The successful reelection of president Barack Obama could be credited to a focus on individualized target marketing and an intense social media push. In speech last night to students at George Washington University, reelection campaign manager Jim Messina told students that the effective use of technology and data gathering was key to securing the White House for another four years.
On a vacation in Hawaii, wading in the warm Pacific waters, President Obama asked Jim Messina to run his re-election campaign. Messina knew how to win and was frank with the president.
“I absolutely will,” said Messina, “I just have one promise I need you to make: I want you to promise me we’re not going to run the same campaign you did last time.”
“Jim, you know we won that one,” replied the president.
“If you run the same campaign you did last time,” countered Messina, “you’ll get beaten. You’ll get beaten badly.”
Messina recounted the 2012 Obama campaign. He described how technology, social media in particular, won president Obama his re-election.
To illustrate the strategical shift in the 2012 campaign, Messina asserted, “Mass marketing is over, forever. Everything is about personal data. Everything is about getting into your close loop. What Facebook really is, is a close loop of people you trust and love. And that became the single most important thing we could do.”
The Obama campaign went for breadth in social media. “I didn’t know what Pinterest was until we put Michelle Obama on Pinterest, and her numbers skyrocketed,” said Messina. “We had a Tumblr. We had Facebook. We had people did content across channels.”
In 2012 the Obama campaign got smarter about how it was going to get undecided voters. “We invented a program that took 14 months to invent,” said Messina. “I think it’s one of the most important things we did, called targeted sharing… where you entered your Facebook information. We matched it with our data. We told you which of your friends were undecided. 78 percent of the people you lobbied to vote for Barack Obama, voted for Barack Obama.”
Messina didn’t send his volunteers to knock on every door down the street to give the same pitch over and over. Most of the time people aren’t home or aren’t interested in hearing the pitch. Instead he had them go to just a couple of houses, houses of undecided voters or those who had yet to turn in early voting ballots. Messina called it “targeted sharing.”
Finally, the Obama campaign got better at using data. “Big data is here forever,” said Messina. “We spent millions of dollars trying to figure out how to use data to make your [liberal student activists] work easier.”
The Obama campaign ranked every voter on three things: 1. Chances of supporting Barack Obama, 2. Chances of voting, 3. Chances of being a persuadable thinker.
“Once you have that data you can measure everything,” said Messina. “We measured how far a front office door was from the volunteer station because it meant how far a young collegiate who didn’t know anyone would come in before he’d walk out because he didn’t know anyone. We measured how far an office had to be from a volunteer. In the end we were able to use that data to predict, within .2 percent the votes Barack Obama got.”
Messina now envisions using technology to create a “grass roots mobilization army.” Messina wants to see the campaign become an advocacy group to take on issues like the economy, climate change, and the deficit moving forward.
