Note: Google’s policy team is a client of Engage. Thus, my goal is that you’ll be doubly floored by the impartiality of this product review.

Probably THE tech story of the week is the emergence of Buzz, Google’s foray into the world of short status updates currently the province of Twitter, Facebook, and in a lesser but still important sense, Foursquare.

My bottom line: Though I won’t be lessening my use of Twitter anytime soon and think @Jason’s wild praise is a factor of the tech-set’s fixation with the Friendfeed model, I do think Buzz will help late adopters dip their toes into the world of social media and open up new fronts in the still-lacking location-based social networking space.

The Plusses: Gmail Integration, Location

It’s hard to ignore the massive headstart Google has given itself by integrating Buzz into Gmail. Google is not generally big on product placement. Its spartan homepage rarely cross-promotes products. There’s no single place you can go to browse the wide array of Google products and services. As such, Google cannot guarantee a product’s success by scale alone. Products like Google Knol and sadly, Google Wave, can fail by seeming as far-flung from the rest of your Google experience as any upstart social network.

That is not the case with Buzz. This is a rare instance of Google building a product inside a tool tens of millions of people use daily, Gmail. The Buzz link is ubiquitous underneath one of the most clicked links in the world, the Gmail Inbox count. And its colorful branding and sense of escape from the daily grind of regular email — what Twitter is in the broader Internet sense — should be enough to ensure a modicum of success and scale. And beyond this simply being smart product placement, tight integration with my real world rolodex also makes the product more useful.

However, where I think Buzz’s greatest impact could be is in the world of location-based networking. You have to login on your phone to see it,  but the “Nearby” tab of Buzz on your phone clearly fills a void in the still nascent location space.

The current tools we have for tagging our posts by location are either too spartan or beside the point of their host services. Google Latitude allows us to tag where we are, and that’s it. No comments, photos, or much of anything really. Foursquare is a step up — dealing with the awkwardness of Minority Report-style GPS tracking by encouraging checkins at public locales like restaurants and bars, but again, not offering a real outlet for people to offer comment on the world around them. In fact, it’s so tied to these establishments despite recent efforts to enable checkins “anywhere” that it almost feels like a conspiracy by bar owners to drum up business in a down economy. Finally, there’s geolocation in Twitter, whose scale and wide install base on mobile devices should give it a powerful headstart in geolocation. Unfortunately, geolocated Twitter posts are still few and far between. We can speculate on the reasons, but since the vast majority of posts likely come from home and at the office, users surmise that this datum would either be 1) uninteresting, or 2) an invasion of privacy. More importantly though, Twitter is really about your thoughts. Where you are when you have them is almost secondary.

Instead of relying on third party clients, which can bury the GPS functionality, Google’s mobile Buzz app makes GPS location more obvious, as thought you’re expected to use it when you’re mobile. It also introduces the concept from day one, building a set of expectations around the product that Twitter never had.

Already, I’m seeing interesting information on my “Nearby” map such as reports of power outages during the DC Snowpocalypse. If the user base continues to grow, I hope to see more of these types of reports from average users (read: not the Scobles and Calacanises of the world) around me. The social space lacks something like this right now, and Google Buzz could be it. (Note: I hope this Nearby functionality comes to the desktop interface too.)

The Minuses: Also-Ran Dynamics, Power User Dominance, and UI

Tight integration with Gmail also has a flip side: it’s doubtful we’ll see a passionate user base develop around Buzz in the same we did around Twitter because of people using it simply because it’s there. This isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world for business. Facebook is not objectively the best place for status updates, Twitter-style, but it is reasonably successful at cloning Twitter functionality because of its scale.Nonetheless, I personally don’t plan to make Buzz my primary venue for social sharing, with the current exception of sharing Buzz-related comments (how meta of me). I’ve put most of my eggs in the Twitter basket, and syndicate to Facebook as I will to Buzz. In this, there’s a risk that Buzz will become the backwater that Facebook has become for me and other Twitterati. Facebook is plagued by a lower quality of interaction around my posts, though it does bring clicks and interaction I wouldn’t otherwise have, so I continue to use it. Though evidence so far is that Buzz is bringing in more and smarter comments (thanks to easy email integration and my knowing most of my followers personally), I hope that Buzz does not become another Facebook, an also-ran to Twitter in the quality of status updates because of content syndication.

An annoying design flaw in Buzz is how more commented on posts tend to rise to the top. This is intended to solve the discovery problem inherent in Twitter, but without real data on the types of posts I like to interact with, this creates an advantage for the most plugged-in tech blogger like Robert Scoble who can amass the most friends and commenters around any early beta tech release. Scoble and Calacanis dominate my feed; their posts are always being at the top, by virtue of having new comments, at the expense of newer posts from my (real-world) friends. I actively prefer Twitter’s fast-updating stream to this, and its messy way of surfacing the most relevant items through repetition (e.g. retweeting) rather than algorithmically.

Finally, the UI generally could use some polish. Because it’s embedded in Gmail, links to other parts of the application like the friend finder are pretty well buried and outside any discernible navigation structure.

Beyond the Horizon: Status Updates as E-mail Killer

What I hope Buzz is getting at, and it’s partly what Wave has thus far failed to do, is to undermine the entrenched but broken e-mail paradigm. Though one can go back and forth on the virtues of bundling with Gmail, as I have, the fact that it was is the clearest sign yet that Google is serious about this.

Two and a half years ago when my twins were born, I wrote the customary e-mail to a selected list of friends and family with photos and YouTube video, a day after. When my daughter was born late last year, I scrubbed the e-mail and the tedious task of determining who should be on the list by posting it on Twitter and Facebook. As a result, everyone who needed to know knew within the hour, which fulfilled the objective of writing a long e-mail and then some — all in a few dozen characters.

Social media itself is an attack on the tedium and inefficiency of e-mail and I hope Google Buzz takes this even further.Here is one particular problem I have with e-mail. Other than an out-of-the-office message, we do not have a good way (that’s tightly integrated with the e-mail client) to signal our availability or current disposition to interlocutors. So much of e-mail, and your ability to respond to it, is bound up in the stuff of status updates — brainstorming, in meetings all day, busy right now, going through e-mail. 

As Google delves into the world of status, I’d like to see the equivalent of my GChat status broadcast to all I e-mail — or heck, even just Contacts — complete with green/yellow/red icons and my latest status Buzz or GChat status message. And it goes beyond Google: I would like to see a protocol that integrates this into Outlook and all other clients as well. A particularly interesting or professionally relevant status update — such as a question or request for expertise — might trigger more relevant e-mail and chat messages. Telling people that I’m busy or traveling before they e-mail might cut down on unnecessary e-mail when I am least likely to be able to respond.

This is not quite in Gmail/Buzz yet, and GChat is still a poor substitute. But Google is now in a position to do this, and it might fulfill its stated objective of making e-mail dramatically more useful.

So, what do you think? Will you use Buzz? Sound off in the comments.

A word cloud of the most commonly used words in donor messages to the Scott Brown campaign.

Engage was proud to play a role in Scott Brown’s historic, come-from-behind victory through iContribute, our online fundraising platform. In the end, over $12 million was raised online with over 157,000 individual donations, more than leveling the playing field and dramatically altering the political calculus as the Democratic establishment went all out to counter a Republican spending advantage powered by small donors. In the end, Brown defeated Martha Coakley by 52 to 47 percent to become the 41st Republican vote in the U.S. Senate.

It was December 29th when people nationally awoke to the opportunity of a pickup in Massachusetts and began donating in large numbers. For the next three weeks, things not only didn’t let up, they grew exponentially. On at least three occasions, an external event caused online fundraising to see a sustained three- and four-fold increase that would hold for at least five days until the next event tripled it again. (Keeping the servers up in the middle of all this was no small feat, but one I’m happy to report was managed very successfully.)

To give you a sense of how crazy things were in the middle of all this, ten days out, when the campaign had raised just over $2 million online, I decided to plug the daily numbers into a spreadsheet, and comparing them to another major effort that went viral on the eve of an election, came up with a projection that we would raise an extra $1.5 million online for the campaign.

Little did I know then that the real figure would be an extra $10 million.

To give some perspective, this was likely the biggest nonpresidential political online fundraising event ever. The most I had ever heard of a statewide candidate raising online before this was Jim Webb’s $4 million in 2006 post-Macaca. Had the campaign cranked it up just one more notch, this would have been on par with the biggest moments of the Presidential campaign, with the Obama campaign raising $10 million in 24 hours after Sarah Palin’s convention speech and McCain’s raising that amount in a weekend after the Palin pick was announced.

Three Big Moments

We normally refer to phenomena like Scott Brown as “hockey stick moments” — the campaign raises money at a steady rate until a month or two before the election when the grassroots finally keys in and starts giving money at five and ten times the rate they were before. The chart of daily fundraising totals looks like a hockey stick with a sudden sustained takeoff towards the end.

The Brown campaign was the ultimate hockey stick, but one that unfolded in stairstep fashion in distinct phases that I’d like to delve deeper into.

The Baseline: A Storm Brewing in Massachusetts

Within hours of setting Scott Brown’s iContribute page up following his announcement of candidacy last September, we could tell that he was inspiring a special level of grassroots loyalty. Hundreds of people contributed within days of his announcement despite his not being given much of a shot. Each blast e-mail would bring in hundreds more donors. Perhaps it’s something about being part of the hardy Republican minority in Massachusetts, but we had at least an early inkling that should it be close, Scott Brown could count on an extremely motivated base in Massachusetts.

Big Moment #1: National Republicans Not Getting Involved?

What kicked off the Scott Brown phenomenon, at least from a national grassroots perspective?

Simple. It was this article in the Boston Herald suggesting that the National Republican Senatorial Committee would not make a major financial commitment to Brown, beyond a $50,000 check and some technology investments. We now know that there may have been a deliberate strategy to play down national GOP involvement in deep blue Massachusetts, but the article served another very useful purpose: it motivated online activists to want to help bridge the gap, and fight tooth and nail for the 41st seat when the national party seemingly wouldn’t. No one was under any illusion that Scott Brown was the favorite, but they believed that so long as there was even a remote shot to derail the health care bill, we should take it. This post from HotAir was emblematic of the initial response, and in the sleepy week between Christmas and New Year’s, radio hosts like Laura Ingraham and Herman Cain (substituting for Sean Hannity) brought in hundreds of donations with each on-air mention.

Lesson: The Internet responds to need. The notion that the national party did not support Scott Brown, ironically, was probably one of the best things that could have happened to Brown. On the other hand, news that the NRSC was pouring in millions in ads would have meant that the Herald piece would not have the opportunity to have the impact it did, depressing online fundraising and possibly preventing it from ever getting off the ground, and thus altering the whole trajectory of the race.

Big Moment #2: The Rasmussen Poll

The entire campaign up to Tuesday, January 5th had been marked by a dearth of public polling. We simply did not know how much ground Scott Brown had to make up. Local Massachusetts’ bloggers conducted a “citizens’ poll” in certain communities that, when adjusted for the partisan skew statewide, showed Scott Brown down mid-to-high single digits. My posts over on The Next Right and Sean Trende’s analysis in RealClearPolitics pointed to the potential for a single digit deficit, but we really had no hard data to go on. Massachusetts was a rare bird: a statewide election without any significant polling until two weeks out.

This changed on January 6th, when Rasmussen released a poll showing Brown 9 points down. There was real question in my mind whether this would be enough to inspire donors to keep giving. This was on the high range of what many of the pundits were saying Brown was down by. Had it been in double digits, people may have begun to write off the race, and this was getting perilously close to that level, in my opinion.

When I looked at the fundraising numbers an hour or so after the poll hit, I was relieved to find that the reaction was very much the opposite of what I feared. Single digits meant a competitive race to people, and this triggered another inflection point in fundraising. The campaign raised more than three times that day than it did the day before, and fundraising continued at these levels for the next five days. By this point, enough was being raised online to have an impact on whether and how much the campaign could spend on last-minute media buys.

The chart below of donations made per hour shows the initial jump because of the Rasmussen poll, and how that caused a permanent change in online donations that would last until the next huge jump, on January 11th. The spike you see about midway through this period was Scott Brown’s appearance on Sean Hannity’s TV show, which I has assumed would be hands down the busiest moment for the remainder of the campaign.

I was wrong.

Big Moment #3: “The Bomb”

In their post on the race, Brown’s new media team Kurt and Kris Luidhardt wrote about the internal debate going on inside the campaign about whether to disclose the campaign’s phenomenal fundraising success. Doing so, it was feared, could tip the Democrats off and awaken the sleeping giant. By the beginning of the week of January  11th, however, the cat was pretty much out of the bag. Public Policy Polling showed Brown up by 1, and it was clear that Brown was starting to inch ahead of Coakley in his media buys.

In the end it was decided that just for one day, the campaign would let people how it was doing. The impact turned out to be transformative.

The campaign had set a goal of raising $500,000 online that day — which would have been its best day to date, but not by a whole lot. Though I have long preached that transparency in online fundraising is good, I had wondered whether exposing the campaign’s largesse, at this level, might depress future giving. It was a fleeting worry, because not only did the campaign raise $1.3 million that day, later news reports of $1 million per day actually understated the case. The moneybomb day was actually the weakest day that week. The strongest came on Friday, when the campaign raised $2.2 million from over 25,000 people. Last-minute contributions are normally on the decline 4 days out, as people turn their attention to GOTV, but the announcement that President Obama was coming in on Sunday for a rally caused yet another boom in donations. How much was Obama’s visit worth to Brown? My conservative estimate was $900,000 on that one day alone.

The moneybomb that just wouldn’t stop going off has renewed my faith in transparency and letting donors how you are doing, in real time. One people see that their gifts are making that big of an impact, it becomes socially acceptable for others to join. It’s pure bandwagon effect. Although the campaign did not continue to expose its fundraising numbers, just the limited data from that one day gave the numbers a real and sustained boost, and created an almost unconscious sense of the grassroots needing to one-up the commitment they’d made before as it pressed forward toward Election Day.

And it wasn’t just online. On the day of the event, @ScottBrownMA tweeted what I think is about the awesomest thing ever if you’re an online politico like me:

Senior Citizens are calling our office b/c they heard about “the bomb” but are not online & want their checks to count #masen

The next day, Martha Coakley would respond by leaving the campaign trail to attend a high-priced fundraiser in D.C. They knew they couldn’t keep up online, and the Democratic establishment was in full panic mode.

Media Impact: What Worked? 

People will invariably ask about the success of various media in driving the online fundraising success of the campaign. To do a bit of analysis of this, I took a look at the words people volunteered when asked about who referred them to donate — a field we make available to all contributors. The responses speak volumes.

An important note: to get people involved at this level, you need something that transcends online and spills into every medium. Though Brown’s cable news appearances were the biggest driver of all the sources I tested, it’s important to remember that early on, when that Herald piece first came out, it was bloggers who leapt into the fray first, and they helped set the narrative that major radio outlets and the cable networks responded to.

Below are some of the most popular words donors used when describing the source of their donation, indexed to the most popular response, Fox News at 100:

Fox (News): 100

Hannity: 57.7

Radio: 54.4

Web: 18.5

(Laura) Ingraham: 15.0

TV: 13.1

Blog: 10.0

Greta: 8.0

(Michelle) Malkin: 7.7

Online: 7.0

Facebook: 6.4

Instapundit: 5.4

RedState: 5.1

HotAir: 5.1

(Herman) Cain: 4.5

Twitter: 2.6

Lesson: Blogs are still important online in driving a narrative and contributions, probably moreso than Facebook and Twitter, though I believe the latter can serve as an important signaling mechanism for bloggers and media to pick the story up and run with it. And it should be no surprise that once a story like this gets into traditional media, the impact can be magnified many-fold.

As we have written in the pages of the Washington Post, the Brown race represented a coming of age of the online right. During the right’s online wilderness years (this “wildnerness” being the mirror image of being in power in Washington) many pundits wondered whether the right was at a permanent structural disadvantage online, whether there was something inherent to the demographics or mentality of Republicans that prevented them from going online.

This thinking has been proven utterly wrong.

No one party has a monopoly on the Internet, and now that the right has needed to use grassroots tools to break the Democratic lock-hold on Washington, they’ve done it in a big way. And it’s happened much faster, and with greater early electoral success, than the evolution of the liberal “netroots” which didn’t really take off until the end of Bush’s first term.

This is going to be a fun 2010.

“People are talking about you on social networks and you need to be in on the conversation.” This should be the axiomatic approach to social media for all public figures (celebrities, business owners, candidates, etc.).  Networks like Twitter and Facebook are the venues where Americans are having conversation about everything from national security to professional sports.   Unlike the old gathering places like the barber shop or the local watering hole, people are letting you listen in and want you to be a part of the discussion.  It’s Gossip 2.0.

The Internet is abuzz with the news that Newark, NJ mayor Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) — an active Twitter user with over 1 million followers – used the micro-blogging service to connect with a resident who needed help shoveling snow from his driveway on New Year’s Eve.  There’s little doubt that the hands-on constituent service was a gimmick, but it was a good one.

What’s worth noting (and emulating) is that Mayor Booker spent time investing in the network.  He’s posted over 1,900 tweets since he started in August of 2008 and he’s following over 21,000 other users.  Mayor Booker is a part of the network.  He actively participates and it’s clear that he’s the one doing the writing. 

As a result of his dedication to the conversation, Mayor Booker developed an audience, and when Twitter user @BigSixxRaven needed help with city services, she engaged the mayor directly.  It’s likely that @BigSixxRaven would have complained about the (perceived) inadequacy of city services whether Mayor Booker was an active Twitter user or not.

The difference is clear: @BigSixxRaven got a better response and the mayor got great coverage for being a good listener.

Contrast this with my own mayor – Adrian Fenty of Washington, D.C.  Mayor Fenty doesn’t engage his constituents on social networks: he’s not even on Twitter and his re-election campaign’s Facebook page is used to re-gurgitate press hits.  (The mayor does have a good photo album on the page of an event here in the District with none other than Cory Booker.)

Mayor Fenty is suffering from being late to the Facebook game.  He has two fan pages: one is likely from a well-meaning supporter filling the void on behalf of Fenty.  This page has 370 supporters, a link to a POLITICO article highlighting the mayor’s endorsement from the local Drag Queen community, and a campaign volunteer asking supporters to join the “official” page on every post.

Fenty’s base of support on Facebook is now divided between the 370 supporters on the unofficial page and the 612 supporters on the official one.  Your voters want to support you on social networks.  The average Facebook user becomes a fan of two pages a month.  You need to provide them with a place to go so you can leverage the community’s support.  Mayor Fenty has 370 supporters in his unofficial group, but he’s unable to engage them.

What about Twitter, where Fenty isn’t active at all?  The case is even worse.  A hilarious parody account known as @FentyDC interacts with Twittering city council members and journalists.  A popular theme of this clever humorist is taking digs at the mayor’s refined image: “First step in shedding this ‘elitist’ image-change moisturizer from lavender to unscented” and his passion for exercising: “Ran 7 miles in 49:05 today…backwards!!”.  @FentyDC even gives a nod to shoveling snow: “Sorry I’ve been quiet. I’ve committed to personally shoveling 32 miles of sidewalks. I can do it!!”

All in all, the self-deprecating Fenty account is pretty harmless, but wouldn’t the mayor like to know when the joke’s on him?  Wouldn’t it be better if Twitter users interested in Mayor Fenty had a place to go?

Things get worse when someone like @NotFenty steps into the breach.  This anonymous Twitterer is overtly hostile to Mayor Fenty (his motto is “Who should be elected Mayor of the District of Columbia? Not Fenty.”).  Mayor Fenty doesn’t have an adequate response to any of the charges levied against him – he’s not even in on the conversation.  Is @NotFenty going to do irreparable harm to the mayor’s bid for re-election? Not likely.

Even though the absence from Twitter isn’t going to be catastrophic for Fenty, he’s still missing lots of great opportunities.  He’s never going to get a story like his friend Cory Booker in Newark, and he even risks seeing a City Paper or DCist blog post about the proliferation of faux-Fenty Twitter accounts.

Ultimately, Mayor Fenty may not be as good at writing tweets as Mayor Booker.  Maybe he’s focusing on other avenues of conversation, but it’s important to have someone from his organization in on the discussion.  Are your voters or constituents talking about you on social networks?  Do you know what they’re saying?   If they’re asking questions, who’s answering them? If they’re complaining, who’s responding?

 You can follow me on Twitter @ericwilson but I will never shovel your driveway.

The McDonnell for Governor campaign made a commitment from the outset to run the most sophisticated campaign in Virginia statewide history. In addition to aggressive volunteer recruitment and voter contact programs, they recognized the value in investing in a professional-looking website and online strategy and media team. Keeping supporters engaged in the campaign with daily blog posts, photos from the campaign trail, Facebook contests and mobile updates, among other efforts was a constant focus, even throughout the primary season while the campaign waited for the Democratic candidate to be chosen.

Critical to the appeal of the communications with supporters through social media and the website was the top-to-bottom interest in the online aspects of the campaign. From the candidate to the campaign manager, communications director and political director, there was an open line of communications with the online team. While many campaigns make the mistake of focusing too heavily on straight numbers (emails, Facebook friends, website page views) or on earning media for shiny, cool new toys, the McDonnell campaign benefited from a focus on value: the number of real online activists, organic email signups and contributions.

The tactics and focus employed by the campaign may not appear novel to presidential-level strategists, but for statewide campaigns, the McDonnell campaign should serve as a model. A cautionary note about any case study on political campaigning: glean valuable lessons but recognize that the political environment and dynamics vary from race to race.If ones takes just a few basic lessons from the McDonnell online effort, take these, the 7 habits of highly successful campaigns:

1. 1. Major statewide campaigns need multiple people working on the online aspects of the campaign, even if they are part-time. One person should be wholly dedicated to website content, social media and blog outreach, and this person will likely not have the bandwidth to run online organizing and fundraising.

1. 2. Invest in a professional-looking site with a robust platform, but you can’t stop there. Budget for continued development to adjust to strategy shifts. Every campaign has them.

1. 3. Devote between 5-10% of your media budget to online advertising. The commercial standard is 15%. With the exponential growth in DVR use and 10% of the population no longer watching television, you will miss voters if you don’t run online ads. Remember, online ads can be launched w/in minutes to rapidly respond to an incoming attack or to take advantage of an opponents’ stumble. Both happened on the McDonnell campaign.

1. 4. Manage online fundraising expectations. No matter how hard you try, your biggest online fundraising haul will come in the final 2-3 months.

1. 5. Don’t forget to utilize your online presence to engage and activate volunteers, and involve your political operation in this process.

1. 6. Candidates and campaign managers must take a vested interest in the online strategy of a campaign. It will not succeed in a vacuum.

1. 7. If you are able, invest in new communications channels such as mobile. Mobile messages reach recipients instantly and are opened at higher rates than email; however, recognize that email will allow you the greatest reach, and is unique in its ability to instantly inspire contributions.

Early Investment

The McDonnell campaign launched a robust, informative and captivating website in conjunction with their campaign’s launch. The early version of the site capitalized on the initial strengths of the candidate to introduce him to those who would key into the race eight months out. Upon visiting the website, one would be greeted with a lead-off bio video that highlighted the candidate’s record of service, experience and personal character that was produced by the media team.

This video was not of the garage-level production type, but instead a well-produced piece that would captivate those who visited. The idea of investing in video production even when the particular videos will never air on television is still foreign to some campaigns; however, the McDonnell campaign retained early a web video professional who could both shoot and produce video press releases, rapid response videos, feature pieces and campaign updates.

Also critical, the campaign invested early in an experienced staff member to direct the campaign blog, blog outreach, Facebook and Twitter, all of the media outreach and social media aspects of online campaigning. They recognized that they needed to build loyalty early from supporters, and didn’t hold back on unleashing someone to serve as the liaison for the candidate in those media channels. The online communications effort ultimately became a three to four person job.

To ensure the campaign was not missing out on the utility of any new tools, the campaign set an early goal to fully utilize mobile as a communications and engagement tool. They promoted their shortcode on all campaign materials from the candidate’s podium placard to screens at the state GOP convention. Acquiring mobile subscribers was a directive to all political staff, and the commitment remained even as they came in slower and steadier than hoped in these initial months.

Internal Audit

As the Democratic primary approached, our firm Engage – who was already working on helping the campaign take advantage of its national presence online — was tapped to conduct an internal audit of the McDonnell campaign’s online efforts. Everyone acknowledged that the efforts were strong; however, we wanted to ensure that the efforts were not only strong on a superficial level, but also that the infrastructure was in place to ensure the investment in new media and technology would pay off in supporters, money and votes. Too many campaigns suffer from false confidence in the money and time they have invested in new media, only to discover in the final weeks of a campaign, that their perceived online support does not translate at the polls. Furthermore, it was not enough for this campaign to run an above-average operation; they were determined to run an exceptional campaign, and the pressure from the Party committees to do so was tremendous.

First, as in any audit, we focused on what the campaign was doing well, including areas that were paying off but that could benefit from a few adjustments:

Senior-level focus on online efforts.

As cited above, the campaign had made a strong commitment to new media and technology. The campaign manager and other senior staff were determined not to fall in the trap of underestimating the importance of new media. Moreover, they knew what they didn’t know and were open and grateful for guidance.

Smart, early investment in blogger and social media relations.

The campaign had hired a native Virginian with ties to the blogging community to handle blogger relations. Several new blogs arose out of bloggers receiving special attention by the campaign from the beginning. To potential bloggers, starting a political blog in Virginia meant access to the candidate and special treatment by the campaign. At key moments, the campaign scheduled blogger calls along with press conferences and donor meetings. At the state GOP convention, the candidate spent nearly 45 minutes walking Bloggers Row, meeting with bloggers and responding to spontaneous interview requests.

Professional, compelling design.

The campaign valued design, meaning their website was visually appealing and user-friendly. It was clearly designed by a firm with experienced designers, not a web development firm for whom design is an afterthought.Strong use of video.The dedicated staffer focused on video allowed the campaign to rapidly respond and provided the bandwidth to produce content that could appeal to various coalition groups. The campaign dominated on YouTube thanks to the flood-the-zone approach to video content. When we recommended that candidate Bob McDonnell release a video statement in response to the Democratic primary results, rather than a straight press release, this was accomplished easily and professionally. On many campaigns, good ideas die for shear lack of infrastructure.

Budget allocation for online ads.

Online ads were a known quantity, and the campaign had committed to buying online ads in conjunction with their TV buys. There was a razor-like focus on consistent messaging across media: online ads, TV, radio and mail. This was indicative of a campaign that was on message.

Focus on email.

The campaign wasted no time amassing an email list. They arranged the necessary exchanges to access existing lists of Republican activists in Virginia. This allowed the campaign an impressive starting point from which to develop their own organic list.

Going mobile.

This campaign had clearly analyzed the 2008 presidential campaigns and had the foresight to invest in a mobile program early, allowing for a steady build of mobile subscribers, and cushion time to perfect mobile tactics. The lesson here is that if your campaign is committed to trying out a specific technology, tactic or program for which there is not much precedent, get started early so you can truly gauge its effectiveness.

Turning It Up a Notch

Then, we outlined ten top-line recommendations for how the campaign could improve. Our recommendations reflected the gear shift from primary season to the general election campaign and included several initiatives that would become harder to execute as we neared the dizzying few months before Election Day, November 3, 2009:

Redesign BobMcDonnell.com.

The McDonnell site worked well at introducing the candidate and providing fodder for the MSM and bloggers. It also quite obviously showed where one could contribute with large “Contribute” buttons on every page. Our theory was that these Contribute buttons were actually depressing contributions and certainly not increasing them. The portal to contribute should stand out; however, an overwhelming number of contribute buttons send the wrong message about the proportional value of donors and volunteers. We put a plan in place to redesign the site to better balance grassroots activity with messaging and fundraising going into the general election.

Primary Season Homepage:

General Election Homepage:

Institutionalize the collection of email address and mobile number at offline events.The campaign was highly organized and every door-to-door and event volunteer would follow a standard script to identify Bob McDonnell supporters. However, the script did not include asking the positive ID’ed supporters for their email address and mobile number so the campaign could stay in touch. We immediately set the wheels in motion to substitute in a new script that would ask for these additional pieces of information. Our rate of subscription to email and mobile skyrocketed by X%.

Segment email program.

Keeping supporters engaged through an eight-month long campaign is a challenge. Some who subscribe to the email list have the appetite for unlimited email messages. Others, while interested in following the campaign, are repelled by too much information. The campaign’s email unsubscribe rate was higher than desired going into the general election. Thus, we recommended segmenting the list into activists (defined by the percentage of messages they opened), donors, and general subscribers, and sending targeted, relevant messages with varied frequency depending on the segment.

Launch a platform for community action.

The campaign was benefiting from a steady stream of volunteer signups through the site; however, the concern was that volunteers energy was not being met with ways for them to get involved. We recommended an online action network, a platform that would give a new volunteer signup the opportunity to connect with other supporters and get to work more immediately. The McDonnell campaign already had a well thought-out and robust field operation. They had also already invested a significant amount of money into their website, videos and new media team. We decided from a cost-benefit standpoint, it made good sense to integrate a Ning network, for a very low cost, that would accomplish our goal of connecting supporters and helping to build their enthusiasm and commitment to the campaign. We branded this network “McDonnell Action,” and re-engineered the volunteer sign-up process, so that new volunteers would only have to sign up once — on McDonnell Action.

Train political team to integrate activity with online action network.

For the online action network to operate as more than a glorified social network, the field staff have to step out of their comfort zone and treat the online action network as another headquarters. We did not feel the need to launch such a site if the field staff were not going to participate. Thus, we made sure all staff were trained on the functionality of the network, and the more tech-savvy staff were made available to set standards and answer questions for the staff as a whole. The result: once field staff realized how little extra work was required on their part to identify new volunteers and valuable supporters, they praised the network.

Online fundraising marketing system.

Our experience had shown that at least 70% of a campaign’s online contributions come in the final 30% of the campaign. We wanted to be ready for the major online fundraising period with a marketing program to maximize the number and dollar amount of contributions. At the point of the audit, the campaign was using an untested contribution form layout, and didn’t have the ability to support multiple online fundraising initiatives to measure how each performed. We recommended that they integrate our proprietary online fundraising platform iContribute, which empowers campaigns to create new fundraising initiative pages on the fly, track the success of various placements of the Contribute button on the website, give supporters their own trackable contribution links and view real-time reports by initiative.

Set hard fundraising email and initiative schedule.

To settle a tension about the pace of hard fundraising emails, we recommended setting a hard schedule that worked around benchmarks in the campaign, such as end of fundraising periods, holidays, political and policy announcements. The subject of the messages might adjust, but this way, all parties could feel confident that fundraising asks were well balanced.

Run baseline ad plan independent of TV advertising.

When and how much to run television advertising is a major decision because every television ad buy takes a big bite out of the campaign budget. Rather than mirror the online display ad buy to the TV buy, we recommended that we continuously run online advertising — both display and search. Online advertising was contributing to signups and donations, and it was important to continuously run the advertising for that purpose alone. Additionally, we could target advertising to specific affinity groups such as women to maximize our dollar.

Save major online ad buy for surge into Election Day.

Particularly in a close race, it’s important to ensure as many voters as possible are touched with a Get-Out-the-Vote message. You don’t leave to chance that your voters will turn out. We recommended a pre-Election Day Google “surge,” a new technique whereby one buys all the inventory in Google’s ad network. Since there is little to no targeting involved, the cost-per-impression for each ad is unusually low, allowing a campaign to serve up more ads for less money. Upon our recommendation, the McDonnell campaign budgeted for a Google blast, which allowed the campaign to serve up over 14 million impressions to potential Virginia voters in eight critical hours the day before the Election.

Boost GOTV with technology.

No matter the number of Facebook friends, email signups and contributions, campaigns must expend all their energy towards turning out their voters in the final couple of weeks before Election Day. Looking forward to Election Day, we worked with the field team to identify which online applications could help reach the campaign’s turnout goals. Supporting absentee and early voting, giving willing volunteers the ability to do GOTV from home and making it easy-as-pie for voters to find their voting locations were identified as the major programs. In response, we built an application whereby absentee voters could fill out their absentee ballot application online (a feature not available through the state), rolled out a Call at Home application and a lookup tool for absentee, in-person voting. We had planned to build an Election Day vote location lookup took; however, Google launched a widget for that purpose, and we simply integrated that into the campaign site and Action Network.

Probably one of the newest applications we employed was the mobile phone bank. The mobile phone bank, made possible by the diligent collection of mobile phone numbers involved emailing potential participants to alert them that they would receive a text message asking them to make calls for the campaign. If they replied “yes,” that they wanted to make calls, they would receive the script (something simple; in this case “Do you plan to vote for Bob McDonnell?) and a name and number of the first person to call. After hanging up and recording the response from the first callee, they would be prompted to receive another voter to call. This is a new program and we only utilized it on a small scale, but it holds great promise for future campaigns who want to use mobile for more than just blast text messaging.

Game Day

Headed into Game Day the McDonnell online strategy had paid off tremendously. The campaign could communicate with up to 200,000 individuals regarding the race. All ten top-line recommendations had been implemented to the satisfaction of the entire campaign team.

• The site had been redesigned and launched at the end of July 2009 to provide more focus to grassroots activities, policy rollouts and the news of the day.
• Through email and mobile collection offline, and McDonnell Action, the grassroots network was highly connected to each other and the campaign.
• More importantly, the campaign had a volunteer force that made more calls and knocked on more doors than in any campaign in Virginia history.
• The campaign far surpassed its internal goal of raising $1,000,000 online from over 4,000 contributors. 82% of the contributions came in after August 1 when iContribute was put in place.
• The online ad campaign had run consistently through the general election with up to seven different display ads running at once, targeted to unique geographic and demographic targets.
• Thousands of voters had utilized the absentee ballot application, call at home and vote location lookup tools.
• We invested in a 12-hour Google ad surge the day before the election, serving up more than 14,000,000 impressions of a “Vote Tomorrow, Bob McDonnell for Governor” ad in DC and Virginia.

This ad showed 14,000,000+ times on November 2, 2009, the day before the election:

The Final Tally

• Members of the online team: 5
• Amount raised online: more than $1.25 million
  • 82% raised after August 1
  • 72% raised after September 1
• Number of online donors: 4,171
• Percentage spent online of total advertising: 7.5%
• Number of emails: 187,000
• Mobile subscribers: 9,700
• McDonnell Action top-level activists: 2,554
• Facebook fans: 31,645
• Twitter followers: 7,152

Credits:

Campaign Manager: Phil Cox
Communications Director: Tucker Martin
Senior Online Strategy (overall, grassroots, fundraising, advertising): Mindy Finn & Patrick Ruffini, Engage
Online Director (blog, social media, web content): Vincent Harris, Harris Media
Website Design & Development: Steve Sanford and Tori Sheppeard, W3BG
Online Video Production: Ed Frank, Frank Strategies
Online Advertising Placement: Media Placement Technologies
Online Advertising Creative: Matt Murphy, Chatham Light Media
Media Consultant: Doug McAuliffe, M3
Mobile Vendor: Tusk Mobile
Mobile Phone Bank: Be Real Good

Today, we welcome to the team David Kralik, who will be leading Engage’s new California office. Based in San Francisco, David comes to us from American Solutions for Winning the Future, where he was Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Director of Internet Strategy. -ed.

It’s great to be joining a very deep bench of talent.  I moved out to California almost two years ago at the request of former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.  It’s been a great opportunity to embed myself with the tech sector and really understand their culture.

When I first moved out here, I thought it was cliché to say “So Goes California, So Goes the Nation.”  But it really is true.  Next year’s Governor’s race in California will be a bellwether in watching how sound fiscal policy will fare against reckless, unaccountable special interest insider spending.  In addition, our state’s penchant for voting on ballot initiatives has driven the national debate on immigration, labor law and of course, marriage.  That will continue and bringing together top technical leadership on both coasts with these pressing issues will be critical in the years ahead.

If you are still defining your digital strategy with words like “Web 2.0” then it’s time to Engage and see the future.  Over the last 18 months, I’ve traveled over 22,000 miles up and down Highway 101 in Silicon Valley meetings with hundreds of technology executives.  I’ve learned from some of leading experts when it comes to the future of social networking, mobile and viral media and am here to offer those insights to clients.

As I’ve traveled around the Valley, one thing that is pretty clear to me is that Silicon Valley and Washington, DC are in two completely different cultural paradigms.   Washington, DC has a tough time navigating Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley doesn’t really understand Washington, DC.  The Washington Post described me as “A Bridge From The Valley to the Hill.” I’ve worked for some very large employers in Washington, DC that represent some very large companies and , in true Silicon Valley fashion, I am involved in my own tech startup.  So, that’s exactly what I intend to bring to Engage: Making you succeed by bringing technology best practices from the world capital of innovation and giving startups a voice in Washington, DC.

Our friend Jonathan Rick notes an interesting trend: more big companies are eschewing the traditional press release, and are announcing news in first-person media like blogs and Twitter:

Indeed, as Claire Cain Miller reported in a much-discussed article last week, the pr agency representing Flickr never issued a release on its behalf-not even when Yahoo acquired the photo-sharing Web site. Similarly, when Google has exciting news to share, it does not use a wire service.

Rather, both companies self-publish blog posts. They do so, I suspect, not because blogs are hipper, but because they’re more genuine, more personal, and more flexible than their old media counterparts. Instead of a flack ghostwriting quotes for a CEO, the individual(s) who managed the project can craft a first-person narrative recounting the project’s past, present and future with pictures and videos and links. Then, as other bloggers pick up the post, “two days later, BusinessWeek calls,” as Donna Sokolsky Burke, of Spark PR, puts it.

As Jon hints at, this is more than just a format change, but part of a revolt against contrived speech.

What social media gives powerful people from politicians to CEOs is an opportunity to communicate big ideas on their own terms, in media they personally create. Being on Twitter has created a paradigm shift for many a celebrity and political figure — either for good or occasional chagrin. You mean I can say what I actually think, in my own words, right now? It’s amazing how bad P.R. has made this basic principle of everyday human interaction seem somehow alien and unexpected.

With a built-in audience of bloggers and social media influentials who will carry your message (big caveat: if it’s interesting), it’s no longer necessary to go for the hard sell, or for that perfectly crafted quote that will show up in the paper. Bloggers are all about authentic voice; what they say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Getting in the papers is a nice bonus, but secondary to building a direct constituency for your product or candidate online. If your story is naturally interesting, or even better, can be vouched for in real time by thousands of people congregating online, the media will have no choice but to report on it. When reading up on the latest tech or political trend, mainstream media is usually the last place I hear about something, the final validator of whether something is important or not — usually after it’s been dissected to death in the blogosphere.

This doesn’t mean it’s not important to get your story out to the press, but even the press is no longer reading canned press releases. Increasingly, blogs are the assignment desks for mainstream media — the place where reporters go to get the pulse of the digerati. Indeed, many mainstream reporters, like ABC’s Jake Tapper, break news through their own blogs.

For my part, I can’t promise I’ll never use a wire service. But the stuff I’d put out on it would probably look a lot like the following: “Candidate X just posted the following to his blog: LINK.”

Last week I had the pleasure of joining a panel on social media and politics at the Milken Global Conference.  The Conference targets CEOs and featured Nobel-prize winning economists, major nation defense ministers, Olympic athletes, and this year, Rush Limbaugh.  So what was I doing there?

Social media’s role in politics fascinates even the triple-Ivy-league credentialed academic.  How is the social web effecting who we elect and how we elect them?  Will the social web have long-term effects on the shape of our democracy?  Will the candidate who best understands social media prevail?

Our panel responded to these questions and more with a summary of our discussion below:

Candidates Must No Longer Run and Hide.

Voters expect candidates to make a presence and engage voters where they are: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and dozens of smaller social networks.  These virtual meeting places are today’s version of town fairs, civic club meetings and after school programs, except online they take place around-the-clock.  This means candidates can make their presence felt on their own time; conversely, once they begin to engage with supporters, they set a standard for the level of activity expected of them.

Authenticity Rules the Day.

Some candidates have “the gift:” this is the smooth-talking, heart-string pulling appeal of Presidents old and new, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama respectively.  Such candidates have a unique ability to win over voters with their authenticity, although one could make a strong argument that their perceived authenticity is as big an act as your average politician.  No matter, candidates with “the gift,” have a natural ability to rule social media too.  They have an appeal; they inspire you to connect with them; they win you over with their hopeful message.  Ronald Reagan, had he been running today, would thrive in the social media.

So what is a candidate to do who has less of “the gift?” They could be themselves for one; and treat their supporters as friends, valued members of their team, and the key to their electoral success.  After all, roughly 20% of Internet users, according to Pew, received and/or shared information through a social network in the 2008 elections.  Social network participants are real people, and the network is purely an easier, more efficient and personal way of communicating with them than traditional media.  It’s not a new phenomenon for the more likeable candidate to win an election; social media platforms allow candidates to feature their likeability, if they choose to open up and let the walls down.

More Networked, Less Dependent on Money(wo)men.

The social web is the ultimate flattener of influence.  Through most social networks, every individual has the same opportunity for influencing the greater community, and thus one would assume, the candidates they support.  One is ranked by how interesting and involved they are, and not by the amount of money they have to contribute.  Popularity matters instead, as the number of friends one has determines their value as an advocate for the candidates and issues they support.

Most social networks are purely democratic institutions; their members, particularly America’s youth, are being socialized to expect an equal stake in historically heirarchical institutions like our government.  Populism sells on social networks, a lesson for tomorrow’s candidates.  The questions is whether the influence of online networks — where membership is free — will surpass the influence of money in politics, and if so, when?

Social Score Does Not Equal Voter Score.

Or does it?  Barack Obama currently has over 6,000,000 Facebook supporters while John McCain has less than 600,000.  If an election were held today, would Obama receive ten times more votes than McCain? Of course not.  So how good of an indicator of voter support is Facebook, or any social network?  The most socially networked candidate is not necessarily the most popular at the ballot box.  Ron Paul had many more Facebook supporters than most of his primary challengers; yet, they received more votes than he did.

But, we shouldn’t ignore social network support just yet.  Candidates who understand the value of running an authetic campaign, and the importance of communicating with and engaging every interested person online, most likely exhibits those characteristics offline as well.  The campaign who treats a Facebook organizer the same as the way they treat a $300 donor is likely to earn favor from more voters than the one who has a static politican profile.  And yes, the campaign that makes an effort to engage voters through Facebook, when their opponent is absent, is more likely to win.  Social networks matter.

What’s Next?

I don’t know what is the next MySpace, Flickr, LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning or Twitter, but if history repeats itself, we will all be socially networked on new, improved platforms by the time we cast our vote for President in 2012.  Remember Friendster?

On Friday, the special election contest in New York’s 20th Congressional District drew to a close, with Democrat Scott Murphy edging out Republican Jim Tedisco by slightly over 400 votes out of nearly 160,000 cast. Tedisco finance chairman Tom Lewis has posted his postmortem on the race from the inside looking out.

Though the result is different than we as Republicans may have hoped for, the NY-20 special election generated new levels of online activism on the Right that show that the conservative base is re-engaging in poltitics online in the Obama era.

Engage was brought in to maximize the campaign’s online fundraising in the final three weeks of the campaign. Here’s a snapshot, by the numbers, of what the grassroots were able to accomplish in NY-20:

• $121,964 raised online from March 11th, when we started to Election Day, March 31st.
• $47,615 raised online for the recount.
• Over $214,000 raised online for the campaign and recount, out of a total of $1.39 million raised from outside donors.
• Over 3,100 online donors giving an average of $68.
• Two thirds of the campaign’s donors gave online.

The groundwork for the campaign’s fundraising success was laid early, as new media maven Ali Akbar hustled to get a simple message out on Twitter and the blogosphere: $20 for NY-20. This message was amplified by Newt Gingrich, who exhorted conservatives to donate to Tedisco during his speech to CPAC, spurring a flood of new contributors. Our activists were already motivated by a simple, clear narrative: take back a seat the Democrats had captured in 2006 in a swing district Obama had won by 3 points.

When we got started, we created an iContribute fundraising widget that displayed the total amount raised as part of our fundraising drive in real time, along with the names and hometowns of the last 5 donors who agreed to go public. We also believed setting an ambitious yet achievable goal was crucial for success. We started with: 20K for NY-20, starting precisely 20 days from Election Day. Here’s what the widget looked like shortly after the first goal was met:

It took just six days for the grassroots to shatter this goal. We wound up upping the goal three more times during the election.

Along the way — and after crunching some numbers — we learned some valuable lessons. They include:

Transparency Works.  Activists want to see the difference their efforts are making in real time. Something interesting happens when you go public with a goal — and show people the real numbers. Your fundraising appeal turns into more than an annoying ask and becomes a piece of interesting original content that people congregate around and can help shape. Though many would still have donated because of the overall excitement surrounding this race, we saw the numbers spike as we got closer to reaching a goal.The following chart shows the overall progression of total money raised in the three weeks before Election Day. You’ll see spikes leading up to the $20K, $40K, $80K, and $120K milestones.

And since the widget was a relative novelty early on, here’s a chart that shows just the numbers when it was first tried, leading up to the $20,000 goal.

Transparency is Popular. When given the chance, 77% of donors opted to show their names on the widget. Bigger donors were just as likely as smaller donors to opt for instant transparency.

The Twitter Effect. There have been many discussions of Twitter’s impact on this race and on online activism more broadly. Some have even credited this effort with raising over $120,000 “through Twitter.” We have some interesting data to share that might shed light on these assumptions.

First, it’s unclear how much money was raised through Twitter specifically, but it was more than pocket change — and well south of a majority. Some number crunching after the election revealed that about 14% of online donors were Twitter users. This is in line with the rate of Twitter usage we’ve seen in other online activist communities. Assuming these Twitter users donated the average, at least $20,000 was donated online by Twitter users.

iContribute gives campaigns the power to create fundraising tracking pages  on the fly. I created a personal page for my Twitter followers and used the link whenever I tweeted about the campaign. According to Google Analytics, my page got 757 unique pageviews and produced $1,280 in online contributions from 15 donors, or nearly $2 per unique click.

Another interesting example came on Election Night. Knowing the election would go to a recount, a group of us tweeted a link asking people to donate to the post-Election Day effort. 518 people clicked on that link, resulting in 11 donations, eight of them on Election Night.

For those evaluating the effectiveness of Twitter as a fundraising tool, I would say two things. First, don’t forget that e-mail — and walk-in web donations from people who are organically interested in your effort — will still be your biggest sources of online income. At best, Twitter will be a small but singificant share of the online fundraising puzzle, just like blog-driven fundraising drives that can raise 6 or 7 figures in 7 or 8 figure-online efforts. But don’t also forget Twitter’s essential role in distributing your message among key influentials who talk to others. The nation’s top bloggers, radio hosts, and TV personalities are on Twitter. If you can get an instantly peer-reviewed message to them in their most compelling and least crowded information channel, they will take it and repeat it to others, further enhancing the “surround sound” around your campaign or movement.

E-mail Still Matters. As an example of the point above, never, ever, ever neglect an opportunity to build up your list organically. By the end, the Tedisco campaign had built up a pretty solid list of donors and activists. An e-mail the morning after the election quickly raised $7,901 from 188 people to support the post-election effort.

Nor was the Tedisco campaign the only group to send e-mails in support of their candidate. An e-mail by Fred Thompson to his Presidential list yielded at least $30,000 in donations, as I wrote about earlier. This is an opportunity that most people with big lists and future aspirations miss. Instead of raising money for the nebulous thing that is your PAC, and then dispensing it $5,000 at a time, why not raise it directly for the candidates who need it most? Not only will your activists find the message more relevant, but added goodwill will be generated by sending a worthy candidate heaping gobs of cash above and beyond the $5K limit.

Online Fundraising is only growing bigger — not having a coherent online strategy is now like not having a direct mail strategy, or a high-dollar strategy. Campaigns have always been concerned about raising money, and for Republican campaigns in 2008, this meant wrangling the most Bush Rangers & Pioneers and sending the most spammy direct mail pieces, all while Obama built the biggest fundraising machine known to man one e-mail and one $25 donor at a time.

This won’t change with one campaign and likely won’t decisively change until 2012, but the fact that the majority of donors engaged online — in a campaign with many traditional elements to it — is significant.

It’s easy to forget that fundraising in Congressional races is still dominated by PACs, contributions from other elected officials, and personal relationships. Of the $1.39 million the campaign raised from outside sources, $845,000 came from individuals. Over a quarter of that came in online — and for a fraction of the cost of traditional fundraising.

One of the most astonishing — but also frustrating — aspects of online fundraising is that the money almost invariably comes in late, when activists are at the height of their enthusiasm about a race. Of the $550,000+ raised after March 11th, when the campaign filed their pre-election FEC report, about a third came in online. Of money that came in from individuals after March 11th, nearly half was online. When it mattered the most, the grassroots was there, expanding the campaign’s footprint right in the days before the election.

We won’t say that everything about this election turned out exactly as we’d hoped. But for the right, NY-20 was an awakening of sorts in the lost art of grassroots online action. We were proud to be there for a small part of it.

Engage is putting out a call for great freelance designers to join our growing network.

Great design can be an elusive thing, but it’s something we value deeply here at Engage. Studies have shown that users judge websites by their design in the blink of an eye. Unless they’re extremely prodigious speed-readers, most users will judge design long before they will the content of a website.

But great design is more than just that initial “wow” factor. It should persist throughout the entirety of the user experience. Good, clean design can make navigating through a site dramatically easier, getting people where they need to go. When a great design is aligned with a client’s essential brand and animating purpose, it sends the public at large an important about the professionalism and seriousness of the organization, and can drive your message. In an age of free tools and template websites, standing out from the pack becomes all the more important.

We’re looking for serious, award-winning designers who can deliver original, pixel-perfect website, logo/brand, and user experience design that breaks the mold. Submit your resumes and portfolios to jobs@engagedc.com — and if you care about great candidates and organizations getting great design, we hope you’ll retweet this post. Since this isn’t a single job listing, feel free to contact us if you’re stronger in just one or two key areas.

Here’s a bit of what we’re looking for:

• Someone who focuses above all else on web and interactive design
• A firm understanding of the principles of user experience design and designing for applications
• Experience with logo and brand design a plus
• Ability to code clean CSS/XHTML or ability to integrate this into your process a plus
• Experience with designing for politics and public policy. Since we want sites that break the mold, we won’t sweat this point — but for the political newbies in the bunch, we’ll be looking for a well thought out critique of the state of the political web today.
• Do you personally do both design and development? Then this probably isn’t for you. We want people who are excellent at one or the other, and it’s difficult to be great at both.
• Been in CSS Remix, WebCreme, or been otherwise honored for your design? Then we definitely want to hear from you.
• Lastly, as conservative and Republican web strategists, a clear motivation to serve like-minded organizations will be considered a definite plus.