This week on the communicators, the discussion of technology and campaign 2014. Joining our rent table is stu trevelyan who works for democrats. Defeooining us is chuck where he serves as chief digital officer. Who is theane publisher of campaigns and elections magazine. Lets begin with you, mr. Trevel yan. What are the components of a Digital Campaign . I think it is evolving. The digitalorically tools were largely thought of as the email tools and the online contributions, the website. I think it has evolved our company also offers tools that enable the shoe leather side of the campaign so the canvassing, the phone calling, the direct mail. I think you are seeing many more marketing talents channels come on. Tv ads, dress will online ads. You can do addressable interactions through social networks. I think now there is a pretty wide array of things you call digital. I think it starts with the data. We were2002, the rnc, the First Committee to take a voter file and target ads to specific folks who we wanted to talk to on digital channels. We progressed that through the 2004 cycle. It always starts with the data. Even when we are doing with socialchannels, through media and in sync with whatever youre doing online offline as well. That is an effective strategy. How has it advanced from the 2012 election . We are seeing a proliferation of use. It as a president ial campaign and what you end up seeing is you have a couple of campaign a republican and democratic president ial nominee that has milliondollar budgets and resources to do those things. Is in there seeing statewide campaigns really embracing what was brought into that cycle. They can push it down into the to support races them with some of the cutting edge tools. Stu trevelyan . Interestinge more things happening this cycle that did not really happen in 2012 is around relationship data. Obama campaign when they did their target sharing program, that was not something where they collected a lot of data about who contacted whom. We have a product we call the Action Center in 45 target races. What that does is it allows people to leverage their social capital on behalf of the candidates and supporters that they believe in. I think that is a whole new set of data. Lots of different channel data is interesting. I think we are getting to a place where, in addition to knowing who you need to target, you are being able to learn who you should target as a messenger to that person. Ck to ask stu to ask chue do things anymore. I think it will be a very interesting area. Picking up on this discussion in 2012 and what we are seeing in 2014 is this the question of how all of these tools and tactics scale. Can you both speak to how that is actually occurring . Our these tactics scaling down ballot races, congressional, even below and how are you both actually involved . We support every republican race in the country. For newstood up symbols tools to actually motivate and move out voters who may not have turned out in previous elections. There is always been that base of who you know. If they are going to vote, they will consistently come out to vote. We are pushing boastful tools into other races to make sure they are showing up. There making sure that email list they are using is actually being used, integrated with the voter file. There are number of tools to sync up of both digital and offline and make sure those communications are in sync. I agree. We have moved from the broadcast era. We are at the tail end of what we have known from the early 1960s. Broadcast television has dominated. As we evolve into it is moving into a relationship era. We have known that in the sector. Brandou build the advocates and you have someone advocating and influencing this fear of friends, how is it we move from just knowing not only the messages . We have gotten good at politics and knowing the right messages. We need to do a better job of making sure who the right messenger is to deliver that message. There are a couple of elements. Productsdnc has used since 2007. That is something that is involved in all the democratic campaigns at this point. Whether you are running for city council or senate or president , they are using it. Advantagesd great are can move for one campaign to another. Over to planned parenthood, the dnc. That goes to the second point good numberre are a over organizations on the side who have done a fantastic job in training people. The new organizing institute has been one of those leaders in that area in terms of training skills withho have the digital products, data and are able to take those skills down ticket to state legislative levels. You also have the third piece is the analytics where the analytics, the Obama Campaign, that was a source of all the innovation. Some of the analytics companies, blue labs, Clarity Campaign able toe been push that down so they reached small organizations and campaigns. Even at the congressional level, it is dealing with anonymous target universe. It is driven by scores at this point. We talk a lot about the tools and tactics, but really it is more about the people. That seems to be the real difference. The talent difference and the training aspect that stu talked about. What is the rnc doing specifically to close that education gap on technology and analytics is what we know out of the 2012 cycle is you have forget about organizations that have done a lot of that work we know now there are democratic operatives of that are all over the country that have specific experience applying these tools and doing this type of analysis whereas republicans are a bit far behind on that human element. How are you closing that gap . It starts with the more you do something, the more you will become people with it and better at it. What we have done is put our ground game in place. This is a shift of what the rnc is. The chairman has turned the organization and focused it into permanent boots on the Ground Organization where we have people in multiple states that are embedded in the community and they know who their precinct is. It is about putting those tools in their hands and putting them to use. The more we can we can send them off to twoday training, but they will get better at it the more they use it. When we talk about these tens of thousands of volunteers we have that are permanent and made a asmitment to stay with us, they start to use the tools we put into their hands for months now, some of those folks as much as a year the more they use it and the broader that base becomes, the more professional we will be about it. Do you think republicans need an equivalent to it . Is there anything that is an equivalent . Has there always been some Training Program . I can go back to into the early 1990s when there is training. The state representative or house candidate and the staff to run campaigns. There is always been institutions in place. There are still. Some of the democratic counterparts have gotten press. It has always been institutions that train our people. Stu trevelyan, you talked about analyzing. What are you analyzing exactly online . There is so much data. How are you going to focus on the important things . There are all types of information about who opened what email, who clicked on what piece of information, where people are coming from, which Advertising Campaigns online are driving people . You know. I think one of the real important pieces is to intersect that with the offline activity. For example, you may have a universe of people who are your target universe and you try to door knock on somebody three times but they dont answer the door. You want to make sure that person is in your Online Advertising universe because they are not interacting with you in the interpersonal way. They are all kinds of data like that. Then, they are different consumer data. What newspapers you read, what magazines you have. All kinds of Consumer Information double income status. Shopsgo into the modeling and come out with the score that says how likely are you to vote, how persuadable are you, are you likely to care about the environment . Is how the data ends up getting action. What about specific groups . Seniors, ethnic groups, etc. . That is basic segmentation. That is not the modeling piece. You can basically go off the information. Age ranges are wasteful way to target. Necessarilydont know that much about a person based on their age even at certain age rate is ranges. 6040 at ais particular age, you will waste a lot of money targeting at an age range. A question about the obama 2012 data that the dnc has the bulk of it and then have talked about the slow process of transferring that. Can you walk me through it a little bit . How that data is being used . Who is in charge of how that data is being used and what 2014 democratic campaigns are making use of that data . The ids from the Obama Campaign inform all the basic models. Of the dnc vote builder which is a combination of our product van and the voter file and Additional Information that has a number of set models and all those models use the obama ids. That is important because there were more ids made by the Obama Campaign than any other campaign. There is an ability to look of peopleive swath and have information on them. Available toare everybody whether you are running for city council, congress, senate, governor. They are having a big impact on races because these models introduce a lot of efficiency. Rly, it is revolutionary for the smaller campaigns. Chuck was at the rnc in 2004. Back in the day, it was 150,000 for a model or Something Like that. We were doing models to were three times in a cycle as opposed to continually recycling them. Campaign, to be able to use a model, to determine who they should be modeling is amazing. This may sound like an obvious question, but what is the measure of success because with democrats are clearly hoping is that scaling some of these tactics that they can overcome that traditional disadvantage they have in a midterm year in terms of the turnout dynamic. Is the measure of success that they get closer or they dont lose the senate . What is the measure of success because we know there are a number of firms won the Obama Campaign that are doing this model. I think Different Companies are going to have different measures of success. Are measure of success is did we have as much impact of success as we couldve have . People are honest with you. If you are going to lose 5545, your digital game when i put you over the top. You can control the victors. I am sure chuck will be out here after election day where you had a number of victories where you caught up on technology and data. It will take a little more research to actually figure out if that was true or not. You are the deputy chief of staff over at the Republican National committee. The Digital Campaign different than what we think of as a normal campaign . It is always been a reflection of what is going on offline. I manage the digital effort for 2004. I did other things in life. Recognizing that campaigns have always been campaigns. It is about going out and finding out who your voters are, getting them to the polls and making sure they are casting the ballot for your candidate. Historically,gns we went through a time where it was really a Political Organization that was knocking on doors. That was how campaigns were run when television came online, we shifted our campaigns. This is the relationship era. That is not me broadcast and important,are not but as we moved to better understand who we are communicating with, who is the right messenger to communicate to, what we think of as a Digital Campaign is not just more than the email in your inbox. You may see on your facebook newsfeed, it is what goes under line. It starts with the data, understanding who is the person we are talking about. We brought in a whole Data Science Team inside the rnc. They help us build up that huge capability. Starting with the observable data we have been building for do decades two decades, a lot of times campaigns make the mistake of using that offline or using that on the phone program or knocking on doors. We have integrated that approach into everything we are doing. Our email file is integrated with our voter file. The segments were moving into an even more into onetoone all of that is dependent upon of what we understand from people and who was the right person to communicate with. We brought in that out across all channels. Give us a sense quickly of how Digital Technology and its use in campaigns has changed from 2004 two today. Everything old is new. The2004 campaign we were first ones to build an app or you can go and download a list of voters and walked the neighborhood on your own. We were the first ones to do the concept where you can take that house party and expanded into people going and knocking on doors. All of that stuff was really driven off the voter file. What has changed most is we were the most expensive president ial campaign by that day. Forward o moving the ability for other campaigns , the that kind of tactics cost structures have changed to do these things that we were doing 10 years ago. Oaden it . Brough will be talk about the community of republican campaigns and vendors, it is how do we make sure we provided that level at the Republican Party and within the Party Infrastructure to make sure all of that access is there. We need to do a better job of making sure no one knows that. If you are getting into a race, this makes a big difference. Looking at that time from 2004 untiloday, do you have to be the out party to create the innovation . Desire what drives that to not only catch up, but surpass the goods it seems to have done that for democrats . I would say that is a correlation. I was a little depressed to see chuck go back to the rnc because he did a great job in 2004. They were ahead of us. Being out of power it took a couple of things. Obama in his primary was the challenger. He could not do the same things the normal way otherwise he wouldve lost the primary. It is more than if you are in or out. If you look at the 2012 campaign, by that analysis, romney should of been the one innovating but instead it turned analyticsriving through every part of the campaign which was the real innovation of the Campaign Came out of the Obama Campaign. I think that may be a little too there are so few data points in these president ial elections that people draw a lot of causality when it is really correlation. Chuck, the stated goal of the openness,encourage accessibility. Not really terms most people in politics associate with National Political committees. What i change at the rnc to create that coulter and hard fall along how far along are you . The chairman made that statement after the 2012 cycle. We move from a time moving into 2011, 2012, the rnc was not in the financial position to make the investments they needed to. Looking at where we needed to go as a party. There were some changes we needed to make. It translated into work in his age in silos but also technology, multiple technology decisionmakers and data silos. That is what manifested. Our main process is to actually level that. To say everyone will have access to the analytics, the scores they need. Everyone will continue to have the best Political Data that is accessible. We will continue to provide the speedand bring it up to no matter what candidate you are. We are going to make sure those tools are available to you in a general election. We have to start that level basis and make sure people are actually accessing it. That is why we work very closely with our political department. We are talking about our Field Program and what we are doing online with the data to support that. How do we make sure that those practices are happening in the 2014 election . This is not just a 2014 plan. This is a fundamental shift of what the rnc is. We have made the institutional changes we needed to do. We are at the end of year one in this program and we will continue. Role tou think the close that fragmentation on the right when you look at data and technology, it is fragmented in comparison to what happened on the left. Show the rnc be charged with fixing that . You can say you alluded to open source. When you look at what our job is. It is not to pick winners and losers, not pick one company that everybody has to use. Our job is to set standards that basically says here is what we think. Heres the level you need to operate on. It is available to everyone go innovate. A certain level of candidates will not go without, we will make sure you have what you need. If you are company or innovator or entre nous are that want to take that level and take it up and actually innovate beyond what we are able to do, we want that. We want that competition. We want people to take it farther than we we could do. What are some of the drawbacks of the Digital Campaign . There are a few. You see a lot of people walking into the door that is a candidate or consultant and they say can we do the challenge . Can we go viral . That is not how it works. Those things either tend to be either be lucky or the byproduct of a lot of hard work. In our world, we dont try to go by luck. There is a lot of hard work of building up that supporter base, activating them and then maybe you will get you wont know which exactly will go viral but maybe one will go viral. That is one of the elements. I think some of the other we are seeing it now, there are few barriers communicating. My friends have told me all is lost. There is a Pretty Healthy debate going on the Democratic Community is that the strategy . All i know is they are raising a ton of money so god bless them. Of overe perils communicating that nobody had to deal with when you never had so many volunteers that you can over communicate at the door. Same question. I think it is about understanding the tools. Tools in the toolbelt. Conversations with folks that arent