The Way to Campaign in a COVID-19 World.
The Way to Campaign, Period.
America could be open for business by this autumn. Or not. Or maybe we’ll be open for business this summer and then close up again this fall. Or this winter. Really, nobody knows.
I’m going to start with some assumptions: 1) Most or all of America will be open for business this summer. We’ll be social distancing, at first, and wearing face masks, some of us, at first. We’ll become a bit more relaxed after a month or two, and by September, we’ll appear to be back to normal. However, we won’t really be back to normal because, and this leads us into assumption number…. 2) Most or all Americans will be worrying about a resurgence of the virus during flu season. I am going to make another assumption here, number 3) that the virus will return just before Christmas and last into February. Finally, my last assumption, number 4) is that flu season will begin in mid-October, a couple of months before coronavirus hits again, but everyone who gets the flu, or a cold, don’t forget about cold season, will likely worry that they’ve contracted COVID-19 and anxiety levels will be…elevated. I make these assumptions based on, well, a bunch of stuff I’ve read. There is one indisputable fact, however: the presidential election will be held November 3
What do we know about the campaign environment during a pandemic? We know that as some voters wear masks and some do not, some keep 6 feet away and other do not, there will be stigmas associated with whichever way you choose to go. Oh joy.
What does this tell us about about campaign strategy in 2020? Door-to-door campaigning, registration drives, and GOTV, gone. Door hangers, problematic. Rallies, maybe Trump rallies. Meet & greets, not so much. Church visits, they’re going to be small or virtual, unless they’re not. Dropping by the diner on Route 27 as voters eat their eggs and sausage, probably not appreciated. Shaking hands and kissing babies, unacceptable.
Traditionally, it’s through canvassing that campaigns figure out where they stand and what they need to do to reach the finish line by identifying voters who enthusiastically support the candidate, voters who make it clear that it will be a cold day in hell before they vote for the candidate, and voters who just cannot decide. Knocking on doors to collect this information, precinct by precinct, in order to rule out the cold-day-in-hell cohort, persuade the undecideds, and motivate the fervent to volunteer, organize, and vote is the bread and butter of a campaign. Campaigns need armies of volunteers to do the work, even if it all goes digital. Without in-person events, late-night bonding among campaign workers and volunteers, and snack-fueled house and debate parties, how will campaigns keep everyone excited and engaged? Without the Party convention to kick off the season, how will campaigns build momentum? We humans get excited when we’re close to one another (and, for some reason, when it’s really loud)—it’s biology, it’s conditioning, whatever it is, it’s true. So, what do we do?
Ok, now we have our parameters. Campaigns involve a lot of human contact, COVID-19 may, but the flu certainly will, return weeks before the election, and this is the most important election of our lifetimes. What’s a campaign to do?
Digital
If you thought, “Digital!” you are not wrong. Go digital like a Trump campaign. Zoom! We’re gonna zoom 🎶 we’re gonna zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom 🎶 we’re gonna teach you to fly…but I digress. Post digital content to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and maybe Stitch (Fortnite, anyone?). Have I mentioned TikTok? Become one with the ether.
Even before COVID-19, digital had become crucial to successful campaigning. President Trump, Republicans, and Fox et al. have been waging propaganda warfare, with varying degrees of success, for 4 (to 28) years, but it was Donald Trump and his digitally-enhanced campaign who took it home. Even the assist from Russia was digital. If Democrats (read: Biden) do not embrace digital communications right now, our lemming friends on the other side of the aisle will be empowered to dive into the rabbit hole for another 4 (to 28) years and may very well take democracy and our great nation down with them. Digital.
So, what does this mean for Democrats in 2020? From Obama to Trump to O’Rourke to Buttigieg, campaigns have been applying digital technology for several cycles now, each cycle’s tactics more sophisticated than the last. But not all Democrats have ridden the digital wave. Some campaigns like Obama’s in 2008 and Buttigieg’s in 2020 invent the wheel (it rolls!), some like Obama’s in 2012 and O’Rourke’s in 2018 and Sanders in 2020 make very good use of the wheel (you can use several at once and attach stuff!), but some insist on trudging along, one jerry can at a time. Now is the moment for all Democrats to hop on the hay cart.
I am going to address three aspects of digital messaging: mode & medium, messenger, and message. In this first part, I’ll address mode & medium, by which I mean the how of it all, how a campaign communicates its message to voters (video, pics, graphics, gifs, text, and voice) and through which method of broadcast (social media and peer-to-peer communications). In Part 2, which will appear in my next blog, I’ll consider the messengers (candidate, surrogates, paid supporters, and an army of campaign workers and volunteers fit with not much more than their phones, laptops, and imaginations). In Part 3, which will appear in the following blog, I will discuss the message, the words, images, and manner that define a campaign and create a bond between the candidate and voters. Let’s jump in.
Mode & Medium
There are a lot of social media platforms, channels, applications, and tools out there. Settle in, get cozy, and put on your best skimming glasses
Home Base
Websites. Campaigns should invest in a well-designed site. Definitely ensure that your site can be found easily by putting some effort into SEO (search engine optimization). Hire someone to create your site, pick a do-it-yourself website design platform like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or one geared to campaigns like PoliEngine, or if you are using full-service, campaign software like NationBuilder, take advantage of its web design feature. Make sure your pick includes outreach and fundraising tools, translates well to mobile display, and will allow for quick load times. I also recommend using a micro-site. A typical micro-site is a stand-alone web page that exists independent of the website and serves as a candidate’s summary page. I would expand on this traditional purpose and use a micro-site as a sort of home base that links visitors to everything available on the campaign website. I got this idea from a website hosted not by a campaign, but by a Pete Buttigieg supporter who created The Pete Channel, a website that hosts videos, pics, issue summaries, podcasts, articles, and sundry other campaign-related things. I think that campaigns themselves should create sites like this and use them as a digital home base that has a clean, intuitive design and includes links to the following elements:
The Masses
What else do you need? Social media, of course. First and foremost, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. It may not seem cutting edge, it may be the dinosaur of social media platforms because it pretty much invented social media, but it is, as Stefan Smith says, the yellow pages of the modern era. Fully two-thirds of the planet and 70% or 170 million U.S. adults use Facebook (85% of adults under 50). Even folks over 65 use Facebook. Even folks over 75 use Facebook. Of seniors who are online, 62% use it. I would argue that without Facebook, Trump would not have won the presidency. (Of course, without James Comey, Trump would not have won the presidency either. It’s always something.) The Trump campaign, namely Brad Parscale, made the most of Facebook by accepting their offer to train campaign staff how to use its every feature, in real time. For instance, the Trump campaign learned how to place Facebook ads that target specifically-defined audiences, but they also learned that they could tell Facebook what they hoped to achieve with an ad and Facebook’s algorithm would determine the audience(s) and which of about a hundred subtle variations on the ad to use for each audience. It worked. Let’s learn from it.
Second, YouTube. Even more people use YouTube (180 million Americans and over 70% of people 55 and under). People spend hours and hours watching YouTube videos of fails and beauty tips and soccer and parkour and babies falling over and puppies making messes and clever backyard rollercoasters and movie clips and, God help us all, smoking toddlers. You missed the last Colbert, Oliver, or Saturday Night Live? Catch it on YouTube. Post video of the candidate. Share video content. Create video content. Place YouTube ads, like Pre-Roll ads and TrueView’s Bumper and In-Stream ads. Above all, make use of YouTube.
The Influencers
Twitter is also a useful platform for campaigns, but in a different way. Only about 22% of adults in the U.S. (about 50 million) use Twitter, 64% are under 50, 66% are male, and the demographics skew to the more affluent/educated/engaged. But what happens on Twitter does not stay on Twitter. Tweets impact the national political conversation by influencing journalists, politicians, and others who directly and indirectly determine what will be covered in the news. Plus, Tweets often migrate to Facebook within 48 hours and then head over to late night, MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, making Twitter the canary in the coal mine of social media (thanks again to Stefan Smith). Twitter is where you influence the influencers. Let them know your campaign has a pulse. Be pithy. Be clever. Move over Murrow, Cronkite, Jennings/Brokaw/Rather, and Muir, nearly three quarters of Twitter users get their news on this platform. But remember, to make Twitter work for a campaign, the campaign and its volunteers must produce content.
LinkedIn is the stodgiest of the social media platforms, but it has its place and, as with its adoptive parent Microsoft, that place is in the (virtual) office. LinkedIn is for grown-ups (167 million or two thirds of U.S. adults), and by that I mean, useful and less fun. Save your video posts for the other social media platforms because on LinkedIn, articles without videos perform better (only 24% of users hail from the 18-24 crowd), as do posts with 5, 7, or 9 headings and article titles of 40-49 characters. Nearly a quarter of users are influencers and decision-makers, half are college graduates. It is also male dominated (57% men vs. 43% women). Like business. And politics. For now.
The Young & The Restless
Instagram is the place for sharing visuals in the arenas of beauty, art, nature, pets, personal moments, and achievements. It a place for celebration, encouragement, and sometimes sympathy. A campaign’s content should follow suit. It is also a good place to promote events. Its U.S. adult audience is half the size of Facebook’s and YouTube’s, but it is bigger than Twitter’s, capturing about 37% or 90 million U.S. adults (and 72% of U.S. teens, so watch your content). It is also a shopping gateway, making it great for brand awareness, so place some ads (Story Ads, Photo Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Collection Ads, and Explore Ads). All in all, it is good way to reach an audience that may not otherwise tune in to the political conversation, an opportunity to connect with potential voters.
Pinterest, like Instagram, is more focused on human interest, specifically of the home. About 88 million U.S. adults use Pinterest, including 80% of American mothers (over 70% of all users are female, which makes this an important platform this election cycle). Photo and video Pins feature home improvement, arts & crafts, sewing, knitting, baking, cooking, decorating, teaching, celebrating holidays, and so on. Campaigns can take advantage of this with light-hearted videos featuring the stay-at-home-bound life of the candidate baking, barbecuing, reading to kids, gardening, fixing up that classic car, or building something around the house. Of course, ads are also an option. I’d like to see Joe Biden narrate a virtual tour of Scranton peppered with stories of his youth (family time, 10-year old Biden exploring with friends, 16-year old Biden getting into trouble with friends). Our former Vice President is a likable guy—his campaign should be able to make much of the Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest platforms in this way.
Snapchat also reaches a young audience and can be helpful to a campaign. As many people use Snapchat as use Twitter (86 million users in the U.S.), but it’s a fresh, young audience (while 78% are 18-24, note that 90% are 13-24, so, as with Instagram, make sure your content is appropriate). Snapchat is used for making personal connections, something all candidates should strive to do. It can be used to promote events, encourage voter registration, and get out the vote, as well as for ads. Gifs, stickers, drawings, and the like make Snapchat fun. Get creative with Snapstreak as a tool for volunteers as it keeps track of how many consecutive days a user has kept up an exchange with a friend (or a potential voter!), giving the conversation elements of a game. And while using Our Story to crowdsource Snaps taken at rallies, protests, and other live political events may be impractical this year, that doesn’t mean that this feature can’t be used for virtual events. Use it to better create the effect of a live event by crowdsourcing photos and videos taken by voters and other participants (in their living rooms, kitchens, and backyards) during a virtual event. However, beware of Snap Map—it reveals the users’ physical locations, which this year may be their homes, so it might be best if campaigns only encourage Our Story crowdsourcing if there is a way to ensure that users are in Ghost Mode.
Another youth-oriented platform is Twitch, which is focused on gamers (80% of whom are male, many of whom are young, so probably not swing-voter rich, but helpful for youth turnout). Placing ads in games is also a smart way to go (think Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, but take note of the guns, bloodshed, and thievery and make your decisions accordingly!). Short ads can also be placed in the word and puzzle games we all play on our smart phones
And then there is TikTok. TikTok is complicated. TikTok doesn’t allow political ads, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t political activity. Users, many of them teenagers, set up Hype Houses or political coalitions that function like cable TV channels for teen viewers with the attention spans of, well, Gen Z teenagers, some leaning right, some left, some straddling the political middle. Each TikTok is no more than 60 seconds long, and while much of the debate is honest, some of it has been invaded by disinformation and conspiracy theories, but that is true for most social media platforms.
Discord, another gaming-focused platform, has started to broaden its horizons into the world of neighborhood chats (think Slack but skews younger and more about community than business). Teenagers make up a vast majority of users and chat with each other on servers. The servers contain channels that host video-voice-text chat groups moderated and administered by one or more users in settings that are as private or public as desired—it is opt-in, not a scrolling feed. A year ago it had 250 million users. Campaigns should be aware of relevant servers on Discord and could consider using it in place of Slack for younger campaign volunteers reaching out to their peers.
Finally, if you can find a digital guru who understands the cross-platform opportunities afforded by social media (for example, posting from an Instagram meme account to a Pinterest board), you can make even more of the opportunities offered by social media.
Broadcast News
As for broadcasting platforms, each has its own features and restrictions, so compare your options. Here’s an overview: Facebook Live can only be viewed by people with Facebook accounts; YouTube Live is geared toward computers unless you are a YouTube subscriber with at least 1,000 followers; Twitter Live and Periscope (owned by Twitter) allow live streaming only from mobile devices, but users can invite up to 3 guests to join via audio; Instagram Live allows streaming only from mobile devices, but you can invite one guest to participate via split screen; LinkedIn Live is available for Pages as well as individual accounts, but beware that you do have to apply to become a LinkedIn Live Broadcaster, so plan ahead; and third-party apps like Switcher, StreamYard, Vimeo, Socialive, Restream, and BeLive are sometimes necessary (costs range from $0 to $20 to $75 to $350/month) but have advantages like simulcasting, talk-show effects, and the integration of text, images, and video. Do the research, and think about investing in a couple of pieces of inexpensive equipment, like a decent webcam and a mic.
Of course, you've got to have something to broadcast, so here are a few of the many digital tools available for creating video: YouTube, BeLive, Magistro, Promo, WeVideo, Crello, Adobe Spark, Vimeo, Camtasia, Prezi Video, and Wistia. Also, Wistia’s Soapbox & Jotto (for user-generated content), PowToon (animation, graphics), PodBean (creating podcasts and videocasts), and Amazon’s Twitch (primarily for gamers).
Most of these platforms have options for broadcasting live events, as well, so take advantage…like when congressmembers show up at immigration detention centers with mobile video in hand to shed light on the Trump administration’s policy of ripping babies from their mother's arms to put them in cages…but again, I digress.
A plethora (isn’t that a lovely word? plethora…thank you, Miranda Hart) of apps and software will make your broadcasts smooth and not at all irritating. Nobody wants to watch and listen to glitchy broadcasts (Biden campaign, I’m talking to you, though kudos on getting Biden into a room with windows, please do it again).
All of these tools can help a campaign get its message out to thousands or millions of voters. Next question: Who should be posting these messages? Look for the answer in Digital 101: Part 2.