Adobe is hosting its annual Summit conference right now in Salt Lake City, Utah and some of the comments coming out of the conference, while geared towards corporate marketers, would be really valuable for political communicators as well.
“Consistent and continuous experiences only happen when marketing goes beyond marketing, and the reality is that brands have to earn it every day, with each experience,” says Adobe Senior Vice President and General Manager Brad Rencher. “With each touch point, we either win or we lose.”
Courtney Eckerle with MarketingSherpa has a great round up of takeaways from the conference, including the quote above. You can find her post here.
Here’s her top takeaways:
Courtney Eckerle’s Takeaway #1: The scarcest resource today is people’s attention
Sometimes people listen to politicians simply because they’re politicians. More often they won’t listen just because they’re politicians. We really are competing with Coca-Cola, Ford, Coors, and other major brands with millions in advertising dollars. How can can a political entrepreneur stand out with that kind of competition?
Courtney summarizes a talk by Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, who talks about the need to know your audience. There’s a ton of great ideas for messaging in these two paragraphs:
“He explains that when he interviews subjects as a journalist, he tries to get to know them in their own environment, where they’re comfortable or doing something they are passionate about. That is when you really begin to understand what drives people.
“Marketers can use behavioral data to understand where your consumers are most passionate — how can you reach them? How do you get them to interact with you and move “away from the desk,” as the case may be?”
Leveraging data to understand your audience, finding out what drives them, then communicating with them in an authentic way that connects. That’s the key. But what does it look like? She dives into that next…
Courtney Eckerle’s Takeaway #2: Create happiness experiences
The title probably prompts more than a few snickers from political types, but if you look past it, the concept is really about co-creating content and experiences with your audience. Political rallies are a great example of this — creating an experience that pulls everyone together. Also creating online experiences that feel like a crowdsourced effort. Obama ’08 essentially won on this concept.
Courtney Eckerle’s Takeaway #3: Find fun and meaningful ways to engage
The example cited from Adobe Summit was a non-profit’s campaign to build awareness and engage more supporters. Their campaign centered around getting supporters to share a meal together, but to make a donation in lieu of a course. The organizers created all of the basic materials needed for supporters to get started and promoted participants’ experiences on social media. They also enlisted the help of celebrities to host meals, giving the campaign prominence and reach.
How often do we have volunteers who are eager to help, but won’t go knock on a stranger’s door? Ultimately, canvassing works because it’s a direct one-to-one contact with another human being. But the goal isn’t a knock — it’s to build a relationship. Are there other ways we could innovate, work to build relationships, and draw more people into the process?
Allen’s Takeaway: It’s all about the relationship
As Brad Rencher said at the top, our success as political entrepreneurs, elected officials, operatives, and as a movement depends on getting out there and earning the trust and support of voters every day. Every interaction, every interview, every mail piece, every email is a chance to earn trust and build a relationship, or lose that trust.
