Strategists say GOP catching up online

Willington said the campaign made acquiring supporters’ cell phone numbers a priority so they could be easily mobilized via mass text messages. Whenver Brown or his opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, appeared on talk radio Brown supporters would get a text blast urging them to call in.

“We saw the marriage between texting and talk radio,” Willington said, noting that with one text blast a commuter stuck in traffic could be converted into an activist. He said when Coakley appeared on talk radio the calls were almost all negative, while Brown almost always received support and encouragement from callers.

The Brown campaign also used a Google Ad blast one week before the election to recruit volunteers, directing them via customized ads to the field office closest to their location. Willington also oversaw the late-stage creation of a smartphone application that was used in lieu of traditional walkbooks for volunteers knocking on doors. He said over 1,000 people downloaded the application immediately after its launch.

Ryan Gravatt of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection campaign said Perry’s camp elected to go paperless during the primary against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison with great success. Gravatt said the campaign received “zero negative feedback” from its decision not to print direct mailers or yard signs.

“We knew it wouldn’t sway Republican primary voters,” Gravatt said.

Instead, Perry’s campaign focused on driving Web traffic to 11 issue-based Web pages that provided voters with Perry’s stances on important political issues. By doing so, they were able to capture the interest of voters that weren’t yet fully engaged or monitoring the race, he said.