Former Obama Campaign CTO Shares Lessons

Today's data-driven, social-media-heavy political marketing requires support of a skilled technical team for success. Who better to give advice than Harper Reed, former CTO of the Obama campaign? Reed was the keynote speaker at the Business Marketing Association Chicago's Fuel Keynote & Expo in May. Creating the right team was one focus: both hiring smart people and not being afraid to "prune" ineffective performers. "Practicing for failure" was another piece of advice, meaning anticipating and preparing for technical problems in advance. Reed said his team spent a month enacting myriad technological breakdowns so they would be ready for anything. When it came to choosing a mix of social media channels, Reed was inclusive rather than selective. The campaign had people dedicated to each of the various social channels, he said, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and reddit. “There was no channel too small or too weird -- except Pinterest, because it just didn't work,” he said. See the BtoB Magazine report at http://www.btobonline.com/article/20130515/MANAGEMENT05/305159996/at-bma-fuel-reed-on-lessons-learned-as-obama-campaigns-cto