East Bay Papers

Decentralization tactics in the Kerry Campaign?

Mena Trott asks: How are you using the tool? To elect John Kerry. Specifically, here's how I want to use it:

1. I want to set up a weblog for every meetup-zone in the United States, at least one per county. Say 500 or so. A zone like Alameda County in California has seven or eight John Kerry meetups.
2. I want to invite local Kerry volunteers to take editorial control of each one. Most areas have 5-50 local leaders who chair meetups.
3. I want them to invite as many local people as make sense to use the blogs. East Bay Kerry (a TypePad weblog) has more than 60 volunteers in its writers bureau, 10 in media relations, 50 in the speakers bureau, and committee chairs with events to publish and promote.
4. As their groups grow, and many of them now have hundreds of volunteers, I want them to create sister weblogs for working groups and committees and projects. Our local Swing State Initiate could use its own presence to improve Coordination, Collaboration, and Communication both within the team and with other teams around the country.
5. I want to see them with common categories, the better to aggregate after the fact.
6. I want to create plug-ins to all the blogs to create special data structures for events. Events are the most important web content we create. They draw attention, get people out of the house, and create urgency. Event features we need, including the ability
   • to have an event post followed by a regular post followed by an event post (not in separate blogs),
   • to generate vcalendar and Apple iCalendar files for export,
   • to sort by date of event (vs. blog post date),
   • to filter-in events within a range of dates (e.g., today-1 to today+45)
   • to wrap in RSS/Atom feeds
7. I want to add a ping server for these blogs, the better to run an aggregator and newsreader
8. I want geocoding of blogs and posts and feeds, the better to find nearby blogs.
9. I want domain names for each of these blogs.
10. I want support for moblogging (quite popular among Kerry folks in Los Angeles)
11. I want blog-to-email setups that also set up locally admin'd list serves.
12. I want blog admins to be able to communicate with their authors. The user account UI should let you send an email to all/selected active/registered users of a given weblog. "Dear bloggers, we're going to write about how oil prices are affecting us in greater Canton, Ohio."
13. I want TypePad-like TypeLists for MT that can be created/edited by other authors. Photos, link lists, book lists, etc.
14. I want a user account API, so other systems can automate account creation and updates. One registration should get let you join a private wiki, subscribe to a listserve, and become a blog author.

There's more, but you get the idea. Grassroots work calls for collaboration (events, comments), communication (blog, email), and coordination (project blogs, wikis).

Rapid Response: Memetic Engineering in the 2004 Presidential Campaign

Initiative. Voice. Democracy.

We got'em.

We're gonna use'em.

John Kerry's Media Corps is a new site on JK.com.

http://www.johnkerry.com/onlinehq/mediacorps/

So let me tell you about the Rapid Response Model, how Kerry's Media Corps builds on it, and what makes this a beta release.

The Rapid Response Model

Most of the money in this election will be spent on television ads.

Every presidential campaign staff has a political director and a communications director. Typically a political director picks the ideas, issues, facts, and positions that will win voters to the candidate and money for the campaign. Then the communications staff wraps them up in events for the media to cover, things for voters to read, oratory for the candidate to propound, and all the other stuff that gets the word out. Advertising and branding, product management and media relations. Promotion.

Campaign communications are dynamic.

Hot items in the press change a campaign's message strategy hourly. For example, right now Rumsfeld is defending his performance in Iraq instead of attacking Kerry's war record. While a candidate's staff is small and agile enough to respond to attacks, it's not enough. Once leveled, an attack can fester in the air for weeks. And character attacks are best fought by anyone but the candidate.

That brings us to "rapid response."

Rapid Response has four parts:

 
1. Prepare
 
2. Detect
 
3. Respond
 
4. Feedback

Preparations include:

 
• Write, edit and test talking points
 
• Recruit a cadre of first responders
 
• List traditional media channels by locale
 
• Write procedures for responding to each channel/program/publication.
 
• Building training materials for effective response
 
• Set up a database of responders

Detection in three steps:

 
1. Notice an attack, through surveillance.
 
2. Report the attack to your rapid response network
 
3. Prioritize the attack.

The US has about 300 million citizens, about 106 million voted in the 2000 general election [US Census Bureau]. There are tens of thousands of newspapers, radio stations, television channels, mailing lists, and web sites. Two "free" strategies:

 
• Volunteers adopt a program/publication. "Mike will read the Business   Section of the Miami Herald."
 
• Automated clipping services, like   Google News Alerts.

Response. Every attack should be met with a swift and effective response. Prioritize only when you don't have the resources to respond everywhere. When you choose among multiple attacks, watch for the attacks which:

 
• are coordinated,
 
• reach a bigger audience,
 
• are authentic,
 
• are more potent, or
 
• open a new channel or issue.

Join fights:

 
• You can win.
 
• Where you can be seen or heard.
 
• Where you need to learn something from the engagement.

Response has three steps:

 
1. Assign. It doesn't make sense for everyone to respond to the same thing.   Make sure your response team covers all the attacks worthy of response, and   that people are matched to the assignment.
 
2. Draft. Every attack is a little different. So tailor your response.
 
3. Engage. Mail the letter, call the show, post to the bulletin board.

Feedback serves four goals:

 
• Risk assessment. Attacks going unchallenged? Attacks with disruptive   potential?
 
• Message improvement. What's working? What isn't?
 
• Resource allocation. Where should we drive volunteer time and attention?
 
• Channel/medium profiling. What can we learn about media outlets to improve   our effectiveness?

Prepare. Detect. Respond. Learn.

The John Kerry Media Corps

Embracing the decentralization message, volunteers put together the Dean Rapid Response Network in 2003. Last week John Kerry's staff launched the Media Corps, their first cut at rapid response.

Components:

 
• For each message (presumed weekly)
     
  • An assignment
     
  • A deadline
     
  • Background
     
  • Feedback email link
   
   
 
• Other tools
     
  • Research materials on the assignment
     
  • Recent television ads
     
  • Link to the D-Bunker (removed after the first week)
     
  • Tips for     writers and     callers
   
   

That's the anatomy. What's the whole?

 
1. Media Corps is a boundary communication channel. It   pushes memes to volunteers. The campaign's politics and communications teams   design messages. Media Corps throws them over the wall.
 
2. Media Corps is an end run past the political press corps. It tells   volunteers to take the memes and run with them. To local media. To audience   participation channels. To letter writing and other P2P channels. Can you   spell disintermediation?
 
3. Media Corps is a memetic amplifier, making messages   louder and reaching further. No longer are TV ads the only place   you're likely to experience the campaign's message. The community reinforces   broadcast memes with their own versions. This improves what advertisers call   reach and penetration. 
 
4. Media Corps minimizes memetic drift, keeping   volunteers on point. Its centralized and standardized seed   message is the reference version. Unlike a game of "telephone" where   messengers garble the message, Media Corps always gives a public point of   origin.
 
5. Media Corps is a localization strategy, tailoring   messages. Politics remains local. No   national message works everywhere. Most advertising is wasted just trying to   find its audience, let alone delivering the right message. Volunteers   translate
 
6. Media Corps is a memetic biodiversity play, a lab   for new ideas. Media Corps pushes its memes   through thousands of channels, each reinventing the message. Some versions   will spread further, survive longer, and have more impact than others. No   single campaign office or market research firm can imagine or test all the   variations the way the Media Corps can.

Why does it matter?

 
• Money. Every minute of "free media" is a   minute more trusted than advertising. But the payoff is dollars that don't   have to be raised.
 
• Message Innovation. Marketing sciences   are all about developing the right sequence, timing, and presentation of the   right messages for the right people. The right message is the hard part. Media   Corps is a force multiplier for the communication team.   
 
• Measurable Results. Powering the feedback   loop. Managerial gold. 

Challenges?

 
• Deeper-memes. Can you build a sequence of   messages that assert an underlying value or point? For example, can   "competence" and "character" be built in to how we talk about economy,   environment, security?   
 
• Listen well to feedback. Listening doesn't scale, that's why we vote. And   why we summarize. You need a combination of structured ("on a scale of 1 to   5...") and unstructured ("What did you say?") input.
 
• Positive Reinforcement. Bring volunteers back for new message cycles.   Acknowledge people and teams for effort, creativity, and results.
 
• Experiment with the Process. This means   consciously trying messages and talking points with different characteristics.   How many words can fit in the bumpersticker version? What's the best day of   the week to launch a campaign? Best time of day? Can we run two at once? Four   at once? Does it have to be a whole week, or can we run one from start to   finish in 48 hours? Test. Measure. Test again.
 
• Tailored Experiences. Support both high and low energy volunteers.
 
• Speed. Keep the cycles short. Look to IM and   SMS for alerting to new threats.
 
• Memory. Help volunteers expose successes and   failures to each other.
 
• Quick Help. Attacks aren't homogenous. In   addition to research for this week's campaign, put response research for the   25 most common attacks, and 5 responses on each issue.
 
• Training. Build volunteer knowledge and   skill. It's summer: recruit 50 high school teachers to craft tutorials on each   issue, on each medium. Interview successful writers and callers for their   story. Feed lessons learned back to the volunteers. 
 
• Attack. Initiate an issue. Seed the   conversation. See how long it takes for big media to pick up a meme. See how   long other groups take to respond, both friends and foes. Change the rhythm,   put opponents off-balance.

From HQ to volunteers to the mediasphere.

Talking points.

Issues of the day.

Attacks recorded.

And the tools to put them to use.

We have five months
    to bring the message
        through the volunteers
            to the voters.