Award-Winning Political Consultancy Firm Holds Trainings for CALD

Elections are the bread-and-butter of political parties.

Hence, when Buzzmaker, an award-winning political and public affairs consultancy firm based in the United States, offered to hold a series of online trainings on political campaigns, digital fundraising and field campaigning, the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) felt that it was an opportunity too good to pass up.

Buzzmaker President Matthew “Matt” Macmillan conducted the seminars.  Matt worked at the highest levels of campaigns and was named international political consultant of the year at the 2021 Napolitan Victory Awards. In total, he’s won nearly 100 awards for outstanding political communication, leveraged strategy to mobilize millions of people to take action, raised tens of millions of dollars online and introduced cutting edge digital political technology around the world.

The first installment of the series – “Best Practices in 21st Century Political Campaigns” – took a holistic look at campaigns – from “air campaign” and “ground campaign” to digital persuasion and organizing.  “Political campaign is a big operation with lots of moving parts”, Macmillan said. “Hence, the best way to think about it is by putting it in compartments.”  Compartmentalizing the campaign can be done by dividing it into four phases: 1) developing the message scientifically; 2) establishing the advertising creative; 3) building the database; and 4) protecting the vote.

All these phases, however, entail costs.  Hence, the second part of the series dealt with “Digital Fundraising – How You Can Harness the Power of Collective Fundraising”. It tackled best practices in digital donor prospecting, acquisition, cultivation and conversion. In particular, it identified the political and advocacy environments where collective fundraising can thrive such as: 1) significant and passionate support base for candidate; 2) jurisdiction is with large population; 3) election or cause is high profile; and 4) candidate has an established/known/trusted brand. More importantly, it discussed the technology, strategy and personnel needed to put into place the collective fundraising infrastructure.

The last part of the series – “Field Campaigning: How to Build a Formidable Voter Mobilization Campaign” – examined the principles of voter ID, get-out-the-vote and election protection along with how to deploy simple yet effective technology to empower them. Macmillan presented, in particular, the features of Canvass (https://www.canvass.today), a user-friendly political canvassing platform.  The tool, which was born of developers in Africa and strategists in the Caribbean, is lightweight, can be used in low data environments, and easy to use with older technology.

The online series took place on three consecutive Thursdays – 16/23 February and 2 March 2023 – and was attended by participants from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.