I recently spoke to Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation. Robert is head of online services for the prestigious conservative think tank. Robert has noted that right now the GOP is looking a bit enviously upon the online outreach machine that Barack Obama has put together. But, adversity is the often the root of transformation. It wasn't long ago when Democrats were green with envy of Karl Rove's impressive micro-segmentation database that sliced and diced the electorate up...all the way down to the type of salad dressing each voting bank preferred.

Contrary to popular belief, the GOP actually had a better message machine in the 2008 election...at least from this bloggers perspective. The much heralded "Republican Noise Machine" performed admirably. That noise machine primarily consisted of quick dispatch and dissemination of talking points from the campaing into the loyal right wing blogosphere. The left was never quite so coordinated in a "real-time" way. Left wing bloggers would often complain to me about access and messaging to the Obama campaign or the DNC. I often heard that those liberal bloggers who signed up with the McCain campaign to check out how the compeitition was moving were inundated with McCain email memos throughout the day with messaging guidance and backup information, citations, and loads of supporting data and andecdotes. It made writing about subjects with one voice almost unavoidably easy. The Obama campaign was never quite on top of this like the McCain campaign and it showed. People may forget, but it seemed like the McCain campaign was always throwing little curves and controlling the tempo of the conversation through much of the summer of 2008. That was the much revered messaging machine at play.

What the Obama campaign got right was create more of a movement versus a traditional marketing machine through online technologies. Ultimately, both are marketing machines. In a bizarre irony, Obama did what the GOP has always wanted to do...disintermediate the media (get rid of the press middle man). The Bush administration had always focused on ignoring the traditional media or at least the media that they didn't feel was aligned with them or would give them what they perceived would be a fair shake...and, a dominant meme on the right has always been "liberal media bias." For the right, the press they ignored was the "traditional liberal media of print and TV news" and instead focused on getting their message out through the blogosphere (the new media outlet of choice) and radio. News in the blogosphere would slowly perculate up to the more traditional news outlets and the GOP message would come through. That was essentially the strategy. But, this approach was still traditional broadcast or mass marketing. Karl Rove's micro-segmentation approaches were still being used by the GOP, but the direct contact was limited to traditional touches. It was used to figure out what was important to these people and play to those values and needs using direct mail.

The Obama campaign took the micro-segmentation approach to a new level. Social networking technologies such as Facebook and more personal text messaging communication were used to create a one-on-one relationship with individual voters...and, it was put in the context of a 2-way conversation as opposed ot a 1-way (heres what you need to know) conversation. People could interact in places like Facebook and self-affirm their views. This more intimate contact was followed with an incredibly high touch campaing of house meeting organization where people could follow-up virtual world contact with real-world contact. This is where much maligned Chicago-style community organzing really came into play. The emotional need of feeling like you are really part of something bigger than yourself which is one emotional need a campaign often fulfills was better met through personal communication and ease of personal inolvement that technology enabled. Frictionaless involvement is what you got. Ultimately, the blogs which were the first evolution of media disintermediation themselves got a bit disintermediated. You got a level of even greater fragmentation with people not just going from the few large media outlets to the many thousands of blogs but down to the more granual level of millions of voices speaking to one another.

In the post election environment, the Obama campaign is wisely not abandoning its impressive technology and people infrastructure. Big problems often require big solutions...and we are clearly living in an age of big problems. Those big solutions often are going to piss someone off. As such, maintain broad popular support will be critical. The campaign infrastructure will be critical in providing the political capital to push through many desired initiatives. The next big challenge for the Democrats will be to try to use this infrastructure to bring in GOP recruit in the context of bipartisan problem solving. Being open to opposing ideas and issue-focused would possibly make this infrastructure more appealing to become a part of for some moderate Republicans. That tone will be set from the top. In the meantime, the GOP will be sure to learn the same tricks of the trade and come armed with a better grass roots campaign in 2010 and 2012. Sphere: Related Content