This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Joyce Pope, Koch Associate for the John Locke Foundation.
RALEIGH — The Republican Party has backtracked in its ability to communicate effectively, especially when it comes to younger people. I discovered this after an afternoon of attempting to collect information about North Carolina’s county political parties. With Republican Web sites, I ran into multiple dead ends. Pages not found, incorrect e-mail addresses, Web sites that were years out of date. The story was completely different with Democratic Web sites — they were consistent, organized, and easy to use.
It only added to the feeling that’s been lingering since the 2008 election: that Republicans are lagging behind when it comes to effective, modern communication strategy.
Last week I attended a lecture by Garrett Graff, editor of The Washingtonian magazine and author of The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House. Graff ran Howard Dean’s campaign Web site while in high school, before attending Harvard, starting a successful Internet strategy firm, and teaching at Georgetown. (He’s 28, by the way.)
Graff spoke about the way the Obama campaign used text messaging, social media, and the Internet to create a sophisticated, multilevel marketing machine. It was geared toward engaging voters, especially younger voters, on their level.
He used the example of how the Obama campaign made a point to track the time of day that people typically opened their e-mails. If they usually opened them in the morning, the campaign sent them in the morning. As a result, e-mails were timely and at the top of their inbox.
In that same vein, he said, the campaign used text messaging as a way to glean information from supporters. For instance, the campaign encouraged supporters to sign up to receive a text message announcing Obama’s VP pick before it was on the news. Supporters felt like insiders when they got the information they wanted, and the campaign built a database of more than 1 million cell phone numbers. They had access to supporters wherever they were, and more importantly, they had access to voters on Election Day.
Republicans didn’t always trail Democrats when it came to communication strategies. A classic example is Jesse Helms’ Congressional Club, which revolutionized television advertising and direct mail fundraising. The Club took advantage of new technology and used it to personalize appeals to voters and contributors. Much like what the Obama campaign did in 2008.
And now it’s time for Republicans to do that again. What Helms and Obama both understood was that people needed to be approached on a personal level.
I’m 23. Approaching my generation on a personal level means becoming something that’s cohesive to our lives, and in order to do that, you have to grasp fully how we operate on a day-to-day basis.
My generation communicates in an entirely different way from our parents. We don’t have landlines, almost never use the Postal Service, and move on a regular basis. We receive our bills, bank statements, and personal letters online. Our work is conducted primarily online. We buy our clothes, books, and groceries online.
In addition to our everyday lives, our personal lives are conducted online as well. We find our housing, pets, dates, and friends online. For better or for worse, my generation has few qualms entering our pictures, birthdays, full names, addresses, and whereabouts online at any given time. Much less our credit card numbers.
We have very few boundaries when it comes to the online world, and when it comes to politics, that’s something to be taken advantage of. That’s exactly what the Obama campaign did when it developed not one, but hundreds of Web sites, all aimed at integrating the Obama campaign into people’s everyday lives.
The Obama and Helms campaigns both utilized strategies that looked ahead and, as a result, had longevity. Republicans need to come up with a new, comprehensive media strategy that capitalizes upon new media the way it did direct mail and television. It’s not just a good investment — it’s essential to the success of the party.