCain's guide to calling talk radio — the subtle differences between the sites of the Democrats and Mike Huckabee and those of the two Republican leaders are telling. All the sites front pages are predominantly top-down (campaign-driven) tools, but at least Obama and Huckabee's sites try to feature their supporters and their enthusiasm (and provide a public reporting system for voting problems). Hillary's site has discussion occurring on a blog, but the supporter messages aren't prominently featured on the site front page (the main "On The Blog" link goes to what is essentially a Mark Penn memo) and the limitations of the commenting tools make it hard to follow conversations. McCain's site prominently features party bigwig endorsements, no doubt to reassure conservatives (BTW, I had a friend describe himself as a "Movement Conservative" the other night; freaked me out almost as much as the intensity of the writers on Obama and Hillary's blogs, but not as much as the Ron Paul people do). Romney's site features a whole lotta Mitt, 'nuff said.

Now, back to intensely clicking around the Interweb.

– cpd

Is the Obama Campaign a Model for Online Politics?

2008-02-03T15:51:24-05:00

Cross-posted on e.politics

Over the past few months, we've gotten tantalizing hints of the level of integration of online and offline organizing that the Obama campaign has achieved. For instance, of the $32 million that his campaign raised last month, $28 million came in online, and though the vast majority of donations were small, this also tells us that the Obama people must have pushed almost ALL of their fundraising online, even for the people who would normally send a large check.

But politics is about mobilizing people, not just about raising money, and a few weeks ago we got this vignette:

In Sen. Barack Obama's Iowa headquarters, young staff members sit at computers, analyzing online voter data and targeting potential backers. They zip one e-mail to an undecided voter and zap a different message to a firm supporter.

Depending on the voter, they follow with Facebook reminders, telephone calls, text messages and, most important, house visits.

Matching the communications channel to the supporter! For another view, check out this part of Zephyr Teachout's lovely stream-of-consciousness look at on-the-ground canvassing:

I looked up Obama's SC office online, they emailed me the $26/night hotel, I used Google Maps to find the location, I showed up, they used computer printouts from a massive database, and an attached mapquest-generated map, and an attached database generated canvass map, to give me a set of doors to knock on. Eight years ago none of this would have happened.

E.politics has long preached the virtues of integrated online/offline communications, and it's fascinating to see a major campaign with big resources put the idea into action and really go beyond the basics. I have no special insight into the Obama campaign, just the same public information we all have access to, but the sense I get is that these folks are really using the web rather than just throwing things online. Their 2007 spending reflects it: in addition to any internal staff resources, "Obama spent more than $2 million on hardware and software, paid the Internet consulting firm Blue State Digital nearly $400,000 and paid technology consultant Joseph Rospars more than $90,000."

From fundraising to voter contact to social networking to online organizing of offline events, the critical point is that the Obama campaign seems to have integrated their supporter communications to a very effective degree — it's not one tool, it's the combination that matters. And the MoveOn.org endorsement is just the latest indicator that the internet community is responding. At this point, the Obama campaign looks like a model that for other campaigns going into the future, and I can't wait to talk with his online people when they're free to speak openly.

– cpd