Jim Webb's Senate campaign in Virginia

The Solution: Leverage the online channel to cut through the clutter and raise funds and awareness, spread viral communications content, and target events to supporters based on geographic and opt-in data.

When Jim Webb entered the United States Senate race in Virginia late in the primary process, he faced two major hurdles that stood between him and the improbable victory that sealed a Democratic majority in the Senate.

In both the primary and general election contests, Webb faced opponents who each had a major head start. In the primary, Democrat Harris Miller had been running for months before Webb officially declared his candidacy, lining up support from many of the state’s most prominent Democrats.  In the general election, Republican incumbent Senator George Allen had name recognition, a heaping campaign treasure chest, and the structural advantages that come from having won statewide office in Virginia multiple times.

To overcome these hurdles, the Webb campaign turned to the internet to raise funds and build awareness. In the primary, the campaign not only raised over $300,000 online in the 12 weeks between Webb’s declaration and the primary, but also recruited thousands of volunteers who were able to join the campaign through its website. Blackrock also helped foment relationships with liberal bloggers during this period that carried on throughout the general election, an effort that was reinforced by having the candidate, campaign manager, and lead consultant write guest-posts for popular liberal blogs such as DailyKos.

After beating Miller in the primary, the Webb campaign used email to stay in contact with its supporters while raising funds for what were sure to be expensive closing weeks of the campaign. Blackrock Associates handled primary message writing duties, and helped the campaign communicate with its full supporter list 2-3 times per week during the traditionally quiet summer months.

Blackrock also helped the Webb campaign grow its list of email supporters throughout the campaign. Using search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, blog outreach, and viral advocacy campaigns, Blackrock helped grow the Webb list from 5,000 supporters at the start of the campaign to over 85,000 individuals by election day.

In August, Blackrock helped the Webb campaign fully seize the opportunity presented by Allen’s disrespectful comments towards an Indian-American Webb campaign worker in what has since become known as the “Macaca moment.” In the past, a campaign would have to rely on the media to disseminate the contents of such a moment captured on video, which not only would take distribution out of the control of the campaign but also dilute the impact of the video.

Thankfully, this race was being run in the era of YouTube, and the campaign was able to use this popular video-sharing site to increase the number of people who viewed the video exponentially. After the video was loaded onto YouTube, we sent an email with a link to the video to the Webb campaign's entire supporter list. We also tipped off the numerous bloggers who we had built relationships with, and thanks to the embeddable nature of YouTube videos they were able to easily host the video on their websites.

The "macaca" video was viewed over 800,000 times on YouTube alone, and the viral way in which it was spread drove traditional news organizations to cover the story in a way they would not have had the video been confined to traditional distribution methods. By leveraging this free video-sharing technology to make it as easy as possible to view and share the video, the campaign was able to reach an overall audience that would have taken millions of dollars to reach using traditional means. In short, Blackrock and the Webb campaign completely reshaped the race by taking full advantage of a gaffe that would have gone unnoticed in past cycles.

As the summer months transitioned into the busy post-Labor Day period, we augmented the campaign's email messaging and online fundraising efforts with geographically-targeted emails to announce fundraising events and public rallies, announced new campaign advertisements via email while encouraging recipients to forward them to their friends and family, and added a weekly volunteer update email that listed every volunteer event for the upcoming week.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Blackrock continued to raise funds online at a remarkable pace.  By the end of the campaign, over $4 million dollars had been raised online – more than half of the $7.5 million that the campaign raised in total. Blackrock also helped the campaign communicate important voting information to its supporters in the final week, including polling place locations, absentee voting information, and closing rallies in their geographic area.

The Result: Jim Webb won a remarkable victory – both in terms of overcoming the race’s low initial expectations and the national impact of winning control of the Senate for Democrats – by a paper-thin 7,000 vote margin out of over 2 million votes cast. Despite a late start and being heavily outspent in both the primary and general elections, the Webb campaign was successful -- in no small part thanks to their aggressive use of the internet as a communications and fundraising medium.