The Republican National Convention’s digital director, Samantha Osborne, is under serious pressure to organize and facilitate all forms of social media to assemble the GOP together-with millennials as her central target.
The 29-year-old is capitalizing on the social media dominance of Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, who has used Twitter as a platform for communication throughout his campaign.
“I don’t think you would see a Donald Trump candidacy without social media,” Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker told CNET’s Terry Collins. “You have to factor in Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat to begin to realize how much of an impact that social media has carried an outsider candidate in a way that traditional media never would have.”
Osborne and her team are working to combine new and old media to draw both the aging conservatives who haven’t adapted to the modern forms of communication, along with millennials who lead the current trends of digital media.
“The reason why we did this is to give them [new media] a footprint for more content opportunities,” Osborne told Collins.
Osborne is aware of the shift in how news and information are received. “A third of all registered voters aren’t watching TV,” Osborne noted. “That’s the way media is changing, and you have to adapt to that.”
Osborne is also aware of the extra work her and her team will have to put in to reach the largest living generation, millennials.
“Among millennials, he has a 75 percent unfavorable rating,” CBS News reported regarding Donald Trump.
Amanda Naylor Flores, an incoming freshman at Harvard in the fall, continues to question Trump as a candidate and has serious concern for her future.
“You know there is a saying about the youth — 26 percent population, 100 percent future,” Flores said. “Without the Republican party learning to grow and bring in that youth, there really is no future.”
Osborne is aware of the desires of her millennial generation, and hopes to find the right way to communicate to them. After only accepting the digital director position in September, Osborne has proved she knows a thing or two about how media works and is now one of the highest-ranking digital directors in the Republican Party.
“People who have worked with Osborne say she’s whip-smart and filled with boundless energy,” Collins reported.
Though her methods of reaching people through media have proved successful in the past, it will still be a challenge reaching conservative audiences, specifically discouraged millennials who are unsure of Trump’s motives once in office.
“No matter how smart the messaging, Trump will be a tough sell for a lot of people, they say, because he hasn’t given much idea of what he’d do if elected,” Collins observed.
