It has long been rumoured that much of the success of the Bush campaign in 2000 and 2004 was down to their superior understanding of social networks. Now a chance remark (highlighted by Valdis Krebs) by Bush’s campaigning guru Karl Rove on Obama’s election campaign draws attention to this.

Barack Obama’s manager admitted to the New York Times that he wanted an “army of persuasion” modeled explicitly on the massive Bush neighbor-to-neighbor “Victory Committee” of ‘00 and ‘04. Those efforts deployed millions of volunteers to register, persuade and get-out-the-vote. Sen. Obama’s organizational emphasis wisely avoids the Democratic mistake of 2000, when Donna Brazille’s plea for a stronger grassroots focus was ignored by the Gore high command. It also avoids the mistake of 2004, when Democrats outsourced their ground game to George Soros’s 527 organizations. The latter effort paid at least $76 million to more than 45,000 canvassers – many hired from temp agencies – to register and turn out voters. It was the wrong model: Undecideds are more likely to be influenced by those in their social network than an anonymous, low-wage campaign worker.

The emphasis on social networks shows what many have long suspected, that the study of social network dynamics, including the mathematical models deployed by businesses like ours, was trialled in the war-rooms of the Bush-Cheyne campaigns of 2000 and 2004.

The key characteristics of these learnings were:

• Don’t rely on mainstream advertising to change hearts and minds - work through existing social networks;
• Identify issues that go to the heart of your targets preoccupations, and hammer your stance on these home;
• Organise in ways that empower the grass roots, not the central command.

It worked for Bush and Cheyne and now it’s working for Bush and for big brands. The key message that Rove is stressing is that paid-for messages are not as effective as recommendations from within a social network.

A key example of this occurred recently in the case of Market Sentinel client Avis. When they launched their blog one of the early commentators posted a comment highly critical of the initiative: what was the blog doing, he demanded, to make the company more effective, how would it address his specific customer service problem? The Avis folk responded to this challenge with a detailed explanation of how the blog was part of a broader initiative to do a better job with customers, to explain, to listen and to fix specific problems (and they fixed his). When on one of the better-trafficked forums used by international business travellers, a commenter highlighted a customer service issue with Avis the same previously hostile commentator responded - defending Avis and directing the complainant to the UK blog where the management had shown themselves so responsive. That’s grass roots advocacy in action. More effective than paid communication, precisely because it is unpaid for.

What Karl Rove knew yesterday, Obama and Avis know today: it is better to have others do the persuading for you. Understand and meet their needs and they are a better salesforce than money can buy.