MANCHESTER, N.H. – Modern-day political campaigns need to keep up with the latest technologies and strategies and a recent seminar aimed to provided to help local conservative candidates achieve that goal.
Hosted at the Americans for Prosperity – New Hampshire (AFP-NH) office on South Willow Street, Liberty Digital Marketing hosted a five-day set of classes centered around teaching local conservatives about understanding AI, digital activism basics, and online advertising methodology among other topics.
Liberty Digital Marketing’s Jon DiPietro led the training, which in recent years had been held one day a week over multiple weeks.
DiPietro said he enjoys teaching others and he also appreciates the opportunity to set the record straight when it comes to digital marketing given what he has seen from some others in the field.
“The so-called professionals that are charging money to candidates and then doing a really poor job are doing them a disservice, especially in the digital space,” he said. “Every single day I see examples of things that professionally run political campaigns do that would get a first-year marketing associate fired for negligence and incompetence.”
Although DiPietro says that online activism can never fully replace meeting voters face-to-face, it can provide a valuable supplement for candidates, especially in tight races and times when in-person campaigning is not possible like during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also says that since Democratic voters skew younger than Republican ones, Democratic campaigns have become more comfortable with online activism and Republican campaigns must catch up to keep pace.
“How many elections in New Hampshire are decided by around 20 votes? While knocking on doors is very important, digital ads can be the difference when it comes to those 20 votes,” he said.
David McMurray was one of the activists that attended the trainings. McMurray identifies himself as a libertarian and lives on the West Side of Manchester, although he wants to help candidates rather than be one himself. McMurray agrees with DiPietro that conservatives must catch up with liberals online an agrees that online activism cannot be a campaign’s only tactic given that many people have grown skeptical of what they hear online. Still, he found the training helpful.
“I came into this kind of understanding the tech surrounding all of this, but not the particulars of deploying an ad campaign or understanding the tricks to avoid failure and get success,” said McMurray.
AFP-NH State Director Greg Moore was pleased that his organization could host DiPietro.
“We’re looking to give our activists a tool to be successful and trainings like this are important in getting folks to understand the lay of the land as it refers to the digital world,” said Moore. “We’re thrilled with folks like Jon DiPietro lending his skills and abilities to help our activists who are worst are sometimes the keyboard warriors, but at best we want to turn into people who are effectively using tools to advance issues.”
“