I asked Hudak about principle vs pragmatism in opposition compared to government, about how he would balance the deficit, the difference between Harper/McGuinty deficits and about the renegotiation of health transfers that is rapidly becoming visible on the horizon. I spoke to the Ontario PC leader after his remarks at the Manning Centre networking conference in Ottawa this weekend.
Rob Willington presents at the Manning Centre conference
Rob Willington is the brains behind the campaign that got the GOP’s 41st Senate vote in the Massachusetts special Senate election.
He gave a lunch time presentation on social media and how the MA republicans used online technologies to elect Scott Brown to the senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy, a Democrat.
On Facebook, Brown advised that politicians should engage potential voters not just with political content but with non-political content as well.
With YouTube, Willington advised to use YouTube as a publisher as a search engine. This means to promote relevant keywords and content.
Twitter was used as an example to use every facet of a social media strategy to promote means by which a campaign can collect data about its supporters.
The Brown campaign was one of the first national campaigns to use Google Docs to manage data flow into spreadsheets to manage RSVP lists and donor lists. Forms feeding into spreadsheets automatically populate your lists.
Google News alerts are appropriate for campaigns to gather new information as its posted on your candidate and their opponents.
Data is gold in a campaign. Data collection can be done via petitions, polls and events.
In the US, talk radio is dominated by conservatives. The Brown campaign collected 70,000 mobile numbers from advertising short codes on lawn signs and twitter. The Brown campaign would send texts when their opponent was on radio on would include a call-in number to jam the lines with Brown supporters.
Ning was used to create the “Brown brigade” to create local groups. Ning is like Facebook but a whitelabel solution to mobilize local cells in your campaign.
Willington was able to target online ads to activists inside and outside of the state discretely. For ads inside the state the ad would be for volunteers. For outside the state, the ad would be to make calls from home to voters within the state. GOTV ads would be visible to Repubican heavy areas on election day.
By the end of the campaign, voluteers were waiting an hour and a half in line outside of the campaign office to make calls.
Willington advised that volunteers have more skills than licking envelopes and making calls. Find skillsets in your volunteers (iphone app development, final cut pro) and put them to work.
Moneybombs were successful for the Ron Paul and Scott Brown. The Brown campaign invented the “Voter Bomb” where people could sign in and claim responsibility for bringing out a number of their friends to vote for Brown.
The Brown campaign changed how campaigners win elections online. Willington gave a great presentation.
One of these things was lifted from the other?
The 150!Canada conference is in Ottawa this week. No not that Canada 150 conference…
What is the 150!Canada conference?
It’s the first big meeting to begin planning the 150th celebration of Canadian Confederation. It’s an opportunity for public servants, business leaders, social innovators, and artists to gather in Ottawa and spend two days thinking about how we will celebrate the next great year in Canadian history. 2017 still seems far away. But the spirit of our Sesquicentennial starts in Spring 2010.
About
150!Canada is a new initiative from the Institute for the Public Administration of Canada to imagine, plan and celebrate Canada’s sesquicentennial in 2017.
The Canada 150 conference is a “non-partisan” conference of Canadians organized by Michael Ignatieff’s Liberals:
This website is part of a national conversation about our country’s future.
We’re coming up on a rendezvous with destiny—in 2017, we’ll celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.
What will we be celebrating that year? What kind of Canada do we want in 2017? And what do we have to do, today and tomorrow, to get there?
We need the next generation of bold ideas, to take our country forward.
So did the Liberals take the idea for their conference from somewhere? When was this idea conceived? A page from the Government of Canada (that’s the “Harper government” to its friends in the Liberal Party) website suggests that this idea was hatched long before Michael Ignatieff decided to unveil anything in the “vision” department for Canada at 150:
