CRM: The New Little Black Book of Politics ...The Institute for Politics, Democracy, & The Internet

After reading IPDI's CRM: The New Little Black Book of Politics you feel like you've read something tangible. As a campaign staffer, there's a great deal of information which I feel is very applicable to my daily job. When you read through the collection of pieces there's not much you'd see as controversial, but the reality is contrary to the logic.

In all political campaigns divisions exist on a variety of levels. Today, we face a new challenge when developing a strategy to elect a candidate. Over the past ten five years or so a new wave in political campaigning has risen to challenge the old guard of the campaign community. The new guard is one which is more in tune to the technology of mainstream America. They are a group who recognize the new ways which Americans are communicating and the importance of both understanding this communication and taking advantage of it. Many modern campaigns still struggle with the reality that ignoring these communication medians could prove fatal to their candidates chances. It's a battle against the old guard and the new guard and the campaigns which are able to reconcile the differences in mindset may prove to be the most succesful.

There's no doubt in my mind that all of the major presidential campaigns are using CRM technologies. I know for a fact one of them uses a number of systems. One of the major themes in this work is the difference between recognizing the need for such a system and combining the usage of such systems with real world relationship building. The point is reiterated repeatedly that simply purchasing a CRM system will not lead to a winning campaign. There's no doubt some campaigns have been dramatically more successfull in building bridges to their constituencies than have others. The ability to bridge between the old guard and new guard determines what a campaign gets out of their CRM strategy. This requires much of the staff, particularly the senior staff, in setting the standards by which the campaign will operate. A small fissure in this approach can lead to major repercussions. For instance, imagine an individual in charge of an entire region not being on board with the CRM strategy. When it comes time for critical contact, there won't be time for the campaign to reconcile rogue lists or god forbid communication which has failed to be tracked at all.

As someone with a significant amount of on the ground campaign experience, I believe some of the ideas and strategies proposed by these authors, while they would undoubtedly prove effective if achievable, are impractical in both a logistical and a political sense. For instance, the notion of arming field organizers with PDAs which would enable them to do real time data entry is logistically unrealistic. First of all, most FOs wouldn't understant how to use a PDA, their strength is in their verbal communication, not their technical know how. While they could be trained, this represents a huge obstacle to utilizing this level of technology. Also, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a field director who would feel comfortable handing over expensive pieces of electronics to his or her staff in the field. Field staff, while they should be applauded for the amazing hours they put in, are notorious for filth and forgetfullness. Another thing that struck me as unfeasible would be having a computer at an event check in to take people's names and email addresses. While I'm not sure if any campaigns actually do this, I would be skeptical of the idea. It's hard enough to get someone to sign a paper list at an event. People sitting at computers taking information would be both intimidating, and probably seen as intrusive. My solution would be to put more urgency into uploading the data into a CRM in some meaningful way.

These are small criticisms of the piece. Overall I feel this is an indispensable collection of essays which no student studying politics should go without. In fact, I'd argue that campaigns should make this required reading for many departments within their operations.