I’ve dedicated today’s space to a cross post from Patrick Ruffini. Ruffini first posted this piece, on his conservative blog THENEXTRIGHT.com, under the title, Stop Talking About “Technology”.
Ruffini, who is a top Republican online strategist has posted several pieces since last November’s Election, providing constructive strategic input on best methods for getting the Republican Party back on track and in position for regaining strength in the future.
This particular post is an interesting take on Ruffini’s views on new methods and the future of party building. I agree with most of his assessment of the changing way people view and react to media and information, however, I disagree with his strong negative view of traditional advertising methods.
I am an ardent supporter of digital marketing and online message dissemination, especially through social platforms, but I believe traditional forms of communication are extremely powerful in connecting with and impacting most audiences.
My belief lies in full multi-media integration, with targeted audience behavior dictating communication methods, not selecting one method over another for blanket communicating.
One area where I completely agree with Ruffini is in message delivery. Effective messaging, that is compelling, delivered by a strong messenger has a major role, if not the most important role, in creating intended impact, despite technological advantages or medium selection.
Here’s Ruffini’s Post
The Rebuild the Party plan has often been characterized as a way to remake the party through technology. Though we’ve sometimes slipped in using that word to describe certain elements of the plan — I generally feel uncomfortable with it being pigeonholed as a “technology” plan. I’ve generally struck “technology” from my vocabulary, taking instead about “new media” or simply, the “Internet” or when talking about a generational shift in fundraising or a 435 district strategy, wholesale party reform. Why? Because the word “technology” reinforces old siloed habits of thinking and implies that the solution is spending money on cool tech toys, rather than a quantum shift in approach.
If there is one thing the Republican Party is actually pretty good at right now, it’s investing in “technology.” From Voter Vault to the tools on GOP.com, the Republican Party has invested millions of dollars over the years in building the best political data-mining, microtargeting, and GOTV applications in politics.
This is vitally important. And it must continue. But the Rebuild plan focuses for the most part on something wholly different than these vital campaign technologies (where the GOP has to date held an advantage): getting the warm bodies who will actually use the technology and volunteer and donate.
The difference between the Bush ‘04 campaign and the Obama ‘08 is simple: the Obama campaign did the same thing, but with ten times more people. Technology was the instrument, but message was the impetus behind this shift.
Getting people to participate by the millions is the biggest job of the next RNC Chairman. That will require a wholesale overhaul in our message and how we communicate. First, the leadership and the grassroots will have to collaborate to shape the message. However one felt about the immigration debate, imposing change from the top as an elite project hatched at the White House was never going to fly politically. Ditto for spending, Medicare Part D, and to a lesser extent, education. The days of a leader deciding a message in a vacuum without grassroots input are over. There has got to be some buy-in from the grassroots — or else you’ll have a hollowed-out party with no boots on the ground. This is a pragmatic matter of survival as much as it is one of principle.
It also means changing our style of communication in a new era. Leaders have to be accessible, open, aggressive, and willing to throw the playbook out the window when necessary. Technology has made it easier to filter bottom-up input so that the good ideas rise to the top, so there is no excuse for at least some personal engagement with new media. Unless you’re the guy with the nuclear launch codes, you’re not too important to Twitter or blog at least every now and again.
Some of these reforms are substantive (changing the message) and others are meta (making people feel invested by applying a personal touch). And none of them are really dependent on technology — I consider the Internet, blogs, Twitter, and YouTube to be media not technology per se. Here are a couple of other paradigms to think about in evaluating this fundamental shift in politics:
Push vs. Pull
By far the biggest mindset-change the RNC Chairman must — and I reiterate, must — wrap his arms around is that media is moving away from “push” to “pull.” An inordinate amount of time at the committee — and by political conultants everywhere — is spent on shaping, testing, and coordinating messages that are pushed out to voters. As in, how many pieces of mail can we push out there? How many phone calls or volunteer door knocks can we push out there? And ultimately, how much media can we buy — which is the push equivalent of the magic sin button. The messages themselves don’t always have to be very interesting, as long as they’re proven and poll-tested.
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Very interesting study, aptly titled 
I’ve been posting a number of new web videos here to draw attention to this relatively new medium of political persuasion. I’ve written in the past about the effectiveness of web videos, but now they seem to be really taking off as a tool for disseminating information, adding extra benefit to the audio / visual format of political communication.
