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On May 11, Republican Newt Gingrich “announced” his candidacy for president on Twitter. Portrayed as a shiny and savvy use of new media to “break” the news, it was instead the anti-climactic finale to a long, torturous, bumbled rollout that foreshadows one of the serious issues Gingrich will face in his 2012 campaign: he’s campaigning like its 1994.
The bland tweet posted on Gingrich’s personal twitter account (“Today I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States") was meant to put a modern twist on the campaign announcement by the political veteran. Gingrich hyped up the digital reveal, telling reporters in Philly in April: "I would just say to folks who are really curious: Watch Facebook and Twitter in the next week. I think you'll have all the information you need."
Yet Gingrich spoiled his own “announcement” by falling back on old traditional media tactics. He couldn't help confirming the worst-kept secret in D.C. multiple times before the faux announcement on Twitter. On May 1, Gingrich jumped his online “announcement” by announcing to reporters at the White House Correspondence Dinner that "I'll be in by the 10th or 11th." Nearly a week before Gingrich’s online “reveal,” his spokesman definitively confirmed with Jim Galloway of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution that he would indeed be a candidate. And less than 48 hours from his official Twitter "announcement," Gingrich made a bizarre "pre-announcement" on his Twitter account, in which he promoted a Hannity interview where he would be discussing "my run for the President of the United States."
By the time his May 11th tweet was published, it was a confirmation, not an announcement -– a long-awaited end to a painful campaign water torture inflicted on the press and the public.
It's not just Gingrich who gives lip service to online “exclusives.” It is standard fare on both sides of the aisle to use digital tools as a veneer of hypermodern campaigning while wallowing in methods of campaign communication that are as old as American politics itself, feeding juicy infomorsels to salivating journalists as "exclusives" meant to engender favorable press relationships (for example, Tim Pawlenty “announced” on Facebook, but his “announcement” too was spoiled by a senior advisor who was allowed to leak the information to MSNBC).
But Gingrich’s 2012 rollout online confirmed that the Gingrich campaign’s lack of digital savvy goes well beyond Twitter or Facebook. His online rollout should be studied by aspiring digital strategists for how not to launch a political campaign.
When Gingrich announced his initial exploratory website, he took to Twitter four days later to brag about the site’s 5,000 visitors (as Atrios brilliantly mocked, his site gets well over 5,000 in a few hours). The cookie-cutter, stock photo image on the homepage of a diverse crowd cheering some unknown subject (as opposed to a real photo of a crowd cheering Gingrich) set a meme on fire with online photoshoppers swapping out the background image with some hilarious results. Those embarrassing blunders was followed up by the epic fail of the Newt.org launch. The site was roundly ridiculed for a wide array of basic errors, from non-functioning donation pages to misspelling his wife’s name throughout the site.
The haphazard Twitter rollout and the error-filled website launch reveal that digital strategy ranks low for Gingrich. The campaign to date has employed a 1990s campaign mindset, where reporters rather than online citizens are the main recipients of campaign information. Gone are the days where a politician can issue a press release with bullet points called a "Contract with America" and have it hyped up as a grand plan to uninformed voters. The traditional strategy of feeding information to reporters and having them feed it to the masses is decades old, and a campaign that fails to appreciate how critical the flow of information is online is already failing.
In a world where memes catch fire in an instant, in a time where a website’s every word and line of code and layout choice is laid bare for millions to critique, and in an era where journalists no longer have sole influence over the ebb and flow of a campaign narrative, a campaign’s digital strategy must infuse every aspect of a campaign. Not as an afterthought, but as a core guide.
Gingrich boasts an impressive 1.3 million Twitter followers and a less-than-stellar 130,000 fans on Facebook, but numbers never tell the whole story. The quantity of online supporters means little unless a campaign constructs a comprehensive strategy to capture, convert and monetize their support.
Gingrich will be going up against the 2012 Obama machine. It promises to be a massive, sophisticated operation and all indications are that it will take a more central strategic role than in 2008. It is a behemoth and a force to be reckoned with, and no GOP candidate will be able to pass into the gates of the White House without appreciating its force and devising a strategy to compete head-to-head with it.
So far, Gingrich has fallen far short of the task.