Mark Strama, D state rep in Texas from a north Austin district
Patrick Ruffini, consultant to Guiliani and patrickruffini.com, previously with Bush and RNC
Mark Soohoo, Campaign Solutions, working for McCain now
Clay Johnson, business development for Blue State Digital, consulting for Barack Obama, democrats.org, previously with for Dean for America
What follows are my notes, thoughts, paraphrases, and here and there an actual quote.
Strama: A lot of people say, Howard Dean figured this out. My contention is, not really. The Internet found Howard Dean, not vice versa. Was that your experience?
Johnson: I get these phone calls a lot. Someone says, "You guys raised $25 million for Howard Dean, and I, too, would like $25 million." Big laugh. I think the Internet found Dean and made him the Internet candidate. One thing we learned fr the Republicans in 2004: Never let anyone own the relationship between you and your supporters. [Meetup had as many supporter emails as the Dean campaign did.]
Strama: What's an email address worth?
Ruffini: It could cost pennies to several dollars.
SooHoo: It depends on where you're getting the lists from.
Johnson: How much would a campaign pay for an email address? We tell our clients, Don't buy email addresses. In terms of what an email address is worth to a campaign, a good baseline is $1 per email address, is what you expect to raise from it.
SooHoo: Realistically not every candidate is able to [go without buying lists].
Ruffini: It's rental and acquistion. One of the untold stories of Dean is the MoveOn primary, when Dean really exploded on the scene. He won with 40% of the vote, and everyone was encouraged to go sign up for the list of the person they supported.
Johnson: The MoveOn primary was definitely big, and it got a lot of media attention.
Strama: We've found organically grown lists, we've gotten from knocking on doors in my district and asking people, we've found are worth $10/address in fundraising.
Strama: Which candidates have the most leverage with online fundraising, and what about them gives them that advantage?
Ruffini: I think the landscape is changing a little bit. In late 90s, 2000, it was an early adopter crowd. I do think there's a model out there if you're a frontrunner, because they do inherently have a lot of support. If they can make their big events offline their big events online, and collect a lot of email addresses, they're going to raise a lot of money off that list.
Johnson: I'd agree. I think your Internet rock stars are going to be your offline rock stars, and 2008 is going to be the year of the boring Internet. In the progressive left world, it's still 1999. We're saying, This is what HTML is. I look at 2001, 2002 as when the Internet got boring. Of course Hillary Clinton is going to do well online because she's going to do well offline. Says, Clinton, Edwards, Obama will all have raised more money at this quarter than Dean had at same point.
Strama wants to know, don't you think Internet better benefits outsider candidates, like Barack Obama.
Johnson disputes, all frontrunners will do well this time around online.
SooHoo: "Outsider" candidates have a core message that resonates with people. That's why the Internet is good for them.
Ruffini: It's critical that your online and offline messages are one and the same. The key is being authentic. We haven't touched on video yet, but we got off television and onto the Internet, and all people want to do on the Internet is watch television.
Strama: And YouTube may have been the deciding factor in the George Allen/Jim Web campaign.
SooHoo: The biggest "shouldn't do" is to not be authentic. You can't just go out and buy an online presence. The online community is looking for a real window into the campaign. "Straight Talk" for lack of a better term. [He's the McCain consultant.]
Johnson: For us, we'd try anything on the Dean campaign. Someone would say, "We should sell peanuts online to raise money," and we'd say "Great idea!" and go do it. Big laugh.
What not to do is anything that keeps people on their computers, not talking to people. Gives an example where Dean campaign made this mistake.
Strama: Biggest thing not to do is Second Life.
Ruffini: There was a Mark Warner Second Life event last fall, and there were 20 people there, half of them political reporters in white t-shirts who couldn't figure out how to sit down.
Strama: Let's talk about blogging. Blogging has become something you have to do, but there's a big risk of it being inauthentic.
Johnson: Edwards didn't have a blogging problem, he had a people problem. Had Amanda been hired to be a finance director, it would have been the same problem.
SooHoo: We're encouraging people to get out there into the blogosphere, do it organically, but we will have a campaign blog at some point. Infinitely more valuable than a campaign blog is supporters who are actively engaged and informed. Politics at is core is social networking, going back to ancient Greece. Now we just have new tools.
Ruffini: Campaigns need to focus on their core competency. We're not political commentators. If a campaign tries to adopt the ethos and mannerisms of blogging, it's not going to work because you need some form of message discipline. Use the tools to your best advantage -- whether sharing information, using video, whatever your candidate is good at.
Strama: Campaign used MySpace as equivalent of "knocking on doors" and "yard signs."
Johnson: The thing that scares the crap out of me are the camera phone and YouTube. They are going to be the death of a candidate.
SooHoo: We don't know yet what will be the big thing in 2008. It's much more efficient to be able to walk inside on a 100-degree day.
Audience question: How will you protect identity online?
Johnson: Even when working with a network of volunteers, you have to educate people so they'll know what they're doing.
Audience question: The Warner campaign didn't present an opportunity for conversation at the Second Life event. That's why it failed.
Johnson: The problem with Second Life is until you can get as many people in a virtual room as you can in a real room, it's kind of pointless. I think the Warner thing was a success, because he got press and a media hit out of it.
Audience question: Current information is critical to a powerful web presence. Too many emails--Where does the line get drawn? People tune out after too many requests.
Ruffini: I think the biggest challenge for our industry is to find a killer app that's not fundraising. Fundraising is the most quantifiable thing you can do virtually.
Strama: I think it's the most difficult strategic question. Zack Exley, strategy for John Kerry....says, How do you say to the campaign manager, Let's not do a solicitation today when every one so far has brought in $1 million?
Johnson: You track open rates....when they become increasingly unreliable...then it's time to give the list a break.
SooHoo: It's hard to say, you put $xx into your online team and we're going to move XX points. You can do that with TV.
