Now that we have established this fact, let’s talk about why it has not received as much emphasis as it should for many campaigns – particularly for the last 60 years or so. First the misconceptions:

1.)  It’s dirty. When you think about door-to-door, what do you think about? Most people think about vacuum salesmen getting their ‘foot-in-the-door’ or, more recently, gas utility or roofer salesmen. These are the type of people with fake smiles, and ways to break your ‘no’ into inviting them inside. A common sales tactic with this sort is to say they were ‘just in the area’ to make it seem a casual drop through and reduce the tension. Have a look at this for some tips. (in all honesty, there are some good tricks he speaks about, but it all has to do with hiding your true motive, which makes it unethical)

Political canvassing is a civic duty of the highest order. It, and similar activities, is the small effort that each of us can make to facilitate the continuance of democracy. I know this appears a hyperbole, but given time, if nobody cares to vote or become politically engaged (or just a clique do) the whole system denigrates and people complain that politician don’t represent them, so why should they bother – do you see the circular trap of this argument?

Elected officials and candidates respond to incentives. These incentives are most often, though not exclusively, tied to their perceived understanding of how they got to power. If they believe they were able to move their agenda forward because of large donors, then they will overly listen to these large donors. Volunteers on their campaign are more likely to get the ear of an elected official, than just the general public. Even the most upright and moral official is affected similarly – even if they are only, in their mind, listening, but not committing to anything. They are still affected.

2.)  It takes a long time to coordinate. This is true, out of 50 volunteers in one campaign we would organize a walk, sending an email and following up with phone calls to connect with everyone – maybe 30 would make it out to our canvass days. Those sheets of paper the volunteers told us when they were available weren’t all collected in any meaningful fashion so we just guessed the best times to walk around evenings and week-ends. There are always those diehard volunteers you can count on – thank God for them.

Once the date is set, you need to get the walk-list prepared with maps attached. Those clipboards can be a headache to prepare and then when the volunteers finally get there you hand them out and can’t be quite sure who had what, or you take your time handing them out to the groups you’ve divided them up as – and hopefully you have enough drivers!

After finishing canvassing the teams get back together, usually finding each other after about 20 minutes walking back to the car where they started canvassing and drive back to the office. Then they drop off their clip-board with all sorts of awful scrawl on a few, to be inputted into the database whenever the database volunteer ends up making it in next.

3.)  TV and Radio have much better coverage. This is also how consultants make money by taking a percentage of your TV or radio buy. The current system is biased towards these mediums, especially if you have the money to spend. There is no proof, however, that these mediums lead to conversion. Whereas door-to-door has a 1:14 conversion ratio, the best evidence we can find shows that TV increases turnout by only 0.5% in the area it is shown. If you are doing it right, this approach takes time doing audience research on several different commercials to know that you have the right message. People guess at the numbers, but it is incredibly inaccurate and the data is incredibly faulty. Check out this article here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1080247/the_myth_about_television_ratings_and.html.

Social media is currently operating on “another level”: detached from reality. A person’s phone is personal and most commonly carried. Finding a way to connect these media produces an evolution, not revolution, in how we can work together.

The recent spat of mobile apps referred to in articles are often unengaged tools. Apps that adopt content and form from pre-existing media never realize their potential, such as the Kevin Falcon, Meg Whitman and Victoria Votes apps (all made by the same company). Mobile and Social Media are new media that must be considered within the current media framework of newspapers, television, radio, websites, movies, phones, billboards and on and on. Ask the teams that used them how effective they were, if at all.

David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign manager admitted as much: “The real drivers were old school.” http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2010/11/15/vp-basen.html It wasn’t so much Facebook and Twitter, but emails, websites and volunteers that made the difference in 2008.

In fact, there is little evidence that social media has yet produced. The Dean ’04 and Obama ’08 boosts were largely a benefit from being the early adopters, rather than the ability to best strategize their use. In the US’s recent election, remember, it was the Republicans who out-did the Democrats, a complete turn-around. Moreover, the research is not definitive and in fact leads to social media not having a significant statistical affect on turn out. The promise was not delivered.

By itself, social media has little to offer, but link it to the real world and its ‘broad affect’ will lead to greater group action. Consider, for instance, the introduction of the radio. To begin with reports were made on the air, then the phone was introduced; now people had the opportunity to get in on the conversation to say their piece to the masses, and even ask questions –  preminiscent of Twitter – many Republican’s were successful at boosting their radio presence using Twitter to get supporters to call-in when their candidates went to open calls.

Expect to hear the term Transmedia more often. It is the cross-platform approach to communications required in a landscape proliferated by media and types. Having the right mix, using each to its strength, and interplaying the platforms to maximize audience engagement are the soon-to-be ‘issues’ of the media and campaign world.

Knowing what each tool provides and what it can’t is essential to your strategy.

Twitter is good to find out what’s happening “right now”, but it does this by sacrificing substance and perspective. It forces users, if they want to be successful, to provide a succinct message or teaser to get people’s interest (FYI: capitalization helps here, but not if everyone does it!).  Providing links is good to provide people the next step to take their interest. In this way it’s useful in funneling people to your site. Direct calls to action might be useful, but only if your followers are sufficiently supportive (you have to test the utility out). Be sure to use other @user_names and hash tags to show up in searches and build a community conversation. Direct messages offer users the chance to connect more personally one-to-one, but only if both users follow each other.

Facebook provides a closer-knit community, well made for viral distribution if your message is appropriately packaged. It is not the place for lengthy conversations as you might find in a blog or for news releases. While you can use the Status Updates as a Twitter feed, most peoples’ main page is set on “Top News” which now shows those links most clicked on. The value of being clicked on more often does not create greater visibility in Twitter – only if you get re-tweeted. Facebook is a place to show your face – use it to introduce yourself (as long as it’s public) and display your brand. Discussions and Events have questionable use. It is useless for survey’s as the population of Facebook is hardly representative, to say nothing of those that follow you.

Which brings me to a final point regarding social media. It is social, meaning some people are ‘in’ your ‘crowd’ and most never see you. It is a great way to connect your ‘crowd’, but not a place (necessarily) to reach out and build a base. Sarah Palin must be the most ‘successful’ politician using social media where she claims 2.56 million ‘supporters’. Of course, these are not supporters but ‘friends’ and they’re not really friends, but just interested people. To be really successful it has to be tied to the ‘real’ world.

Mobile allows your campaign to fit into the volunteer or voter’s life. If two colleagues bump into each other, why not sign them up to the campaign, or alternate-reality ‘flick’ the form to a friend. What about providing a stronger connection between candidate and voter? Volunteers could collect videos from supporters to later use in an ad campaign, or collect personal issues and messages to the candidate he/she could later respond.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) app was one of the most effective in the political, social media realm. It encouraged users to take photos or video for famous ‘gotcha’ moments like Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s (UK) “bigoted woman” comment or  Sen. George Allen’s “Macaca” moment. The app was useful because it provided Republican information on all candidates, was linked to twitter, RSS and Facebook profiles, and had an “Action” center. If an app doesn’t have a native call-to-action then make sure you don’t spend any money on it either.

The app that most connected to this spirit was the Organization for America app which I’d encourage you to check out here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/iphone2010. More on this in later posts.

Smartphones are such awe-inspiring devices for the new capabilities we can all have on the go. The value of the feature-set is still yet to be determined. As mobile sales passes desktops by 2013 it is sure to become the must-have for the modern lifestyle. The proliferation of blackberries into government and business is only the first wave of change and expect similar social dislocation of work-life balance in the future…

Voter apathy and community disengagement is leading to the decomposition of our society. Declining voter turnout, proliferation of broadcast media and population growth leads to further divide those chosen rulers and the masses.

In any campaigns – be it political, charity, local or national, there are three key resources to build upon: this candidate or issue, volunteers and money. It is human nature to wish to reward and strengthen the relationship with those we ascribe our fortune.

Citizen engagement is the sole exercise of power in a democratic society for the population-at-large, meant to counter-balance an over-reliance on the perspectives of the elected few. The strength of a community is determined not by its size, but its bond. Indeed, it is this very trust that underlines strong communities that underwrites our sense of value, namely money.

The advent of mass media, such as radio and television, accompanied by exponential population growth led to an acclamation of broadcast as the accepted communication choice of large groups. Initially their share of human attention skyrocketed, but as the number of channels and proliferation of alternate mediums grew, their audience has become segmented and over-assaulted.

Psychological scholarship moved to societal-level analysis such as identity and the definition of other, often overlooking the more pedestrian mechanisms of power relations, such as influence and cooperation. Their focus was largely warranted in a communication model where humans are largely receivers, but could not adequately approach one of two-way communication. In other words, the model focuses on the population as observers, rather than participants in decision-making.

This model of viewing power overly focuses on the power of the wolves, as Benjamin Franklin said: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb.” In order to safeguard our liberty, our greatest ‘arms’ is participation.

Friedrich A. Hayek: “If we possess all the relevant information […] the problem which remains is purely one of logic… [T]he “data” from which the economic calculus starts are never for the whole society “given” to a single mind which could work out the implications, and can never be so given.”[1]

Those in power are often affected more by their situation than they are able to themselves affect often because of, not just despite, their limited perspective. A certain inevitability appears to produce from an onslaught of unseen happenstance. They are only able to steer their administration through the rapids, rather than pick their shore to land. Underlying power relations, the communication with those they do listen to, affect their understandings and perspectives on what is possible, or even right.

In the 1950s AT&T had the slogan “Communications Is the Foundation of Democracy.” At the beginning of each communications evolution: be it radio, television or social media, there is a groundswell of optimism that this new method will lead to a rebirth of participation and, therefore better, more responsible society. While each has enabled broader engagement, their attempt is to better replicate the deep or intimate bonds of personal relationship. Instead of heralding the medium, as AT&T was implying in its corporate slogan, it is relationship and participation, through communication, that is the “Foundation of Democracy.”

With increased connectivity and numbers, larger population units can be controlled with more similar perspectives. The apex of this movement is the totalitarian state of George Orwell’s “1984”, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and Aldous Huxley’s “A Brave New World.” In these books, the government urges a more unified reality and experience at the expense of individual perspective and self-actualization.

As James Bryce noted: “The People, though we think of a great entity when we use the word, means nothing more than so many millions of individual men.” The attempt of, or perhaps merely result from, unified perspective is to dull our differences making the people easier prey to control. The heroes in each the aforementioned novels, broke free of these limiting perspectives to bring more possibility in their worlds.

“The philosophers,” as Karl Marx explained, “have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it.”[2] For, as Thomas Paine said: “The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age, may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide, the living, or the dead?” Change and time are constant, and who is doing the change matters greatly as Abraham Lincoln said: “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

I like to think D2D is taking Voltaire’s oft-quoted maxim, “I don’t agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” to the next level. Our world is less rich without your input and it is our mission to strengthen your ability to participate in our history. We seek to encourage your engagement by providing the tools for you to amplify your voice and, in turn, encourage others to more engagement as well.

D2D Campaign Solutions leverages the power of mobile to increase face-to-face engagement, motivating users to connect with people outside their social network. Building a strong community willing to engage people on political or social issues will encourage a better running democracy that responds to people and strengthens community. Low turnout in mature democracies suggests apathy and a feeling of inability to affect change – but apathy is self-defeating. Motivation for each individual to feel empowered and creating the opportunity to ‘do’ something lies at the heart of D2D.

So raise your voice and get involved. If you want change, then rise up and make it yourself. Bring others on board, but don’t sit back and expect a silent majority to affect change. Notice Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan “Yes we can” was not “Yes I can.” If we want to change our world for the better we do it by winning others to our side, motivating them to participate as well.

Get involved, stay active and fight the good fight because the world can be a better place, we just need to care enough to reach out make the difference. It is your life, live it to the full.

As Martin Luther King said: “The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”

People are picking up their phones and BBM’ing or Tweeting to add their voice to growing angst and organize themselves into flash movements or flash robs. The most likely to get involved this way are youths who don’t appear to know any other outlet to their frustrations, or any better way to use their time. With youth unemployment in double digits whether it’s the United States, Europe or Canada – it’s a disturbing trend, particularly when our definition of youth is getting older and older.

Why don’t youths know how to use their energy, drive and power to push for constructive solutions? Mainly, I would contend, because they don’t know how to direct their energy. I never learnt how to organize in school, I didn’t learn how important it was to participate in political campaigns until I actually worked in a political office. In university, despite majoring in Political Science, I didn’t know what a political campaign was about. You see, the ‘Royal I’ was a policy guy with all the answers.

In fact, it took me a few years of considering myself some elevated policy-wonk elite (while just answering the phone), to experience the true power of political engagement. In political circles, especially young circles, there is a feeling that canvassing for support is the lowliest job you can get. When you work on a campaign, you want to be in the office with a closed door where staffers talk in hushed voices pointing at maps and moving pins around. Somehow there was something magical in that room, until you actually participate in some of these conversations. Until then, I was given a clipboard and pointed down the street to canvass.

It took me a little to get going, but I had some of the most energizing conversations I’ve ever had. They weren’t academic and theoretical, although don’t get me wrong – I love those, these were conversations with real people who are going through real problems. Political candidates don’t just gain support going door-to-door, they learn how and why they’re doing their job. I didn’t know what it meant to be a citizen until I canvassed my neighborhood – I was walking blindly around not seeing everything that was around me. Life gets so much more interesting when you start learning all the different ways people view it and the number of experiences out there. One life time will never be enough!

Democracy started making sense, not just from the theory of a structured power relation between those governing and those governed, but as a unitary entity. If voters are neurons, canvassing is the synapse getting our body working together. Democracy is such a higher ordered thing, it is so… civilized. Francis Fukuyama heralded “The End of History” with liberal democracy being the highest point in our sociocultural evolution.

It’s easy to see his excitement because there is something so developed and sophisticated and powerful in the idea. Perhaps we’ve lost the excitement that Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, and so many others had. My grandparents fought in the Second World War for it, but since then our focus as a society became so granular focusing more and more on what needs to be fixed. Take a step back and think about the process, not the policy, and I’m sure you’ll see something beautiful. We have to remind ourselves and teach our generations youth about it because this isn’t something natural to the human condition, this is the culmination of thousands of years of development and evolution.

The wind whittles even the strongest stone. Democracy is aware of this, that’s why we have elections to put a little more plaster on the wall. As Andrew Jackson said: “Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.” Elections are supposed to be mini-revolutions to adjust our course to the new winds.

Rioting will never produce long-term solutions. I like Gilbert Chesterton’s famous quote: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”

We need to remember how precious democracy is, and how and why we have it. Democracy is the social fix to many problems that we haven’t inherited from our ancestors because they made the fix. We must stay on guard for our protector for “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” – Winston Churchill

Everyone needs to experience what it means to be on a campaign, to learn how our system works that no academic study can ever provide. People need to know how they can affect positive change to give them an outlet for their frustrations and allow us all to believe in a better future. The establishment must work to make it easier for the population to get involved, but the mechanisms are already here, people just haven’t been taught where they are. So please, if you haven’t done so already, get out there and join a campaign – any campaign, even if it’s just to get a feel for what democracy feels like at the roots.

Failed California gubernatorial contender Meg Whitman (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/meg-2010-campaign/id387432163?mt=8) or BC Liberal leadership hopeful Kevin Falcon’s (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/kevin-falcon/id410091977?mt=8) iPhone apps offer little or no value other than the excitement of their existence. If anyone doubts this, please do your own research by asking either these teams what the utility of their efforts has been.

The iTunes store even has some useless and poorly made app attempts for the upcoming Irish election (http://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/the-labour-party/id415321369?mt=8) and municipal election in Victoria, BC (http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/victoria-votes-2010/id401302047?mt=8).

A most hideous manifestation of this adolescent trend is the KFC Grillz app (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kfc-grillz/id312591922?mt=8) – I can’t even think of anything to say about that sorry attempt.

I hope nobody’s actually spending the $10,000 on these apps and I wonder how that ever passed anyone’s budgetary process – maybe they don’t have one… There must be some slick salespeople, way too much money to burn or, more likely, a total lack of direction and intelligence.

It’s pathetic attempts like this that might lead to some needed innovation, but inevitably it will sully the whole industry in the minds of many ‘serious’ business people. This is just growing pains, like getting your wisdom teeth removed, which these companies will be if they don’t grow up.

There’s a great article on this phenomenon regarding the adoption curve and customer expectations that is essential for companies, organizations, politicians and the average Jane to consider before they make too hasty decisions about the social media phenomenon. Christopher Rollyson (http://www.socialmedia.biz/2009/04/18/web-20-adoption-curve-2009-2015/) mentions five stages in this evolution and guessed at the corresponding years: Initial Discovery (2006-7), Hype & Experimentation (2008-9), Failure & Disappointment (2009-10), Triumph of Determination (2011-3) and Pervasive Adoption (2014-5).

Please don’t hold you breath or buy into the huge media hype around social media – you’re bound to pass-out or be disappointed at the very least. Don’t lose your hope though, because just around the corner, things are about to get REAL. 2011 here we are!

http://www.socialmedia.biz/2009/04/18/web-20-adoption-curve-2009-2015/

Joe Trippi, known most for his use of the Internet for fundraising in 2003 for Howard Dean, is expecting third-party candidates to soon be viable through the use of new media. The new technology is disruptive to current campaign organization and early adopters stand to gain the edge. New media leads voters to “expect more personalized, dynamic and interactive communications”, as Natch Greyer said of social media in the March US edition of Campaigns & Elections. What is more effective in creating a personal, dynamic and interactive relationship than face-to-face communications? The answer, of course, is nothing.

Consultants enjoy selling social media as their next winning elixir. A step back from the hyper-focus on social media to view how technology has affected politics in the past will provide better context to this inquiry. The arrival of the printing press in the late medieval period led to leaps forward in literacy rates, the Enlightenment and rationalism. In turn, it allowed a new form of mass identity and organization hitherto impossible. The written word did not simply allow for mass society, but also detached the argument from the author, allowing a new discourse remote from emotional ties enabling great scientific discoveries.

In the American and French Revolutions, people discussed and countries tried to contend with the printing press along similar lines as we do today about twitter. Organizations learn they must adapt to the techniques rather than simply banning them: the techniques were never the cause in the first place. Political change is fostered because of under-riding economic and political factors, not techniques.

Facebook may have facilitated the Arab uprising, but it was by no means the cause of it. The status quo focuses on the how things have worked in the past without keeping the focus on what they are doing. Campaigns can easily fall into old habits of how they did things, instead of focusing on what they want to accomplish. As Trippi pointed out, “really smart people, even the Obama guys, they get fat and lazy and they’re in charge and the conventional wisdom thing even seeps in for them.” And things are changing faster than they have ever done in the past.

Take the radio, for instance, which was commercially introduced in the early 1920s. Politically it was used originally by President Calvin Coolidge to deliver his State of the Union Address in 1923, but it was mastered with President Roosevelt’s fireside chats ten years later once it had reached over 50% adoption (US census). Originally, reports on radio were canned with little emotion, but with time techniques were adapted to bring a more human element to better connect with the audience.

By 1960, the new thing was television. In the historic 1960s televised debate, the more traditional Nixon approach won over radio listeners, while the physical charm and make-up of Kennedy won the TV audience. As the mediums connected with more senses, campaigns had to convey their message through voice tonality, changing the wording, correct arm movements and eye contact often requiring experts in the ins and outs of the new medium.

The assumption was that TV was more effective at connecting with an audience than radio; technology was moving us forward, allowing us to connect better than we’ve ever before. These one-to-many tools do allow us to connect to more people, but it is patently wrong to say they allow us to connect better. The best messages for one-to-many mediums are those that appeal most broadly to the population, not best to each voter.

The gap between these two levels of connecting, the broad and the personal, is huge and leads people to turn off politics. Many in the public notice that general political messages are so similar as to make all the options ‘the same’, so why would it matter to not vote at all. In many ways, candidates appear the same because there are tried and true methods for reaching the broad audience. What we have in common is our fear of the unknown or losing what we have. Psychologists have shown we are risk averse. It is much easier to appeal to a broad audience with a negative message that emotionally connects with people. Our motivations are much more diverse.

Dr. Drew Weston’s book, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation posits the four main requirements in the development of a political message. Overarching all requirements is to deliver emotionally compelling principles through a narrative, while defining the other party. This is the high-level messaging strategy that appeals to the broad target audience; all other messages should tie back to this/these over-riding principle(s). At a close second is to encourage positive “gut-level feelings” to the candidate, while the opposite to the opponent. Thirdly, campaigns should “manage feelings toward the candidates’ characteristics” or the sort of judgments relating to leadership qualities, kindness, or trustworthiness. At a “distant fourth” a campaign should manage feelings toward policies and positions. Notice that each of these four goals contains an emotional attachment.

Through his research, Weston shows that humans rationalize our emotions leading us to adopt positions based on what we most associate or ‘like’.  His findings echo former Prime Minister Kim Campbell’s dictate “elections are no place to talk about issues.” Particularly when dealing through a broad medium, the message must be tightly about the highest order, principle, focus of a campaign. The focus has been far too much on mass media in the last 60 years, but when it was much easier to control and remain on message – it seemed the preferable option.

Was it? The bible of effective GOTV technique, Get out the vote: how to increase voter turnout, by Doctors Donald Green and Alan Gerber hailing from Yale University, present the compiled facts from the last 20 years. They found radio and TV raised turnout by 0.8% and 0.5% respectively, but were unable to prove their effectiveness in mobilizing a specific campaign’s supporters. They found a strong utility bias to real-life volunteers connecting with people in their own communities. Volunteer phoning would generate about one vote for every 38 contacts and door-to-door would generate one in 14. The ability to have personalized, dynamic and interactive communications increased the effectiveness of engagement.

The consultants agree this is the way we are going – to the new social web 2.0, which will connect many-many relationships allowing nanotargeting and engage people in new ways. After all, look at the success of Howard Dean, Barak Obama, and the Arab uprising. This storyline is wrong. From the emotional appeal of mass media, the Internet is actually a step back from FDR’s fireside chat, or Kennedy’s TV charisma.

What social media does introduce is the importance of the network and drastically reduces the cost to participate. However, the most influential twitters and viral online material continues to be the mainstream press and corporate-created content. Just as radio and television have their best practices to connect with audiences, so too does social media have its place in the communications mix, but it by no means replaces any of them.

Barack Obama’s social media presence was seen as the juggernaut that got him from obscurity to win the country’s top job. It was just an interesting story blown out of proportion by the media. Social media is most effective at raising awareness which is exactly what Barack Obama needed to be taken seriously – Hilary Clinton could not have benefited from it near as much. It was a lot easier for Obama to use this space because it was relatively ‘free for the taking’, his emulators will not find the bounty as pronounced.

Social media isn’t a panacea for all campaigns. Like any tool, it’s best used for what it’s good at. The Tea Party used it to amplify a committed communities message to the national stage. They were able to control the message by bringing issues to the surface, increasing awareness and the length of time that it was a story. That’s another thing social media is great at – keeping a story alive. While this led to a powerful punch on Election Day, many analysts have noted that the full power of the movement didn’t connect directly with the ballot box.

Two-weeks prior to the 2010 mid-terms Gallop poll found that 58% of Americans desired a third party and the trend appears likely to continue (in 2003 it was found only 40% preferred a third party as an option). It requires a lot of work to form the consensus between people that provides a good balance of interests to form a stable enough base to win an election, and requires organization of this base, not just buzz. The requirement of organization for a grassroots movement to reach its full potential appears a tad anachronistic, but it is exactly in the better organization of grassroots activity that the Internet presents its opportunity.

Let’s focus on the what of campaigning, rather than the how. What is it we seek to do? We want to communicate a message to the public so they vote for our candidate or issue. In a drastic simplification of the issue, you will recall Albert Mehrabian’s three elements of communication that “communication comprises 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, [and] 7% content of words”. The model is illustrative of why radio is more effective at connecting with people than the printed word. When a medium lacks a component of the communications mix, it amplifies certain aspects of communication – like how words led to a more rational discourse in the 1800s, or how, with the advent of television it mattered how our leaders looked. It also leads to the difficulty of finding any consultant that has mastered all the mediums.

Like John McCain’s appeal to “friends”, each medium adjustment is to try and better connect with the voter, making up for distance and the lacking components of the communication mix.  While it is true social media allows for a conversation, lacking in traditional mediums, it continues to have its own deficiencies of communication. Only personal, in person, appeals can communicate your message to the electorate – nothing can ever replace it.

But, you may say, it’s a headache organizing, printing all those walk-lists and organizing the volunteers to make it into the office. Some of them don’t even make it, and we need to make sure enough come to warrant all the time spent. Then we have to enter in the data that takes hours, and there’s little value in conducting voter ID too shortly before Election Day, as we can’t get it into the system by the time GOTV starts.

The answer to your problems is a combination of the social media, the Internet, and mobile. Nielson anticipates smartphones, those optimized for Internet and apps, will overtake feature phones by the end of 2011.  This heralds the next stage of campaigns. Instead of always needing to bring in the volunteers, the volunteers will always have access to the campaign – in their pocket. Social media can lead to better organization and connectivity with your volunteers and the Internet allows you to be more agile in your coordination of resources, assigning phone or door canvassing and receiving the data in real-time. Scott Brown’s ‘Walking Edge’ solution and the OFA canvassing app were only the first foray into this market.

D2D Campaign Solutions offers an Internet and mobile solution to do just this, taking full use of the volunteers’ time and resources. It connects the campaign more directly with volunteers to monitor their progress and reward preferred behaviour, and allows the campaign to more quickly respond to voters’ requests for lawn signs and other follow-up. While the solution focuses on the power of mobile, it produces paper walk-lists for those without smartphones, and provides a volunteer web interface for phoning both before and on Election Day. It works for all campaigns from municipal to presidential and allows the campaign the ability to update their database on the go. It brings grassroots activity to the next level, bringing technology to leverage your most precious resource in getting more votes on Election Day: your volunteers.

Knowledge is power. The interface allows more nuanced collection of information like support level and which issues matter to individual voters. This is mass customization applied to the political arena and enhances the way campaigns will be run, away from more stale mass communication techniques that was never as effective as person-to-person contact.

With mobile, technology has taken politics full circle.

Social media is effective at getting attention to a relatively unknown candidate/issue (raising profile) and a new way to crowd-fundraise (smaller donations from broader donor-base), get volunteers or invite your base to participate. The main tools of this medium are Facebook (over 50% adoption), Twitter (6% adoption), blogs and meetup.com. Youtube is an interesting medium that has social components, but I see it as another channel for one-way broadcast, albeit at significantly reduced costs and with more freedom for people to participate.

All these tools offer their own set of unique benefits that are exciting to talk about and learn how to integrate into your campaign. That said, the underlying dynamics of an election is still about connecting with individuals and making sure that they get to the polls. It’s not just about targeting all the audience, but a specific audience that makes the difference.

You should spend few resources connecting with your base because you can count on their support and motivation to vote. However, your base is the place to start efforts finding volunteers and building infrastructure to your winning campaign. Some of your base will not make it out to vote – this is a danger especially if you have a history, or an expectation, of winning, and have an energetic opponent who is trending well.

The dynamics of your district or constituency obviously plays a factor in the type of voter you go after. However, if you are absolutely confident of your base pulling you through, but are worried that some take your leadership for granted, then you may wish to put more effort in making sure your supporters who don’t always vote know it is critical for them to do so.

Make sure you’ve spent some of your resources on updating your lists so you know how best to GOTV this group and be sure to invite them to some events, though they may not be as engaged. You should be inviting 10 times the number of people to come to your events at the very least and the message should say something valuable to those who will not make it.

Voter ID and ensuring your lists are up-to-date is something that is best done outside official campaign periods, and is a great way to remain in contact with your base. People are most themselves at their home where they have security to be most themselves. Connect with them at home and you will receive more authentic responses and have a far reduced chance of statistical bias, getting a more accurate pulse on what matters to voters.

While there are strategies for connecting with voters who always vote for your opponent, these tend to be risky and must be done correctly. Tactics often involve mass media, like TV ads or postal drops saying why not to vote for an opponent and can become rather mean spirited. Their intention is to disengage the opponent’s support. Negative advertising is shown to have much higher retention than positive ads, which may be why they are used so often. These tactics do not necessarily work as well in a social media environment where negative conversations either excite your opponents, or might even backfire. Going negative becomes much more risky if you don’t control the medium.

For most ridings where campaigns matter: in swing states or for campaigners going up against a legacy candidate, the voter to spend the majority of your resources is the swing vote, or switcher in marketing terminology. These voters are often pulled by the tide of time, but a personal approach is best in winning their support. This is where your volunteers you collected, come into use, and where their motivation and excitement in the campaign makes all the difference.

This group doesn’t likely follow your Facebook or twitter feeds. They likely aren’t overly political and don’t follow all the issues, which means they are more difficult to connect with – but often that personal connection can make all the difference. Common in campaigning is a volunteer asking whether “we can count on YOUR support?” Merely reaching out and talking to these voters and being open to their issues can make the difference. Your cannot rely solely on social media, if you want to win it’s about connecting with people who may not be the most open to connecting with you, motivating them to GOTV through social pressure, and reminding and engaging their support. With the right strategy you can build your base for lasting success.

1)   Responsive to your community. When someone made a comment on Facebook/Twitter or by email, you responded in timely fashion and didn’t ignore (or even worse delete) some of the more difficult questions.

2)   Up-to-date on what was happening. You gave your personal perspective (on Twitter personal matters more) and reached out on events your community cares about. It’s not just enough to respond to your community, but you need to get involved with them so even if you’re not on exactly the same page as them, they know you’re reading the same book.

3)   Calling out. On your Facebook page, webpage and even occasionally over Twitter, you showed people what they can do NOW to get engaged and help out. Many candidates had an “Action Center” panel – make sure these are front and center. Given that you were engaging your community’s comments, etc – they’re now more likely to reciprocate the favor. If you don’t ask, you don’t get… well, you get less anyway.

4)   Aware of your community. This will often come with being responsive and keeping up-to-date on what is happening from their perspective. That said, opinion research and taking advantage of magazine subscription lists (like Karl Rove was well known to do) will allow you to target your likely support and target your limited resources. The web is awash in ways to analyze your community’s comments, characters and habits – perhaps you dabbled in a few of them (for links to resources on social analytics and to join the conversation on this, please go to: http://www.d2dcampaign.com/2010/11/how-to-analyze-your-social-media-presence/

5)   Not listening to consultants on social media. Consultants are great because they bring with them their network of connections and best practices, which through years of experience sets them far and above what you can get from a volunteer. In social media, this just isn’t the case. The network is already there and you aren’t constrained by a middleman to have a conversation like TV, radio, or even billboards. Cutting out the middleman means less money for consultants so they’ll easily fall prey to accounts discounting the value of spending pennies on social media, compared to a big budget TV commercial.

6)   Open-minded on adopting new approaches to use the medium. Most commonly used example to emphasize this point is the first Presidential TV debate in 1960 of Nixon vs. Kennedy. Radio listeners reported that Nixon won, while anyone watching was won over by Kennedy’s charisma.

While a lot of the 20^th Century control media was about putting make-up on, social media is often about taking it off and connecting on a more human level. That said, you don’t want to appear too human – there are still expectations.

This election, I’m thinking about Eric Cantor’s crowd-sourcing of what programs to cut, Youcut, http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/, Rand Paul’s adoption to the medium of YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/randpaul#p/u, or the use of geolocation to reward supporters for coming out to events.

And let’s be honest: the media loves talking about how new media is changing the way politics is done – it’s an exciting area. Coming up with new ways to reach out to audiences, even if not wholly functional, is a great way of showing that you’re doing your best to reach out and it may get media on it’s own account!

7)   A Facebook-type page is not a trend, so stop treating it like that. It’s a not just a static page that allows you to say you’re “with it” and people can ‘Like’ you. You should have forms for people to fill out: saying how they want to get involved with the campaign (phone calls, door-to-door, fundraising), or report what issues matter to them. This way you can target your community really connecting with them (and more of them)! Here I’m thinking about services like: http://shareourcampaign.com/home/, or http://www.facebook.com/FundRazr. It could be as easy as using the discussions page on different issues. This goes with point 3, but I have a feeling this has to be stated explicitly.

8)   Link your social media strategy to the real-world, not Second Life. Here I was expecting a lot from the Democrats this election, but then they fungled it all up. The tool I’m talking about is the OFA canvassing app: http://www.cultofmac.com/democrats-take-the-pain-out-of-canvassing-with-iphone-app/. If someone is serious about social media (ie, particularly the influencers), they probably have an iPhone or Android. Mobile is the perfect way to bring a strong and engaged online community out into the light of day where they can connect with a much larger community.

Sadly, the app was tied to a central command-structure and therefore Barack Obama who wasn’t appealing to the independents so many candidates tried to distance themselves. As far as I can tell, it was a mighty attempt, but it totally fizzled because of several issues – which I might deal with in a later posting.

Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/) is another way to link your online presence with the real-world and was tested out this election. Basically, your community will check-in at various locations you’d like them to go (perhaps this might link to the canvassing app example above) or events they might attend.

9)   Keep it local. This election was definitely a national election affected by the national economy, citizens’ response to the Wall Street bailout and resultant disaffection from the ‘Hope’ campaign. That said, if social media is about creating connections with people, it’s also about talking to their cares rather than everyone else’s. By having a direct local message, you can cut through the larger dialogues that people often get ‘lost’ in, and means that there won’t be as much ‘noise’ on the issue. You also form a closer connection to people this way.

Humans love shiny new objects. Social media is one shiny object the media can’t seem to get enough of recently. It’s a function of our media to pay attention to the topical over the substantive, so perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on them (us?). For instance, it’s so much more topical to report on carbon emissions, rather than the sun, heating the earth. (Just in case I’ve elicited a storm of protest, I do believe that humans are contributing to the degradation of our ecosystem).

The point is everything has context. Social media is not a stand-alone tool for communication and articles that focus on the impact of social media stand-alone are a complete waste of time. Media is nothing more than a means of communication. A medium’s use is never ubiquitous to begin with and requires time to grow with users and specialized tactics that are built around their core functionality. The 20^th Century has seen a proliferation of media to the extent a new buzzword in the industry is transmedia: phone, radio, television, daemon-dialers, billboards, smartphones, websites, video games, laptops, tablets, not to mention books, word-of-mouth, fax, etc!

Take the radio, for instance, which was commercially introduced in the early 1920s. A relatively affluent time, its introduction produced a fever of excitement with an over 50% household adoption rate by 1930 (US Census data), 90% by 1940 and 95% by 1950. Politically it was used originally by President Calvin Coolidge to deliver his State of the Union Address in 1923, but it was mastered with President Roosevelt’s fireside chats ten years later.

The introduction of TV Presidential debates, for instance, saw the more traditional Nixon approach win over radio listeners, while the personal charm and make-up of Kennedy won the TV audience. One-to-many media meant that, all of a sudden, campaigns required assistants who knew about make-up and production, and a host of consultants for everything from telemarketing to political targeting and ad buying.

With so many media channels (not just TV channels) the industry if fast running away on itself with spending and the race to the next thing. While there are benefits to being the first in a new space, by the time the majority has adopted a medium the competition becomes tight and the real value comes in new avenues or forming new connections between current mediums. A great example is the phone-radio-twitter media basket where candidates are guests on a radio show, with their supporters informed by twitter to phone in; or London protestors use twitter and mobile with Google maps to coordinate around tactical police maneuvers.

It takes time for a critical mass to develop and this mass is determined by the rate of adoption. Furthermore, society as a whole takes time to develop the best tactics to exploit the true range of communication possible, lagging behind the initial adopters. Futurist Ray Kurzweil explained the accelerating returns of technology that sees computer capacity doubling every year and rates of adoption doubling every 10 years. Seeing the progressive adoption of additional technology: phone, radio, television, mobile and Internet, and continuing this trend in the “twenty-first century will be equivalent (in the linear view) to two hundred centuries of progress (at the rate of progress in 2000).”[1]

Robert Tercek (http://roberttercek.com/biography/), digital media visionary and previously President of Digital Media at OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, takes it back to Gutenberg’s printing press in showing how new mediums creates new products, new business models and new processes. The printing press allowed for modern literature for the masses, fixed media, the concept of intellectual property, advertising, packaged goods, propaganda, public politics, division of labour, mass production, mass education, mass identity and the global concept – all culminating in world changing events from the protestant to the industrial revolution. The new paradigm shift to digital and new mediums heralds world changing events of the same magnitude.

Instant many-many communications, in popular vernacular: Facebook or Twitter, are in the very early stages of their development. What the Internet has done for computing power, social media promises to connect us all in a new human identity. It’s easy to get really excited about the possibility, but only about 48% of the North American population are on Facebook (http://www.checkfacebook.com) and roughly 6% are Twitter users according to a 2010 Pew Research center survey (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010/Findings/Overview.aspx). This amount is only growing, and 2011 will be an exciting year with 2012 showing the true potential of social media.

Political organization has always had a great impact on the ruling powers, whether it is the newsprint-era creation of the USA in 1776, or radio-incitement of the Hulu against the Tutsi’s in Rwanda in 1994. When people join together for some common cause, recognizing their group dynamics – like Karl Marx’s failed plea for “Workers of the World unite”, historic events can arise.

Getting the people to unite or vote on a particular issue for a sustainable time, however, is a difficult task as Vladimir Lenin was to find forcing him to establish an autocratic regime for his ideals. Communist victory in 1917 was due to a number of factors – none of them relating to the media being used at the time. Essentially, Russia had a battered economy struggling to industrialize when it became entangled in WWI.

These under riding economic and political factors were conflated by evolving social dynamics pushing Russia toward a more European economy. Protests had been successful, previously, in pushing Nicholas II to establish an incredibly weak Duma, like a congress or parliament, but it was too little, too late. Communism was able to quickly grab political ‘market share’ like some start-up tech company, and then focused on monopolization relegating it to the dustbin of history – kind of like Microsoft… When things move fast, politics has a reputation for falling behind.

As in the American and French Revolutions, the printing press was an essential medium, or at least for the vocal minority. For the most part, these changes (particularly in retrospect) were like earthquakes after tension had built up among component societal parts. Politics, especially, tends to lag behind new realities whose development if too far outpaced can lead to revolution. The true value of democracy is in recognition of more frequent change to smooth the rough edges of development, moving with change. Perhaps the tech community comparison to this phenomenon is the movement of large companies increasingly apportioning their R&D budgets to the purchase of cutting-edge start-ups, challenging their internal structure with small shocks from the outside…

Newspapers were so successful in early America they became a crucial factor in President Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 win. Our modern equivalent is the rise of Fox News avowedly spreading Republican talking points. The media has always been used by the elite or political forces to spread their message, but on some level it is impossible to report on events without marring them in politics. In other words, reporting on politics is itself political act.

Calvin Coolidge (1924-1929) was the first US President to make a political speech on the radio, and the new medium allowed him to open up to reporters in ways that had yet to be possible. Of course, it was some 10 years later that the flag ship of historic radio usage, Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats, were begun with the first words, “My friends” which maintained political capital to John McCain’s recent presidential run.

Today, talk radio continues to produce household names like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and the list goes on. This happens to be Republican ground and many of these have gone on to fame in radio-plus or TV. These radio stations often have ‘open lines’ where the public is offered the chance to get in on the conversation. This development, dependent on the phone, increased the power of the radio that became a place where people could take part in reporting. Twitter is now being used with these two other mediums to quickly mobilize a support base to ‘take over’ the conversation on the radio – a use at which the Republican’s in particular have been very successful at using.

Radio has developed steadily over the 80-odd years it’s been put to direct political use and we should expect similar refinement in how we use any new media, including today’s buzz, social media.

Robert Tercek, a digital media visionary, believes the scale of change we can expect in the next 100 years is relative to the 1450’s introduction of the Gutenberg press in Europe.

“Linear one-way programs will be transformed into a two-way dialog between creator and audience. In order to compete with made-for-the-medium fare, static fixed-media content must become responsive and interactive.” http://roberttercek.com/blog/

If this is only partially true, the change required to incorporate new media capabilities in our systems heralds an exciting time to live. But nobody assumes that social media does, or ever will, exist as a stand-alone strategy. Except, it appears, Malcolm Gladwell.

In his article “Annals of Innovation Small Change”, he makes the argument that twitter does not improve activism, but hurts it. Gladwell believes an ‘energy shift’ of our focus to weak-tie connections will lead to slacktivism. While Gladwell enjoys the morally infused weak v. strong labeling, to me it is more accurate to label these two connections the more descriptive broad v. deep, as I believe he had previously characterized them at conferences.

Broad (or weak, in Gladwell’s New Yorker article) is the idea of connecting with people on the internet in a social network, be it twitter, Facebook or the like. These are the relationships you’ve developed by ‘following’ or ‘friend’ing someone, vice versa. Deep (or strong) ties are relationships where you are more embedded with people, or the relationship is carried on across multiple plains, and is essential, for Gladwell, for ‘high-risk activism.’

While Gladwell is admittedly only talking about ‘high-risk activism’, a linguistic contention, but there are counter-arguments that emphasize the strength of weak (or broad) ties. I recently read a paper, THE STRENGTH OF WEAK TIES: A NETWORK THEORY REVISITED Mark Granovetter, that discusses the value of a broad perspective to combat against provincialism, or overly embedded networks that can lead to dependency. A common example of this inefficiency is the many companies’ close institutional relationships that can lead to complacency when determining their suppliers or market.

Gladwell jumps on Mark Pfeifle, former national security advisor, for his exaggeration: “Without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident”. The fact is, Twitter did help people coordinate, but it was also the ease of taking video/camera footage, using Google maps and uploading and downloading all thanks to the wireless network. Twitter without mobile would not be at all as effective.

A more accurate statement would be that the people of Iran would not have felt AS empowered and confident without twitter. They would not have likely felt as confident without the phone or mail, or had they not talked to their colleagues about the issues prior. Twitter facilitates faster communication for individuals with larger groups, particularly if they coalesce in time around a specific event or issue.

Twitter has enabled immediate communication with large groups – it is a significant improvement on walkie-talkies, allowing London student protesters access to updated maps of the scene (citation) to coordinate their movements. You may have noticed the last conference you went to had a hashtag associated with it. A hashtag, #, prior to a term like #fees, used for the London protests, makes it easier for groups to track an event and/or issue, not just users.

It is the profusion of multiple entry points to communications that, when working together produce the real change. Considering radio as a stand-alone communications tool doesn’t at all capture the true value, as the radio-phone-twitter or London protestors’ examples show.

Another way of considering this multi-faceted consideration of media is that in countries like Russia, where fair reporting in the media can get you killed, the importance of blogs and other forms of media are comparatively more important. Michael Ignatieff, Canada’s opposition leader, agreed in a recent Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66840/michael-ignatieff/michael-ignatieff) review essay: “they will bring new freedoms to closed societies such as China and Iran.

Iggy, as Canadians call him, is concerned however about “the troublingly ambiguous impact of social media of the marketplace of democratic ideals.” This echoes concerns from other politicians, such as President Barack Obama who believes twitter emphasizes what’s happening this minute over substance. These comments all further emphasize the importance of proper balance for social media usage. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, the correct media ‘basket of goods’ changes.

Much of Gladwell’s argument is based on the Greensboro sit-in protest in 1960 and the dependence of its success on the quick growing of the movement from four closely connected college freshmen to 300, three days later. Strong relationships matter, but it’s the undercurrent social conditions that made so many people join in the common cause. The movement grew without e-mail, texting, Facebook or twitter. That’s because none of those mediums existed. Do you think they used the phone and cars? And so does this mean today we should discount their value merely because they weren’t used before they were invented? Not a great argument Gladwell.

A precursor to the Greensboro sit-in protest was, of course, Rosa Parks sitting on a bus in 1955. This was the action of one individual who pushed through the social fabric and began a ripple effect that would not end. Parks had been an activist previously raising money for the Claudette Colvin arrest in a similar case that ended up being dropped. Parks knew that many people were in the same situation and in her own words: “the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” This was the courageous act of one individual, perhaps that’s the ‘strong’ tie that Gladwell is referring to when discounting twitter. Without broad or weak ties to spread what had happened, only those close to Parks would have been ‘activated’ in her defense. But this was not the case. Arguably it is the weak, broad network that increased the confidence and empowerment sufficiently for the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins.

Gladwell has a simplistic understanding of organizational hierarchies and networks. In social networks decisions are still made and these hierarchies are not necessarily obvious looking at the structure of ‘friends’ taking decisions together, but exist nonetheless in the fact that some people are more likely to be followed than others. What the system does do is flatten the hierarchy allowing a much more efficient and stronger direction for the group as a whole. Like protests in general however, there are far more failures than there are successes. The right mixes needs to be in place and the activity must be tied to alternate mediums to bolster their affect. The strongest tie that ever will exist, at least prior to mind-melding (lol), is that when people are face-to-face.

Lenin may not have found a social network to be of all that much use in his creation of Communism (which was largely taken by an incredibly hierarchical group), but would have found it helpful in organizing his protests. His social capital was more that he was a strong voice against the Tsar’s regime, rather than that he was for communism. He would likely have found his social media strategy to fall to pieces after attaining power, perhaps a little like President Barack Obama found upon his ascendency. For the sake of argument, let’s say Obama was full white, if he was to have run for President 100 years ago – he would not have stood a chance. He had next to no experience in government and may have done well on radio with his orations, but his personal charisma would not have shined through on the TV.

Obama used social media like Facebook and Twitter to get recognized, quickly becoming the biggest rising star in politics that I’ve known to date. It’s hard to prove, but I just don’t think that he could have won the primary against Hilary Clinton had it not been for the quick dissemination of his message of Hope. He didn’t just play well (enough) with the political base, but also pulled in votes from the relatively politically neophyte under-30 voters when it came to Election Day.

I like the quote, don’t know where I heard it, that if Howard Dean was the Wright brothers of social media in elections then Barack Obama is Apollo 13!  Howard Dean raised money so effectively on the Internet because none of his opponents were using social media anywhere near as much. The Internet provided a new ground for connecting with many average Americans compared with focusing on a few larger donors. Marrying social media with real-life meet ups, meant there was something more to it than just hitting a ‘like’ button or donating $5. Obama has continued to focus on small donations (as well as large, of course) through the Internet because it’s so easy for people to donate in this way. Many of the small donations are not as likely to have been made without the use of the Internet. Who would have mailed $5 by post or check?

That said, we shouldn’t overemphasize the value-added. Many of the donations to Howard Dean toward the primary scooped up money from democrats looking to make a contribution online who made that split-second easy decision for Dean. It was easier to donate to Dean than opponents so he therefore raised even more money online – this boost is unlikely to be repeated given the current acceptance of social media as a fundraising strategy. Furthermore, many of the donors would have given money in some other fashion, but only donated online because it was the easiest method. When new tactics are found, like social media, there is an advantage to being the first to use them. I bet in ten years social media doesn’t earn media by itself like it does in today’s campaigns.

In conclusion, the base of this argument is that the more that changes the more that stay the same. The strategy of politics does not change much, while the tactics available and hence correct ‘basket of tactics’ does adjust according to new competitive advantages of the new tactics. Furthermore, Malcolm Gladwell’s argument that twitter causes a counter-productive shift away from activism is looking far too narrowly on it’s utility.

The next post will consider ‘What is the right balance?” in your political communications strategy.