Spalpeen

“We ran Barack Obama’s fanclub”

Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner at Blue State Digital which ran Barack Obama’s pioneering web campaign during the 2008 US Presidential Election, came to talk at City University. I made some notes from the last few questions, specifically why he thinks Twitter is a gimmick for political campaigning. City should be posting the video of Thomas Gensemer’s talk pretty soon.

UPDATE: Read The Guardian’s great interview with Thomas Gensemer. He has some great tips for Labour! Listen up Tom Watson and Derek Draper!

How do we shake it up in UK, and get broader adoption by politicians for new online tools?

“You can’t create a Howard Dean moment in the UK.” Instead, you’re got to start a small project, and show quick results. Spread “buy-in” from constituencies to other constituencies. Not helpful to think of a top down perfect solution. Best to say, here’s the budget, here’s the goals, here’s the community we’re mobilising. Best way to grow an idea is to start small and let it spread.

How do you manage expectations and prevent later disillusionment?

No possible way to have 15 million mobilised people at the end of first year to be as gung ho as they were in the days after the election. But, can identify niche issues and mobilise people. Segment out who are health care advocates and build something for them deeper than the campaign rhetoric. Understand that the other 80% will be less responsive (but build niches for them too). If you keep core bases of support alive, there’s no reason why it won’t turn into 15 million come campaign time again.

Why do you think services like Twitter are gimmicks?

Let me say that I think there are interesting consumer applications. Will be interesting to see Facebook’s biz model, and to see if Twitter has a business model [implication being it might not get one].

The problem is that the new tool on the block tends to distract. It’s easy for a lazy and unimaginative campaign flack to sell story of “politician on twitter!”. Case of shiny object moving to shiny object. For organisations that need to invest in deep relationships, new services like twitter are scattershot and dizzying. They burn political capital. Besides, they don’t talk to the people you want to talk to [case of early adopters not being very useful to political campaigns? I'd still consider Twitter to be an early adopter service - won't change until it has 60 million users, not just 6 million].