Monday, March 26, 2012

When Bringing Voters Online Goes Wrong



"Newt Gingrich has often told voters during the presidential campaign to learn more about him by going online.
But many people who typed "Newt" into Google just before Nevada's caucuses saw more than the traditional search results on Mr. Gingrich. They also saw an advertisement attacking his stance on housing—purchased by the campaign of rival Mitt Romney.
On Twitter, people who used Mr. Gingrich's subject marker #250gas, a reference to his promise to cut gasoline prices, at times have seen an ad from Barack Obama touting the president's own energy proposals."
The foregoing highlights some of the reasons that 121campaign is an important tool for campaigns to use. With 121campaign, you leave nothing to chance. Using the platform's unique codes to establish your one-to-one relationship with a voter, you're then directing the voter to the exact content that you want them to see. Opponents can do nothing to disrupt the process of bringing a voter online using 121campaign. It's the most risk-free and efficient way to bring a voter to your campaign online.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Introducing 121nexus

121nexus is a platform for engaging with audiences on a one to one basis and providing highly relevant and dynamic digital content to them. The vision for this company is born out of months of hard work on the part of myself and my co-founder, Albert Ho.

We began to build this company in earnest in the summer of 2011. It is now officially the spring of 2012 and I'm pleased to say that we're on track to build something special. With what we have learned we decided it was time to rebrand ourselves as 121nexus from our original corporate name, AgileQR, Inc.

The problem with the name AgileQR is that it over emphasized the QR code aspect of our platform. QR codes are just a feature of what we do. They simply embody the unique link that we create in order to provide a recipient of that link with a personal portal into the person or organization that gave it to them. The ability to create a one-to-one relationship through the portals we create and serve dynamic, relevant content is what ultimately makes our platform special.

We chose the word nexus because its definition is: a means to connect, tie, link. 121 (one-to-one) simply convey the nature of the connections that our platform allows users to establish.

With our initial products, 121campaign and 121constituency, we aim to improve the democratic process and empower voters and constituents with the information they need to know in order to make better decisions and contribute to democracy.

The 2012 election cycle provides us with a tremendous opportunity to validate our technology. But it's only the beginning. We will change the way direct marketing is conducted, the way people are brought on to the web, and the way content is personalized for individuals. We are the web's premier Web 3.0 platform.

Check back here for updates as we continue through the second half of Betaspring, the start up accelerator program based in Providence which we're currently participating in. It's a been a game changing experience for us and we will dedicate a blog to it in the near future.

Lessons from Romney Etch a Sketch Gaffe



There’s been so shortage of media coverage on the Romney campaign’s recent “Etch a Sketch” gaffe. But in case you missed it, here’s what happened.

Appearing on CNN's "Starting Point” Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s senior advisor, said that the absence of a GOP challenge could allow Romney to "hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It's like Etch A Sketch," he said. "You can shake it up and we start all over again."

This lead to immediate attacks from Romney's opponents. Rick Santorum said, "He will say what he needs to say to win the election before him, and if he has to say something different because it's a different election and a different group of voters, he will say that too."

Romney has since responded to the statement, saying that “The issues I’m running on will be exactly the same. I’m running as a conservative Republican, I was a conservative Republican governor, I’ll be running as a conservative republican nominee, excuse me, at that point hopefully, nominee for president. The policies and positions are the same.”

What Romney and all politicians should learn is that changing your positions within your platform is bad. My impression is that what Fehrnstrom ought to have said is that they will highlight and emphasize different aspects of their platform for the general election.

That's what 121Campaign is all about. It recognizes that different issues appeal to different voters. That's why it makes it easy for political campaigns to customize landing pages for voters to feature the issues that they care about most, in order to get them more engaged in the campaign.

For campaigns to be agile and effective their focus should be on highlighting relevant content for individual voters and driving engagement because to do otherwise it does indeed come off as "flip-flopping."