It’s no secret that the 2012 presidential campaign was the most expensive ever. But we’re just learning how Team Obama collected so many checks from so many people.
Michael Slaby, who was the campaign’s chief integration and innovation officer, said he mined companies like Amazon for ideas. The biggest: saving the payment information of donors.
Discussing digital campaigning with students from the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, Slaby said that the Amazon-like system helped to snag donations before people had a chance to change their mind.
With Amazon, he said, “You go on, you say, ‘Oh I want to buy that.’ [It’s] shipped before you even have a chance to say, ‘Maybe I don’t need that.’ We like that idea. When people get inspired, we don’t want to introduce barriers to participation.”
Building a fast donation system was also key, he said. “Speed matters a lot. We used to joke about making a process as easy, so easy that if people tripped and hit their head on the computer, they’d give us money by mistake. More, ideally.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
