How Agile Helped Elect Donald Trump

Forbes ^ | July 22, 2018 | Steve Denning

[2ndDivisionVet]

The idea of democracy is that voters will compare the candidates and select the better on the merits of their respective campaigns. But what if the outcome reflects better use of technology, independent of the merits? In 2012, Democrats celebrated the Obama campaign’s smarter use technology that helped lead to victory. But in 2018, the shoe was on the other foot, as the Trump campaign is being hailed for nimbler use of technology, specifically the “test, learn, adapt” approach that exemplifies Agile management.

The Trump Campaign On Facebook

In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Trump campaign spent about 50% more in Facebook ads, but more importantly, tested almost 90 times the number of ad variations. Thus “Clinton spent $28 million from June to November 2016, while testing 66,000 different ads,” Bloomberg has reported. “In comparison, Trump spent $44 million in that period and tested 5.9 million versions of ads, suggesting his campaign’s Facebook strategy “was more complex than Clinton’s and better leveraged Facebook’s ability to optimize for outcomes.”

Trump 2016 campaign digital director Brad Parscale explained on 60 Minutes last year that the campaign “obsessively tested ad creative and messaging — up to 100,000 different versions per day of different ads. That involved “changing language, words, colors, changing things because certain people like a green button better than a blue button,” he explained, outlining the automated alterations that were made to spit out different versions of an ad. “Some people like the word ‘donate’ or ‘contribute.’”(continued)

[Widget Jr]

I saved the study to my collection of Freeper files. Thanks for taking the time on this.