Revolutionizing Politics - Dean's Internet Marketing Campaign

Teachout is a key architect of one of the most effective marketing efforts in the history of national politics, and the most sophisticated online campaign to date. Using a variety of Internet tools, from the electronic journals known as weblogs to social networking sites, the Dean campaign has propelled the Vermont doctor from near-anonymity to the front of the Democratic pack aiming to replace George W. Bush as chief executive of the United States.

The marketing of presidents and even state and local political candidates may never be the same. By early November, the Dean campaign claimed 500,000 online supporters, up from zero at the start of the year.

Just as important, he has been able to raise large amounts of money, a critical element in any national campaign. Dean pulled in a record $7.4 million in online donations during the third quarter of 2003, almost half his total for the period.

The lessons of the Dean campaign do not just apply to politics. Teachout and her compatriots have laid bare the essential power of the Internet to marketers of all types, from clothing to industrial equipment to financial services.

Television, radio, print and mail can create awareness and desire for a product. Senders control the presentation and, if intelligently worded and presented, the messages cause an individual or company to vote with its dollars, by buying the product. But the lesson of Dean's campaign is that the Web is not for micromanagers. With the Internet, an effective campaign creates a community that will on its own begin to market your product for you. Properly done, you won't be able – or want — to control it.

The payoff is a powerful multiplier effect that turns anyone into a potential campaign worker. It gives Dean a national network of troops on the ground, unpaid but on task. This is the great innovation of the Dean campaign: using the Internet to raise both support and funding, before rivals figure out how to do the same.

The two most effective tools for Dean have been a Web site that allows users to set up meetings with individuals of similar interests, known as Meetup.com; and the easy-to-use online diaries known as weblogs, or blogs.

Many of the campaign's principles have been developed in books like David Weinberger's "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," which explores the role of individuals connected by the Internet, and "The Cluetrain Manifesto," by Weinberger, Doc Searls, and Christopher Locke, which describes how to think of the way markets work in the online world, as well as "Smart Mobs" by Howard Rheingold. ("Moral Politics" by George Lakoff is cited as another key text for the campaign.)

"Cluetrain" describes markets as conversations, in which companies engage customers with an authentic human voice and respond to their needs, rather than pushing one-size-fits-all information out to them in mass broadcasts. "They are as close as I've seen to structuring a political campaign around the Cluetrain themes," says Weinberger, who is working as a consultant to the Dean campaign.