Technology: The Powerful Political Campaign Manager

Politics is serious business. Businesses, to reach their consumers, are using technology today like nobody’s business. Why should it be any different for politics? The heat is on. Who is intelligent and has packed all sandwiches for the perfect picnic on the technology spectrum to cast the most influence on its voters? Is the traditional campaigning dead? Or will this be the evolution of revolution the world of politics has to revel in for the better times?

Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, needs no introduction. Barely six weeks old in the political chessboard, running for presidency, Donald has already outsmarted his much-experienced opponents with his controversial outspoken demeanor. But the reason he is more in the minds of people than his seasoned opponents is because of the endless social media lashing he has been bestowed with for simply – being him.

Barack Obama, for his second term, just as he had in the first, did not mince any favors he could have with technology to garner voters to his benefit.

Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager, taking cue from Eric Schmidt and other top executives from companies like Apple and Facebook hired digital prodigies from promising tech start-ups to mastermind the architecture for Obama’s second term campaign.

The crew was a steaming hot mix of data scientists, financial analysts, a biophysicist, and three professional poker players.

The whole commerce of marketing in the digital universe is quantifiable. That’s what makes this so exciting.

There are specific platform tools like Aristotle and TrailBlazer that take care of end-end campaign management like reporting, outsourcing, funding, voter data, data matching, contributor data lookup, and district matching dataset.

Dan Wagner, a number-cruncher in Obama’s campaign, says, “The thing about online is, you can collect data very cheaply, very widely, and very quickly.” Speaking for the exponential use of mobile technology, Dan points out that all that a mobile needs is a single social media app on it and the interactions between the networks become automatic and autonomous. He maintains, “The device is almost irrelevant. What’s valuable is the network.”

Politicians, who are becoming increasingly savvier by the day in their composure of being able to connect better with the audience, have Facebook and Twitter as their top deployments in their marketing agenda.

Facebook, of course, is used as a primary medium to extend reach, while Twitter is a favorite for its uncanny ability to maintain a continuous dialogue.

The reason Facebook is the apple of the eye for the vast legion of advertisers, is because of its offering –  which is Facebook’s unlimited power to generate a constant trickle of information from its unsuspecting users.

Max Kalehoff, Senior VP for SocialCode, a commercial ad tech company elaborates, “The thing about the new social networks is that they are creating unprecedented consumer profiles. Most people are logged onto Facebook whenever they do anything else on the Web. It creates this incredible bread-crumb trail.”

Technology is an extremely economical conductor to get to a larger number of voters in an ultra-short period of time. Another prime USP of technology is its discretion to impart influence in the most organic manner possible. A friend comments on a politician’s facebook page, I will be able to know. That’s telling me that my good friend is doing something to do with that politician. There is instantly an atom of recognition created about that politician in my head already.

Politicians, to earn public support and votes, have been ceremoniously kissing babies, leaking fake news, limelighting offensive statements about ethnicities, races and sexualities, staging sign wars, getting tongue-in-cheek with dog-whistle politics, and dropping bombs in Google to create their own political signature craters.

Getting into the groove of technology to nail their political campaigns on the high wall is only being part of living in the present and working according to the trends demanded by the current era. Technology is here to help Politics, and it doesn’t need our votes as to win.