The First Casualty: A Political Campaign Lexicon

Personal Holiday Fundraising

How the Internet has brought Politicians into our family Celebrations

The Obama Campaign recently introduced (see below) a new facet of fundraising effort that is a continuation of widely expanding genre of raising money that I call Personal Holiday Fundraising.

Political campaigns are about mass communication, and that requires money always.  It is the bane of reality.  Before the late nineties, political campaigns had to rely upon three tried-and-true methods of fundraising: (1) One-to-one personal requests where the candidate or a surrogate would personally ask another for a donation; (2) The Campaign Fund Raiser - such as a dinner (with a visiting crowd-drawing guest); and (3) the direct mail request.  

Email and the internet have not changed those tools, but they have certainly added some interesting new flexibility in tailoring and targeting the message.  Previously it may have been cost effective to do a fundraising letter (with the stamp, the hand written address,etc) to mark or celebrate a birthday, but it was very limited.  I recall seeing a few letters trying to raise money for Reagan's Birthday, but that was it.

Now with the internet, political candidates insert themselves into all of our personal holidays such as birthdays, Father's Day, Mother's Day, and now weddings.  These pitches seek to acheive four critical goals for any electoral campaign:  (1) Connect the candidate with voters on personal issues; (2) Raise Money; (3) Create engagement by having voters "sign" the card, or send a message of support; and (4) develop a database of active supporters.

Mothers' Day

The Obama campaign continues with a near flawless integration of campaign messages and personal holiday fundraising with three efforts.  

(1) Sign the Card.  Voters are asked to "join" the Presdient and sign the Mother's Day Card.  When people click on it they are asked to put in personal information (to build the database) and also for a donation.

(2)  Get a Tweet from the President.  This is something new - where grassroots activists who get five or more contributions attributed to them will be entered in for a chance to have the President tweet to your Mom on Mother's Day.  These sort of promotions are really new in fundraising and thus far incredibly successful. 

(3) The Mother's Day Video.  Starting off with the courageous introduction that "I think it is important to  recognize that Mom's come in all different shapes and sizes..."  The video flawlessly intertwines the political messages of inclusiveness, equal pay, medical care with messages of hearth and home.

Mitt Romney also issued a Mothers' Day video that does an excellent job of connecting the candidate with the people on a personal level, but falls short of Obama's video in tying in the political themes and messages of the campaign.  The video gives more insights into the antics of those Romney boys and Ann Romney's dedication to her family than it does about how Mitt is going to take those lessons and move forward to protect all women everywhere.  

The Obama Campaign has unveiled the latest version of this genre of fundraising inviting supporters to make the Obama Campaign part of their personal wedding, bar mitzvah, or other even with guests bearing gifts.  Supporters are encouraged to include the President's campaign as an option for guests to donate to the campaign rather than bring you a gift card you'll forget to use.  

Derided as Obama's desperate effort to visit the Honeymoon Suite and poor taste, we will not know if this latest effort will be successful.  If we see it again, and if we see Mitt Romney adopt the same tactic - then we'll know it works.