Activists win elections in 2018
Voters are bored of 50-something white men who speak without conviction.
You are an activist.
Not a mother and a politician and a lawyer and a public servant.
One thing. You are an activist.
Yes, one that is a mother, a lawyer, a public servant as you were formerly the Minority Leader in the Senate until you termed out. After which you taught Public Policy at University of Michigan before you were asked to come back and help your Government by taking over for the shamed former prosecutor of Ingham County, in which, over one year you restored faith in the halls of justice.
All that.
This is your narrative. It’s you.
You’ve been building towards this job your whole life.
Your Brand
‘Reformer’ is your brand. It’s the thing people say when they want to gesture ‘why’ they support you to their peers in opposition.
“Yeah, but she’s a reformer.”
Sample Key Messages
Reform is bottom up.
Every person deserves reasonable access to opportunity.
Entrepreneurs and activists build great communities.
We need to rekindle our relationship with progress.
The Interface
Websites are so 2016.
A website is an island. It doesn’t really matter in the context of an election unless you make it matter.
Content is king.
Hundreds of localized and community focused news outlets, each budget strapped and in need of good fodder for content.
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Millions of targetable voters on social media, tired of the same old political character, same old sales pitch.
The people of Michigan are looking for their champion and the following strategy puts you everywhere in the State without having to live on a bus for two years. You create hundreds of hours of quality content for pennies on the dollar compared to traditional media production and purchasing.
And without the relentless challenge of trying to cultivate and retain proxies that can effectively carry your message and reflect your positions.
You hear from the people.
You listen, learn and roll your sleeves up beside them.
You can win this election by 15+ points for half of what your competition will spend in the general election.
Now, on to the fun stuff.
What if you could hear from every voter?
You can, virtually.
To start, we’ve outlined five innovation pillars to be simultaneously rolled out across the State. Each component creating relevant content to be edited and curated out to demographically targetable media channels.
You consistently drive people back to your website where they can learn more about you and passively or actively engage in supporting you.
Five Pillars
1. The Gretchen Bot
Personalization at scale
- Print/Mail, Posters, Billboards.
- Web Banners, You Tube, Click to Text
- Facebook Messenger
- Any channel; TV, Radio, etc.
Sample Message
Hello, my name is Gretchen Whitmer and my goal is to be elected Michigan’s Governor but right now I really want to hear about your goals.
I believe politics plays a key role in each of our lives and I’ll prove it to you.
What is the obstacle keeping you from your #1 goal?
Text 313–228–3916 or come to my website.
*This question might seem strange at first and that is the point. It makes the reader stop and think. More important, it prompts a response which reveals the issue closest to each person.
2. Integration
All data, everything.
Systems like NGP VAN are necessary for compliance but not nearly robust enough for a modern campaign. We worked to build on top of these systems during the Duggan campaign, to provide analytics and fluid contact relationship management.
Measure engagement in real time. Tag each contact with issue keyword(s) and track conversation flow with every potential voter, across all of your outreach verticals.
We can do the same thing here. Plus, there is great potential for further experimentation given the timeline we have in this case. Leveraging the data you gather and existing data to which you have access, to build applications that can be used to better engage voters.
For example, we built MI Win Machine, a distributed canvassing database on top of existing MDP data. We also built the Absentee Voter Technology to capture data on the fly and manage the absentee voter registration through a mobile website, converting to fax delivery to registrar offices statewide.
3. Online Fundraising
Talk directly to the people.
Your competition talks in back rooms.
You have your conversations in public.
Put your (public) call calendar on the front page of the website. Let people register to reserve 20 minute blocks of time to speak with you. The callers names are posted publicly, the audio recorded and transcribed to create content and to keep the conversations productive.
Now, we build in a crowdfunding ask into the primary user flow of the website.
Sample Message
It costs millions to run a political campaign for Governor.
It’s unfortunate but true.
To compete candidates spend hours on the phone each day, asking for donations.
There are only so many hours in a day and so candidates end up on the phone with the richest among us. Those who can afford to give the most.
It’s a sad fact of political life.
I thought we would do it differently.
Help me spend more time hearing directly from the people.
This has never been done before and so the uniqueness of this crowdfunding strategy will give it National reach and break open your donor base.
4. Gretchen + Ford Listening Fleet
Traveling billboards and engagement.
Modeled after the StoryCorps program, we put multiple vehicles on the road across the state to interview individuals and small groups around their obstacles and goals.
Mobile production studios with two-person advocate teams, riding around their assigned region in what equates to a mobile billboard.
Their job is to interview and engage citizens where they are. e.g., community events, nonprofit organizations, corporate employers, etc.
Ford will likely jump at the chance to co-opt your marketing dollars and you’ll get these assets donated. Worst case, they have Fleet Lease Program and they even have a custom graphic builder for each model van.
Sample Content
The two videos below are from our archives. We are using these to demonstrate the value of not overly producing content. You’ll notice how authentic it feels.
We deploy your campaign fleet statewide and cover the spectrum of issues in small groups. e.g., Entrepreneurship, Public Health, Workforce, Education.
5. Right Now Roundtable
Act as if.
This is an evolution of the ‘Town Hall’ strategy campaigns employ to position the candidate as if they are already the elected leader.
First, we develop a real time map for local issues across the State. Take the data from The Gretchen Bot and combine that with keyword monitoring around local publications — the relative weight of ‘issue tags’ in each region.
And now it is just a matter of production. We hold dozens of ‘Right Now Roundtables’ around the State. Create urgency for change and challenge people to get engaged in the political process.
One part community discussion and one part workshop. You invite the activists and entrepreneurs of that city, town, village and activate them around the issues that matter to their community.
You respect the context they possess around local issues and you can leverage the access they have to their neighbors.
All of these activities create opportunities for content. It is what you put on your website and syndicate across all media, remixed for each specific channel. e.g, Facebook, MLive, Twitter, CNN.
Drive traffic to the website with your content and convert to donors, volunteers, storytellers, registered voters.
You do this consistently starting in January and you win by 15+ points. Put your Democratic competition in the corner early, keep them off the game table to start with, then pound the Republican candidate with the sheer volume of engagement. He’ll be speaking at podiums to Regional Chambers of Commerce and you’ll be everywhere.
Your opponent won’t know what hit them.
You get elected Governor and we get to disrupt the woefully incremental innovation we see in political campaigns.
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