K Street Cafe

Written by Kate Kaye, ClickZ Politics & Advocacy

Political campaigns are stuck on Facebook, and one Washington, D.C.-based digital consultancy aims to help them put engagement on the social site to use in more ways than simply collecting “likes.” Republican agency Engage has developed a set of tools for combining Facebook, social games, and Foursquare-style action-based incentives to driven online and offline activism.

Corporate brands from restaurants to retailers have taken to Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services to capitalize on the check-in fad, awarding consumers with special symbols displaying their visitation prowess, and often with discounts or freebies. Engage’s Multiply product isn’t exactly a check-in service, but it takes a cue from those mobile-centric loyalty programs to build community and inspire activism for door-to-door canvassing, fundraising events, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other key activities driving political campaigns. The tools allow campaigns to attach a system for awarding prize points and badges to their sites, and connect with Facebook’s social graph to encourage sharing among supporters’ social networks.

The notion of awarding incentives to super-supporters is nothing new. The Democratic and Republican parties, as well as individual campaigns often honor their big fundraisers – if not just with cool names and bragging rights, than with parties or other prizes.
The tool helps campaigns track individual volunteer actions, virtual and in-person – from sharing a link on Facebook or donating cash to door-knocking. “The actions that score points and the number of points are flexible from organization to organization,” said Mindy Finn, a partner at Engage. Staffers can make note of who performs a real-world task and upload that information to the system, which in turn awards points. “For example, if there was a phone bank at headquarters, [you could] award 50 points to anyone who attended,” said Finn.

While points and badges are rewards for volunteers, data is the primary reward for campaigns. As the Multiply page on Engage’s site states, “User scores let you target your supporters by likelihood to take action – tied to their phone number, email, and Facebook ID.” The firm is pushing its Data Manager upgrade, which allows campaigns to “collect form data on your site and score every single action or form submission.” Part of the Engage pitch also involves volunteers registering with Multiply.

To read the entire article on ClickZ, click here.

A New Tool for Advocacy Communications – BrightText (Beekeeper Group)
BrightText makes a standard advocacy letter easy for activists to customize, transforming a single form letter into numerous unique communications.

White House Orders Review of Federal Technology Spending (Hillicon Valley)
The White House plans cut government waste by making public-sector technology more efficient.