Fast changes coming to campaign software

Sophisticated decision-support software combined with interactive banner advertising soon will be the most powerful election-winning device since the deployment of television advertising.

In the 16 years since we launched a campaign technology company out of a Connecticut garage, most of the changes in the way political campaigns are waged have come about gradually.

Fasten your seat belt because that's all about to change.

Sophisticated decision-support software combined with interactive banner advertising soon will be the most powerful election-winning device since the deployment of television advertising.

In the next 12 months, campaigns will be won and lost by the deployment of such technology. No question about it, we at Aristotle are betting our company on it.

The big winners will be the consultants who offer to their clients services such as highly targeted and interactive buys on the likes of Web TV and Internet service providers (ISPs) such as America OnLine.

Made possible by the recent widespread combination of registered voter files with ISP subscriber lists, campaigns will serve up banner ads that only reach the intended constituent. Services, which will for the first time target Internet users based upon party affiliation or propensity to vote, will explode as campaign managers and consultants seek an unprecedented interactive engagement with the voters.

Three trends that became apparent at the end of the 1998 election cycle support this premise.

First, time spent online has increased dramatically at work as well as at home. The average AOL household is spending nearly an hour online each day. With the cost of online time decreasing, this number is growing at the direct and continuing expense of television advertisers.

Second, the same consumers who used credit cards to purchase more than $1 billion in goods and services online last Christmas will prove less resistant to making a contribution to a political cause or party soliciting on the Internet.

Third, with nearly 40 million American households online and a disproportionate number of them being registered to vote, online advertising has political "reach." In the average congressional primary where 30,000 votes will be cast and the outcome decided by less than 10,000 votes, the ability to reach 15,000 high-propensity Republican or Democratic voters is electorally significant.

Targeting these key voters by neighborhood and household can now be done when they log on to pick up their e-mail or check their stock quotes. Banner ads can appear based upon party affiliation of the voter, vote history, age, gender or any other criteria merged from a registered voter file to the computers maintained by an online service provider. Upon seeing the banner, if voters are motivated to "click" on the banner, they will be whisked to the candidate's Web site for information, or a pitch for a contribution.

This is ironic, given the generally disappointing results from Web site fundraising efforts in the 1998 campaign. Setting aside all of the hype and media attention, barely $100,000 was raised this way by all candidates combined in the 1997-98 election cycle. This represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the funds raised and spent during that period of time. Not a lot of money was raised, and probably not a lot of votes were swayed.

However, the 2000 presidential campaigns (we call them the Y2KPs) face crushing demands for early fundraising and tight, early organization. To address this, most of the better-run campaigns have been quick to embrace high-performance database engines built on Microsoft's NT/SQL servers to house and manipulate in-house lists of contacts, supporters and contributors, and registered voters. As you read these words, systems are being installed to give field offices and organizers (including New Hampshire and 20 other early primary states) instant access to entire databases and the ability to communicate directly with core supporters on a daily basis as needed.

In these races (and for most statewide and congressional campaigns) traditional direct mail, telephone contact, and yes, broadcast television advertising, will diminish in importance. Prohibitively expensive and cumbersome, these "blunt force objects" for persuading voters will command less and less of the campaign's media dollars.

How much less? We have projected that spending on broadcast advertising will drop to as little as 50 percent of the average campaign's media buy in this cycle. Direct mail will continue to recede as consumers tune out more and more of the estimated 1,000 pieces of commercial solicitation that clutter their mailboxes each year. Enabled with caller ID, telephones will be ringing less as telemarketing is relegated to the status of a late buy employed by campaigns with money to burn on highly personalized GOTV efforts.

Early in the cycle, campaigns armed with the right technology will buy banner ads targeting sympathetic voters. Their objective: drive these voters to a Web site maintained by the campaign where they can be asked for an e-mail address for future communication and possibly a contribution.

Each night, software will identify and track the hundreds of supporters who visit the site, identifying demographic criteria of future prospects for further personalized electronic ad solicitation and targeting.

After customizing target audiences, campaign managers will re-target ads every night focusing on a tighter and tighter demographic. Then, in the home stretch, with the war chest full, the emphasis changes from persuasion to GOTV with exacting precision.

As a campaign technology company, our greatest challenge has not come from competitors with software, voter lists and the like. Whenever Aristotle hasn't offered the best product at a fair price, our customers let us know by taking their business elsewhere. We get the message pretty quickly.

Rather, the most challenging aspect of this business is positioning a 50-employee company to compete with companies that do not yet exist and who may offer campaign technology not yet available.

However, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the Who. There are lots of talented entrepreneurs out there with the wherewithal to start a successful business just as we did years ago. Capital is abundant and the political campaign market is vast for the right products well-supported. The more interesting question has always been the What. Specifically, forecasting the demand for political campaign technology by smart managers and consultants before they need it.

John Phillips is president of Aristotle, a political software firm based in Washington, DC.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Campaigns & Elections, Inc.
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