Technology will win next elections, not policy - debate notes

This evening I went to a debate with the above title organised by Henry Jackson Society and Delib agency.

Panellists were: Rory Cellan-Jones, Kerry McCarthy MP, Julie Meyer, Bruce Anderson & Rishi Saha, hosted by Danny Alexander MP

The discussion was interesting in a funny way - I felt like I was stuck in 2008. The panellists spent 20 minutes discussing whether enough people in the UK are online for digital to make a difference in the next elections. This is one of the typical arguments of why digital is not important. So bored of hearing it again and again - people in this country spend days online, just look at the Neilsen, Ofcom and other reports. Discussion over. Moving on.

Undoubtedly, political parties accept that they can not ignore digital if they are to engage the voters. The problem is though that they try to engage us in the same way with the same strategies they used to engage us pre web 2.0.

Panellists laughed at the fact that Cadbury's chocolate has more fans than a Labour or Tory Facebook pages. Well, those are your voters so you need to find the way to speak to them. Not with wonkery, but by addressing the issues that they are bothered about/enjoy/consider entertaining. And to gauge this - you go to social networks.

And yes, as Bruce Anderson said, this doesn't mean you do everything they say (like Obama didn't legalize weed just because that was the most prominent campaign on his Citizens briefing book website). It's just that politicians are so scared of openly debating/saying no because they think it'll damage their image. While it's more likely that people will respect them for standing up for what they believe in and/or treating lay people with interest in politics with respect.

So all in all I was disappointed with the level of the debate. Which at moments descended into party-political mud-slinging.
I really expected that people will start with the lessons of the Obama campaign and discuss what could work in this country, with our political parties.

Rory Cellan-Jones said in his 2-minute intro that he fears that the election 2010 digital campaign will result in a virtual Westminster Village. The discussion tonight makes me fear the same.

Stuff that could be of interest

PPCs (224) on Twitter: CON 38% LAB 29% LD 21%
MPs (111) on Twitter: LAB 57% LD 23% CON 14%

http://www.globalpovertypromise.com/home
Labour online community for the people who care about global issues.

www.edspledge.com/
Labour's climate change community.

eCampaigning forum - Obama campaign insider tells us about blogging for the elections

Sam Graham-Felsen of Obama campaign
blogger on the campaign

- The campaign knew Obama was an underdog - the plan was to harness the energy of grassroots - Obama said to the team that "it had to happen from bottom up"

Three pillars of online campaign
- message
- money
- mobilization

MESSAGE
- authenticity
- it's about everyone not only Obama. African Americans felt that they can be anything they want to be.
- over 2,000 videos uploaded - telling stories of people who supported the campaigns
- 5 times as many videos as other campaigns
- 1 billion minutes of video web content was consumed = 2,000 years of viewing - youtube powerful because they are usually sent with a personal recommendation
- video explaining why Obama campaign in Florida needs 39 million dollars used to raise these funds
- mini-documentaries - although 18 minutes - it worked - the video was viewed over million times
- fun videos that plugged the action around the campaign (e.g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg56KbtmARc)
- using supporters content - reached out to supporters - example of Shepard Fairey
- "yes we can" youtube video

The game is changing:
*new media - building the movement - turning people from passive supporters to evangelists of the movement
* traditional media - getting votes - of those who are undecided

MONEY
- how to raise half a billion?
- fundraising was never about money - they didn't set the goals which were about money - instead of we need XXX dollars by the end of the week they would say we need XX people to join the movement
- people could be chosen to meet Obama even if they give a smallest donation (breaking down the barriers)
- asking supporters to explain on video why they donate to the campaign, what motivates them
- an email in response to Sara Palin speech where she dismissed grassroots campaigning raised 10 million dollars

Building the email list
- the Obama campaign list grew organically, Republicans campaign bought lists
- competitions (dinner with Barack)
- Send to a friend - made it very easy - you can upload all of your contacts and pester them
- Active presence on My Space Facebook and LinedIn
Online Ads - asking people to join the campaign
- the match game - traditionally one wealthy donor says they will donate 1 million if a bunch of people donates 1 million ; change is to ask a bunch of donors to pledge to donate more if other donors donate more (this was done using a sophisticated segmentation system)
- 2/3 of income of the whole campaign came online, most of donations are under $100
- house parties - neighbours will go and organise their own
- mybarackobama.com made it easier for field organisers to organise supporters. It help build real relationships. Campaigners were working together already - relationships already built, so this was easier for field organisers when they arrive at a location.

Other campaigns had to start from scratch - train people and organise them.

QUESTIONS

1 Online ads - example of a different way of doing it - caucus look-up tool (location) - flooded Iowa newspaper websites with it as well as the social media

2 Opening up to user generated content and keep it open is sometimes an issue for NGOs
- Example - a group against Obama's position on some law on privacy/data protection Obama voted for in the Senat. The group grew to 20k. Obama didn't want to change his position. He wrote back to the group - explained why he disagreed with them and he knew that he will lose some of them
- Keeping people engaged after the victory - Organising for America - campaign supporters now - campaigning still - gathering support for Obama's plan. The group will be supporting Obama's presidency.

3 Sign-off
Sam's posts were reviewed until he was trusted to do it himself. When he started employing bloggers he told them that bloggers need to tell their story from their own perspective, but their post shouldn't end up in the media

4 Subject lines for emails - rigorous testing

5 In-depth content viewing? - focussed on building a grass-roots movement, voices of ordinary people

6 Importance of Facebook and Twitter in comparison with email lists?
Didn't want to have paople only sitting on Facebook. They tried to move them onto http://mybarackobama.com. This site was seen as a mobilization network not a social network. Email had the best impact - in terms of raising funds. Mainly because you can test and tweak email.

Obama's new media team tells us how they did it

I had a pleasure to attend a meeting organised by Compass -democratic left pressure group, focussing on the Labour members, but also building a bridge to the 200,000 or so progressives who have left the Labour Party - which was a host to Joe Rospars, the Director of New Media of the Obama campaign.

Joe gave us a good overview of the principles that he thinks made the new media activity successful. Below are the bits that I found very interesting - mixed with my thoughts and interpretation of what this could mean for UK NGOs...

Overall - there was nothing surprising in what Obama campaign did - they followed all the best principles in using new media comms for campaigning. What is special is that the Obama campaign put theory into practice and gained the wealth of experience which they are now sharing with us.

New media in the centre of your campaigning strategy

Joe was part of the top team running the campaign- as Joe said it - "I was at the table with the finance guy, the campaign guy, the media guy". This means that he could bargain with them, participate in decision-making and impact on the direction of the communication strategy.

Make Poverty History new media evaluation report made this same point in 2006, making this one of the top recommendations, drawing from the conclusion that new media output of the campaign was an after-thought most of the time.

Letting go of control...

The Obama team utilised online community around My Barak Obama website and user generated content intelligently and by endorsing the rules of genuine online communities, rather than trying to twist them to reach their own ends. The team took the MY in the name of the community literally and allowed people to create their own ways of supporting Obama.

One example is the use of the phonecall system by the online community (explained in more detail further down)- anyone could join My Barack Obama community, so people were worried that Republicans will use this system to phone up people and persuade them to vote McCain. There probably were some people doing it, but the benefit of an open &easy-to-access system was that many people could use it. And majority of people were campaigning for Obama, so this didn't emerge as a problem.

Again - we knew that this is the way to manage possible rogue members in an online community. Rather than close-down the community for many in order to protect it from the difficult few. I remember Greenpeace once giving an example of a supporter who was very rude/abusive on a forum. Instead of deleting their post and closing their profile, Greenpeace left it to the community to respond. And respond they did - the abusive supporter left the forum after few exchanges with other members.

I can hear some NGO people saying that the online systems are dangerous as people would be "off message". Many people in NGOs feel that online people need to be controlled, while they are more than happy to live with the risk of volunteers promoting the organisation offline. It's a clear example of out of sight out of mind - they don't hear/see what volunteers say in a face to face contact, but can see what volunteers say online.

Also, Joe said that with 13 million emails on their list Obama has a big advocacy organisation to help him form his policies once he enters the White House. Again, this sounds like the right way of treating the community - instead of dumping them now that they helped get Obama elected, the campaign team is continuing the conversation with supporters. Obviously this is also a very clever long-term planning because there will be other elections and fights to fight when the campaign will need support of these people.

Segmentation

Joe told us a bit about the technology and systems they used in the backend.
The sophisticated segmentation and emailing was possible because of the powerful CRM. To illustrate - they could email people about events close to them with reminder to join in.

They also released what is usually used as a back-end function of a CRM to the online community - the phonecall system. As a user logged into My Barack Obama community, I could get the list of people in a specific area, click on a name, which then dials that person's number and pulls up the script.

This is how customer systems work in call centres when, for example, your mobile phone provider phones you up to sell you an upgrade.

For those who are familiar with UK Data Protection laws it's clear that we couldn't do this in the UK - voter register is not up for sale as it is in the US. However, the phonecall system has been used in the Ken Livingstone campaign for London mayor - where Labour members were phoning other Labour members.

Supporter journeys

The campaign was meticulous in planning user journeys. To use Joe's words - "if you have 10 people you need to put 8 of them to work".
The technology and segmentation were focussing on this result - getting people to something for the campaign.
Some stats:
- half a billion $ raised online
- 6.5 million donations of $100 or less by 3 million online donors which means that in average people were donating 2+ times.
- 13 million of email addresses
- 22,000(not sure about this figure) youtube videos totalling in 2,000 years of watching time.

Another related and important note was made - the user journey didn't finish with the victory - for example since the victory there were 4,500 meetings involving 50,000 people discussing the future.

Online to offline

Joe said that online campaign was "a window into the offline field operation".

One of the main features of My Barack Obama is the meet-up model of registering your own event and inviting people to attend.

The main focus of the online community was to do something and the strategy was formed around that.

Email segmentation was focussing on serving up information which is likely to suit a specific person. So if an event is registered which is close to where you live you receive an email.

If you are not taking up that offer than you will be asked to phone someone up from the comfort of your home. If that isn't your cup of tea you can donate, blog, create a video, etc.... There were many ways to engage..

Support and channel shift

The campaign invested in helping supporters use the online system on the phone. Joe said that they had people acquiring email addresses for the first time in their life in order to join My Barack Obama.

Also, the online phonecall system is much more convenient to use than the traditional systems. After initial training, a supporter can do it all from the comfort of their home. So once familiar with the system, supporters are more likely to use it.