One to Watch!

History is full of parallels; some are more surreal than others. The election of Senator Scott Philip Brown that made him the first Republican United States Senator – Elect from the State of Massachusetts since 1972 is one of those historical parallels.

A member of the Massachusetts House of Representative Brown was a virtual unknown until last month when he won his party nomination to run for yesterday’s special election. In 2004 President Barack Obama too was virtually unknown until he was elected to the United States Senate; the president also started his journey in the Illinois State Senate where he served for three terms. Both men are charismatic good speakers and came form a law background with a passion and commitment to public service.

Brown, is an ordinary man who most Americans can relate to, he is in the Army (a big deal in the patriotic scale) and drives a truck (even a bigger deal in ‘the one of the folks’ scale), a family man who still lives and serves the community he grow up in and love. But most of all he is a man who is not afraid to speak his mind.

He told a campaigning rally “the Senate Seat is not the Kennedy Seat but the People’s Seat”. In the finial debate Martha Coakley – the Democrat candidate- went on and on about the Bush Cheney policies trying to pin them on Brown. He calmly replied “You keep going on about Bush Cheney this and Bush Cheney that, you are not running against them you are running against me …….” That debate proved to be the end of the road for Coakley and the turning point of the election. It was the catalyst needed to encourage the grassroots and make them entrust the people’s power that send the message to Washington. When reporters asked him what type of Republican is he? He answered; “a ‘Massachusetts Republican’ who wouldn’t hesitate to cross party lines if he deemed it necessary”.

But what really fascinated me in this campaign is the brilliant use of online media. Along side Facebook and Twitter the campaign has used every single tool Google offers to drive volunteers and voters. They began what’s known as a Google network blast, an advertising tactic that floods Google content network Web pages in a particular geographic area with display ads from one advertiser. That put Scott Brown pretty much all day every day on the web and his ads were just a click away; earlier ads encouraged the grassroots and the people to volunteer for the campaign and closer to the election they focused on getting out the vote. The campaign also used similar method in YouTube and gmail.

This online outreach also brought the campaign a fundraising surge added to his use of “moneybomb” (is a neologism coined in 2007 to describe a grassroots fundraising effort over a brief and fixed period of time to support a candidate by an increased and concentrated fundraising on that time.) The moneybomb raised $1.3 million (£800,000) in one day putting him far ahead of where it was expected his campaign will be and ended the race with $4 million (£2.45M) in campaign funds.
Like Obama in 2008 he made great use of online campaigning and fundraising.

Senator Scott Philip Brown of Massachusetts is most defiantly one to watch!