Joe Rospars, the new media director of the Obama Presidential campaign spoke at the excellent Labour 2.0 conference last weekend.
He had three lessons for progressives looking to organize on the web.
Build real relationships through content – The web is about getting your message. It’s not just about raising the candidates profile, it’s about showing people what the candidate stands for – he pointed out that not all the videos and content included Obama, much of it was about the message of Hope and Change.
He also cautioned against simply using a website as another channel for press releases and TV ads. He highlighted that for the Obama campaign written contents was really important. They invested heavily in recruiting people to write for the blog and used it as a space for storytelling the experiences of people linked to the campaign, or who had been inspired for the first time
Put people to work – This was a campaign about inspiring people online to do something off line. The campaign used the web to get people to do the traditional campaigning. They incorporated traditional organising tools into the website, a new approach to an old problem. Obama was originally a community organiser.
For example the web contained details for the phone bank where people could call undecided voters, allowed people to organize (and promote)local events, many of which formal Obama campaign staff had nothing to do with, or use it as a way cheaply distributing resources to field staff. The web was able to lower the barriers to entry for these activities, including many people who hadn’t been involved before.
It wasn’t about the money – The web was about raising money in ways that hadn’t been done before, and using new ways to do this. For example the ‘Dinner with Barack’ fund raising drive, which allowed all those who gave $10 or more to the campaign the opportunity to have dinner with Obama.
More from the conference to come over the next few weeks.
Tag: talks
Upcoming Events
Some upcoming events that might be of interest.
Thursday 19th Feb – 5pm
Make Poverty History: Political Communication in Action
Book launch and debate at City University, London – more here
Saturday 28 Feb
6 Billions Ways – Making Another World Possible
London – more here
Saturday 28 Feb – 10am
Labour 2.0 – campaigning for the net generation
London – more here
Monday 2 March – 10am
BOND Campaigning Forum
London – more here
31 March – 1 April
eCampaigning Forum
Oxford – more here
And some campaign dates that should be in your diary
Fairtrade Fortnight – 23 Feb to 8 March
Put People First- March for Jobs, Justice and Climate – Saturday 28th March – London
Here Comes Everybody – group action just got easier
I went to hear a guy called Clay Shirky speak at the LSE earlier this month. More efficient people that me have documented what he had to say here and here.
I hadn’t come across Shirky before, but he’s the author of a book called ‘Here Comes Everybody’ and is regarded as a an expert at online collaboration/online movements. He’s been advising the Obama team about how to keep the web outreach going now they’re in power. It was an enlightening 90 minutes, not all of it is necessarily relevant to campaigning, as much of it was about how governments engage with citizens.
This summary also comes with a ‘the room was full of tech geeks like me so does it work in the real world’ warning! But a few take home messages that got me thinking;
1 – The central premise of his argument is that the web is that ‘group action just got easier‘, and that the web has lowered the transaction costs. He pointed to the example of Facebook being used by students to close down HSBC a/c when they changed the T+C, suggesting that no longer do companies (and I think by extension but less so, governments) have the information and cooperation advantages that they used to have. The web makes it easier to cooperate and share the information you need (this case about how to close down your HSBC a/c).
2 – He argued that Obama was the first ‘platform candidate’ that is, he encouraged people to take his message and make it work for them. He contrasted the McCain online outreach, which was ‘here are some points to make on your blog’ with the activities that people like will.I.am and others had done to take the Obama message.
The challenge for me from this to campaigners, was how do we do this, albeit it on a much smaller scale. Do we needto more to just give our campaigners some key messages/points and let them work for them, or do we do this already?Are their any good examples to
3 – In the Q+As at the end he got into an interesting discussion about the ongoing value of newspapers, he was arguing that the newspaper model of making people pay for news is dying, because people will increasingly get their information from online sources, often ultra local and more interactive. I don’t know if I agree, but got me thinking about two things, a) what would our campaigning look like if we didn’t have newspapers to try to communicate our messages to decision makers, because that’s in part why we do reports, stunts, etc, and b) if paid for newspapers are dying what about the magazines we produce will people want something different from us, does it mean an end to print publications?
4 – He had some insightful stuff to say about the way that new media needs to be incoporated into an organisation. That it should sit somewhere between the technology and communication teams, but allowing space to innovate was criucial as was regular reviewing of what was working and not. He said that because the web changes so quickly it challenges the traditional planning cycles of many organisations.
5 – Finally he pointed to the recent campaign by mysociety on MPs expenses, as an example of one of the first completely web based campaigns. More on their blog – Its a fascinating example of not only how to mobilise lots of people in a short time just using the web, but then getting them to translate into action, and one I think I’m going to come back to.