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Vincent Harris
| Vincent Harris | |||
 | |||
| Basic facts | |||
| Organization: | Harris Media | ||
| Role: | Founder | ||
| Location: | Austin, Texas | ||
| Affiliation: | Republican | ||
| Education: | Baylor University | ||
| Website: | Official website | ||
| |||
Vincent Harris is the president and CEO of Harris Media, an Austin, Texas-based company formed in 2008 that provides strategy for digital political presence. He was the digital strategist for Rand Paul's 2016 presidential campaign. Born in Northern Virginia, Harris is a graduate of Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
Career
Early life
Harris has run digital campaigns for many candidates, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). Growing up, he used to skip school to volunteer in Northern Virginia politics. In Steve Freiss' Bloomberg profile of Harris, he noted: "[Harris] was a pre-teen C-SPAN junkie, a kid who recorded Al Gore and George W. Bush’s convention acceptance speeches in 2000 to listen to for fun, a 12-year-old volunteer for a Virginia state delegate who is still a Harris Media client."[1]
Ted Cruz 2012 Senate Campaign
Harris first came to national prominence when he ran the digital campaign for Ted Cruz, who rose from unknown tea party candidate to senator in 2012. The campaign was noteworthy because Cruz cultivated a social media presence early on and led with his digital efforts rather than the more traditional campaign methods of direct mailing or phone solicitation. Of the Cruz campaign, Harris said:[2]
| “ | There’s no doubt that the Cruz campaign ran the most integrated statewide digital strategy in the history of American politics. Other campaigns have spent more money online, but this campaign led with digital in all aspects. Really, this was unprecedented in politics. To have the digital team have access and input with the pollster, general consultant, and television ad producers.[3] | ” |
The Cruz campaign was also marked by Harris' use of Facebook and Google ads to respond to attacks from Cruz's opponent, former Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. In a 2012 interview, Harris stated: "One of the things I am most proud of was the use of ads to rebut the attacks coming from the Dewhurst campaign and his Super PAC allies. We ran unique search ads when someone searched 'Cruz China' for example that would lead people to a 'get the facts' page on our website."[2]
Mitch McConnell 2014 re-election
Mitch McConnell's 2014 campaign used Harris' digital strategy techniques of tailoring to individualized voters, packaging content into smaller pieces, and engaging with voters' Internet habits.[4] The digital staff for the campaign, called "Team Mitch," ran seven separate websites, with messages varying from McConnell's support for Kentucky coal to his opponent's support for President Barack Obama (D). For sportsmen, coal miners, veterans or women, Harris' specific websites provided a platform to show support.[4] In addition, the campaign focused on shorter messages. In a Bloomberg profile from 2014, Harris noted that people spend an average of 45 seconds on any given mobile site, leading him to conclude that "everything has to be short, everything has to be succinct."[1] For Harris' team, short and succinct often meant disseminating Internet memes featuring Obama, Nevada Democratic Sen. Harry Reid or McConnell's opponent, Democratic Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. The goal was to amass "likes" on Facebook, follows on Twitter and donor-visitors to TeamMitch.com. Integration with social media, in particular, was central to Harris' strategy: the campaign worked full-time on connecting with the web habits of voters. Targeted Google ads and rapid Facebook responses to breaking news were designed "to help drive a media narrative," according to Harris Media's case study of the campaign.[4]
Presidential election, 2016
Rand Paul
- See also: Rand Paul presidential campaign, 2016
In November 2014, Rand Paul's campaign strategy looked a lot like his father's from 2008 and 2012. He had invested in Saber Communications, a firm that "had basically mastered the art of direct-mail fundraising" for Ron Paul's (R) presidential bids, according to Slate.[5] In May 2015, when he joined the Paul campaign, Harris was poised to lead the digital campaign for Ted Cruz, whose digital campaign Harris had led in 2012. Yet Harris decided to join the Paul campaign because of the priority Paul placed on digital campaigning. "Rand Paul is a forward looking thought leader who is going to put a large emphasis on technology, probably a larger emphasis than any other candidate considering who he is, who his supporters are and his issue stands,” said Harris to Politico.[6] Less than two months after Harris signed on, Paul participated in the first ever interview for a politician via the popular photo messaging app Snapchat.[7] By April 2015, Paul conducted an interview via Periscope, an app that allows users to live stream video to Twitter.[8]
Use of Facebook
For 2016, Paul's campaign made Facebook a priority, often posting multiple positive articles or targeted ads a day. In addition, his page advertised flash sales, polled its fans for their opinions on the issues, and even crowdsourced information. According to Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast, Paul invited anyone to report known foreign donations to the Clinton foundation: "On his website, you will find a form where you can 'REPORT NOW' if you know anything about Clinton’s foreign cash."[9] After reporting any activity, users were redirected to the donations portion of Paul's campaign site.
Targeted Google ads
The campaign also utilized Google ads. A quick search for "Clinton foundation" would yield an ad that read: "Do You Have Information?—randpaul.com," positioned just above the ad for Clinton's (D) own campaign.[9] On the night Ted Cruz announced his candidacy, a search for "Ted Cruz announcement" yielded an ad for the official website of RAND PAC, Paul's leadership PAC.[10] It is "micro-victories" like these that Harris hoped would "encourage online fundraising, boost get-out-the-vote efforts and return the GOP to the White House," according to Politico's Tom Bartlett in May 2015.[11]
Paul suspended his presidential run on February 3, 2016.[12]
Donald Trump
- See also: Donald Trump presidential campaign, 2016
On June 28, 2016, Politico reported that Harris had joined Donald Trump's presidential campaign in an unspecified role. The article cited multiple campaign sources, saying, "Trump is hiring not just Harris but the services of his Austin-based firm, Harris Media."[13] Harris commented to Breitbart News on June 29, saying, "All I know and all I’m going to say is we’ve been hired to do project work–we’ve been doing a good job at the work we’ve been doing and we hope to keep working with the campaign. That’s all. There really isn’t anything here."[14] The next day, Harris explained on Twitter that he had been hired for contract work and that the work had been completed in June 2016. He went on to say, "Harris Media was engaged as subcontractor to do various project work for Trump’s digital agency of record. Nothing more or less."[15]
Digital strategy
After Mitt Romney's (R) loss in the 2012 presidential election, Harris criticized the GOP's digital presence from top to bottom: "There’s an old guard in Republican politics, and that old guard is mostly made up of television and direct-mail consultants. ... The old guard in the Democratic Party made the adjustment with the Obama digital operation. There hasn’t been a concerted effort among the established GOP folks to figure this stuff out."[16]
Facebook for political campaigning
In 2010, still in his early twenties, Harris wrote of the virtues of social media for political campaigns, focusing on their unique ability to micro-target a campaign's message to voters who are like-minded. Facebook, he claimed, can "allow you to identify and target people who are in 100% agreement with your values system, regardless of your ideology" through ads targeted specifically at "self-identified supporters of specific keywords."[17]
Targeted social media ads
The following are some of Harris Media's social media ads. To see a larger version of each ad, hover over the ad's image.
Snapchat ad for Secure America Now, an independent expenditure group
Facebook ad for Mitch McConnell's 2014 U.S. Senate campaign
Facebook ad for Dan Patrick's 2014 Texas lieutenant governor campaign
Facebook ad for Ted Cruz's 2012 U.S. Senate campaign
Instagram ad for Rob Portman's 2016 U.S. Senate campaign
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bloomberg, "The Man Who Invented the Republican Internet," accessed May 4, 2015
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Texas on the Potomac, "Q&A with Vincent Harris, the mastermind behind Ted Cruz’s social media success," accessed May 7, 2015
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Harris Media, "Mitch McConnell Digital Case Study," accessed May 5, 2015
- ↑ Slate, "Paul, Inc.," accessed May 6, 2015
- ↑ Politico, "Rand Paul hires digital guru away from Ted Cruz," accessed May 6, 2015
- ↑ CNN, "CNN exclusive: Snapchat Interview with Senator Rand Paul," accessed May 6, 2015
- ↑ Twitter, "Chip Englander," April 10, 2015
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Rand Wants You To Put Your Hillary Horror Stories (and your dollars) In His Dropbox," accessed May 6, 2015
- ↑ Twitter, "Vincent Harris," March 22, 2015
- ↑ "Rand Paul's Internet Army," accessed May 6, 2015
- ↑ Politico, "Rand Paul dropping out of White House race," February 3, 2016
- ↑ Politico, "Trump hires Rand Paul's former digital director," June 28, 2016
- ↑ Breitbart News, "Trump Campaign: Vincent Harris Not an Employee, Only Did Project Work Through Subcontractor," June 29, 2016
- ↑ Politico, "Trump parts ways with newly hired digital strategist," June 30, 2016
- ↑ New York Times, "Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence?" accessed May 4, 2015
- ↑ Harris Media, "Facebook's Permanent Place in Politics," accessed May 6, 2015
