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Make the Most of the Conventions

Wed, May 14th, 2008 by Michael Cornfield | 1 comment

Branding and Engagement Strategies for the Parties’ Big Get-Together

As the presidential primary season winds down (finally!), public attention instinctively looks ahead to the conventions.  This year, the Democrats and Republicans will stage their quadrennial spectacles back-to-back starting on August 25.  The combined two-week period offers advocates great opportunities to reach an enlarged and alert audience primed for political content.  Here’s how you can take advantage.

If there’s one thing we can count on during the conventions, it’s that the decision makers and opinion leaders who flood into the host cities will experience periods of boredom as they travel from one venue to another and wait out the less-than-compelling speeches and presentations they attend.  At times like those, they will check their Blackberries, iPhones, and other net-enabled devices.  That’s a chance to grab their attention and connect them with your activists, whom you can have ready to communicate your message.  Activists will leap at the chance to link to conventioneers, especially those unable to be there in person.

The 720 Strategies equation is 360 Degrees of Media x Web 2.0 = Maximum Influence.  We help you line up your supporters in two-way and multidirectional channels (e-mail, Facebook, mobile phones) to amplify your message as distributed through one-way channels (advertisements, campaign web site, news events).  The resulting combination impresses the very people you want to impress.  Think of it as a sort of political surround-sound.

One strategic approach we like devises a “virtual convention,” whereby people outside convention locations are tied into individuals on the scene through a series of daily activities.  In 2004, 720 Strategies worked with EMILY’s List to put on this kind of program for Democrats.  As you’d expect during a convention –and from us-- we made it fun.  We wrote a counter-convention platform.  We distributed recipes with punny titles, such as Wild Condolezza Rice.  We even made available a downloadable Dress Up Dubya Doll.

We made sure to transact serious business in the process.  EMILY’s List members were instructed and inspired to throw convention-watching parties.  Participants were tasked with five actions that carried over into the general election campaign; thus, just like the official convention, the virtual convention served as a springboard into a productive fall.  The results were positive…and this was before YouTube and Facebook existed.

This year, aided by user-generated videos and contact lists, and ideally by micro-targeting data and constituent relations management software as well, we believe a virtual convention can produce even stronger results.  The benefits could be qualitative as well as quantitative, should one of the activist messages you stimulate happen to catch fire with the convention crowd.  Remember, it doesn’t take much to increase your earned media profile in an environment with thousands of reporters assigned to the same small space.

A national political convention is one of those special occasions when the people who follow politics follow it very closely, and those who don’t nonetheless get wind of what is going on.  It is a wonderful opportunity for branding and engagement, and it all begins with the simple idea that during a convention, the influentials assembled are looking for ways not to be bored.

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