Election-winning lessons from another Brown

Innovations in political campaigning now move at warp speed. So while the Tories and Labour are throwing money at former campaign advisers to President Obama, hoping they can repeat the magic of America's 2008 presidential election, the tricks of that era have been overtaken already.

The Obama campaign's great leap forward was to recognise the value of letting supporters use social networks to persuade their peers. It even recruited one of the founders of Facebook to run its social networking strategy. Millions of political novices were able to make the campaign their own in a way that had never occurred before.

Eighteen months on, the campaign momentum has reverted to the Republicans who, after their hammering by Obama in 2008, quickly learned their lesson. In January, they won back Teddy Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, a Democratic fortress for decades.

The virtually unknown Republican candidate, Scott Brown, updated the campaign manual yet again. He went online to devastating effect — not promoting a blog, but rather creating a hub for a network of supporters. He used Ning, an online platform that allows you to build a social network around any area of interest you choose. The Brown Brigade was born.

His under-resourced campaign also used free Google applications to communicate. Volunteers began using Google Docs to create call lists and schedules, which could be updated by anyone, anywhere.

The campaign also made great use of Google advertising. During the last week of the campaign, it ran Google ads targeted to appear in Republican-leaning districts asking for volunteers. The ads were specific to each region, giving directions to Brown's regional offices.

Hundreds of people came forward, so many in fact that they were queueing up to man the Brown phone banks. The solution to that came in the form of smartphone apps which enabled volunteers to download voter lists and call from home.

Another innovation was a smartphone app called Walking Edge, developed by a Republican technology firm. It allows canvassers to access canvassing maps and addresses on their iPhone, BlackBerry or any smartphone with GPS. Volunteers can see in real time who has been contacted and who hasn't, who is undecided and who is committed. On election day, the Walking Edge data was constantly updated so Brown's supporters could see who had voted and who hadn't, and then go to their houses and prod them out to the polls.

Brown also made use of two relatively new campaign innovations: the money bomb and the voter bomb. The money bomb is a short burst of intense fund-raising activity. It has proved much more effective with small donors than constantly passing the hat. In one day in January, Scott Brown raised more than $1 million.

A voter bomb is similar to the money bomb, in that supporters are given a short period of time to pledge to bring another voter to the polls with them. Brown received 32,000 voter pledges during his voter bombs.