ICYMI: RNC Chief Digital Officer Chuck DeFeo on Bloomberg’s “In The Loop”
WASHINGTON — This morning, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chief Digital Officer Chuck DeFeo joined Betty Liu on Bloomberg’s “In The Loop” to talk about the launch of Para Bellum Labs, an incubator built within the RNC. DeFeo also discussed the RNC’s focus on building out a permanent infrastructure based on data and technology to reach voters more effectively in future elections.
View transcript excerpts below and watch the clip here: http://bit.ly/1h41F30
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS:
Using Data And Technology To Reach Voters More Efficiently And Effectively
CHUCK DEFEO: … That is part of why we launched Para Bellum Labs. It’s really about an effort to prepare to win. There are a lot of policies that need to get worked out in this country and we need to get more Republicans elected so we can get the policies that we would like to see enacted. …How do we put our candidates and a better position to win? One of those ways is to make better use data and technology to reach voters more efficiently and effectively.
DEFEO: …Para Bellum labs is an incubator within the Republican National Committee that is bringing in that start up culture and
that way of doing things, to help us innovate faster and bring products to market much faster. How we’re doing that is not only setting up an office here in Washington, D.C, but also we’ve set up an office in Silicon Valley where we’re bringing in that new talent. We’re bringing in those skill sets that haven’t existed in our Party before to help us to build up that technology and data infrastructure that we really need.
DEFEO: …We are building our own startup, we’re not trying to go out and hire consultants or other startups. We are actually bringing talent in that have worked in start ups, that have worked in established technology companies like Facebook and like Linkedin. And how do we bring in those abilities so as we build out this technology infrastructure…
Growing Our Understanding How We Interact With Voters
DEFEO: First and foremost we are building a unified data warehouse. When you think about how you communicate with voters and how you understand a relationship, we hear things in the private sector and corporations that they have a consumer relationship management system. How do you understand how you interact with your customers? We need to do a better job of understanding how we interact with voters. What’s most important, what are the issues that they primarily care about and how do we communicate to them on those issues and activate them more in our campaigns?
Building A Permanent Infrastructure For All Republican Candidates
DEFEO: Our success is going to be in our ability to align at a data level with technology platforms that we’re building out, along with the content and the messaging that we need to be able to do to target people in. When you actually get those three layers aligned so that you can actually really customize messaging and understand how you communicating with voters, and more importantly understanding what’s important to them so you can activate them in your campaign, that is not a talking point, that is a true shift in operations of how we’ve been doing things, at least in the Republican National Committee. Just as importantly, we are trying to do that for all of our candidates. We saw in 2012 the Democrats effectively do that for one candidate, and do it for one cycle. We are here to build out an infrastructure that is permanent and that can continue in 2014, 2016 and beyond.
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