Agenda

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

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Campaigning in Crisis: The Puerto Rican Gubernatorial Campaign
Campaign managers, strategists and communicators from the Puerto Rican gubernatorial race talk the key strategies for victory and how the economic crisis is impacting their campaigns.

Moderator: Luis Herrero-Acevedo, Explorer Media

Panelists:
Alejandro Figueroa, Pierluisi for Governor
Liza Ortiz, Bernier for Governor
Samuel Rosario Medina, María de Lourdes Santiago
Elias Sanchez, Rossello for Governor
Armando Valdés Prieto, Cuarto Piso LLC

Grand Ballroom Foyer

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Why 2016 Is Different

Featuring:
Whit Ayres, North Star Opinion Research
Molly Ball, The Atlantic
Mark Mellman, The Mellman Group

2016 40 under 40 Awards
Recognizing the best and brightest young political professionals in the U.S. Nominated and judged by their peers, AAPC will recognize and celebrate the new class of Democrat, Republican and Independent young political professionals making their mark in 2016.

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Wednesday, April 13, 2016

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2016: Half Time Show
Prominent political strategists will share their unvarnished observations on the presidential field, the battle for control of the Senate and House, and the role of independent expenditures in this cycle.

Moderator: Becki Donatelli, Campaign Solutions

Panelists:
Dan Backer, DB Capitol Strategies, LLC
Alex Gage, TargetPoint Consulting and G2 Analytics
Charlie Kelly, House Majority PAC
Jessica Mackler, American Bridge 21st Century
Jef Pollock, Global Strategy Group

Innovation Showcase—Shark Tank Style!
The AAPC Innovation Showcase provides a unique opportunity for campaign professionals to learn about a range of campaign technology, solutions and success stores in a fast-paced, informative session.  A diverse panel of campaign software and advertising solutions providers will conform to the principles of Pecha Kucha, a presentation format designed to keep discussions concise and entertaining. Presenters have only 3 minutes and 15 slides max to tell their story!   Then a panel of seasoned campaign pros, our “Shark Tank”, will cut through any hype through a series of pointed questions.  The audience will then vote for the most innovative solution.Come to be entertained. Come away informed about the cutting edge in campaigns!

SOLUTIONS

AnchorOps ePay Political, powered by WEX
Political media agencies face unique pressures and demands to ensure that media is executed within tight timeframes. Without clear communication and payment processes, a media buy can misfire. While balancing critical campaign requirements, agencies spend significant time writing checks, sending overnight payments, and following up to ensure payments are received.  AnchorOps ePay Political is the only payment solution designed specifically for political media.  It provides fast and secure electronic payments, detailed reporting, and the necessary notifications to media reps to ensure media runs on schedule.  The solution is available to agencies at no cost and offers a revenue share opportunity.

Presenter: David Frogel

Fluent
Learn how campaigns are using Fluent’s Political Acquisition Channel (PAC) to consistently grow the number of advocates, donors, and voters committed to their candidates & causes at a massive scale. They accomplish this through leveraging innovative, people-based advertising solutions to facilitate the data-driven and deterministic targeting of individuals across all marketing channels and devices – mobile, social, email, search, display, and even television.

Presenter: Jeff Pavelcsyk

L2
Bruce Willsie, CEO/President of L2 will discuss the use of enhanced voter data and high speed data visualization to improve voter/constituent outreach, fundraising, GOTV and media targeting. Plus he’ll take a look into how L2 and HaystaqDNA have made rich modeled issue data accessible to any campaign.

Presenter: Bruce Willsie

Shindig
Online conference calls and video conferencing solutions have long been stilted experiences limited mostly to one to many addresses with at best text based questions as their primary mode of interaction

Shindig introduces a new more engaging video chat communications architecture where not only can any online participant be selected to share the virtual stage and ask their questions in video chat before a large assembled online audience but audience members themselves can privately network, discuss, confer, consult, socialize and otherwise share in their own self initiated video chats. No more texting or other back channel communications amongst those in the same online event, shindig makes easy the ability for colleagues to video chat sidebar while still in the larger event. LIkewise, no more isolation of participants and mystery as to who else is there and who in fact is speaking, Shindig allows audience members and speakers to all see one another and makes clear who is speaking from the stage.

Shindig promises a whole new way to take candidate appearances online as well as being a powerful platform for campaign messaging, premium access online fundraising events, campaign organizing, volunteer team administration and opinion research

Presenter: Steve Gottlieb

Smart Media Group
Smart Media Group has launched a new data analysis software called Pharos. This software aggregates data off the media buying contracts in the FCC’s public file website and puts the data into Pharos for the user to quickly see what political advertisers purchased per network.  The information includes time-slot, cost per program, and number of units per program.  Before Pharos, there was no easy access to this competitive information.  The media buying process is fast paced and the process for getting this information from the FCC is slow and inefficient.  Steps include selecting the network, the political clients, then printing all contracts.  Then, you have to compare, manually, the multiple contracts.  Pharos now gives you the competitive edge to quickly and easily access this information.

Presenter: Kyle Roberts

Veritone
Politics just got smarter! Veritone Politics enables campaigns and political organizations to win elections by providing new sources of content to raise funds, inform the campaign narrative, track competitors and issues, and easily share relevant information with constituents. Political teams gain access and deep insights into previously untapped sources of audio and video (including broadcast radio and TV, YouTube, Podcast and private media such as speaker and tracker videos), uncovering critical intelligence that can be acted upon in real time.

Presenter: Kristy McKnight

SHARKS:
Shannon Chatlos, Strategic Partners & Media
Brian Franklin, Impact Politics
Ryan Horn, Sandler-Innocenzi
David Mowery, Mowery Consulting Group

MODERATOR: Matt McMillan, Buzzmaker and DSPolitical International

Breakouts

It’s the Creative, Stupid.
Preciosa Ballroom

In the last years in politics, we have realized the power of targeting.  Big data, small data…just data in general has made our job at fundraising, persuasion and GOTV a little easier, more efficient.  However, if people don’t pay attention to what you are showing them, it doesn’t matter how many times it shows up on their Facebook feed, or follows them around the Internet. So it’s time to think about the creative, not only what it says, but where it will be placed. An online ad needs to be made differently than a TV ad.  Join this panel of experts as they dig into the creative elements of some of today’s best performing ads and take a look at what’s grabbing voters’ attention—and what isn’t.

Moderator: Kelly Gibson, Hamburger Gibson Creative

Panelists:
Jamey Bowers, Berman and Company
Ashley O’Connor, Strategic Partners & Media
Emily Williams, Global Strategy Group

Is there a Millennial Gap in 2016?
Atlantic Ballroom

What are the key political demographic patterns in the last several Presidential elections that may have huge impact on this year’s outcome? This session will explore the trends and how it reshapes the electoral map. Then, we’ll look at innovative new ways to engage millennials most effectively.

Presenters:
Alex Gage, TargetPoint Consulting
Ryan Waite, Campaign Solutions

Business of Politics Series: Avoiding Legal Missteps
Caribbean Ballroom

Legal missteps in a campaign can become fodder for your opposition–or worse, put you personally at risk for prosecution. Given the recent federal criminal sentencing of a campaign manager of a failed Congressional race, it’s critical that you understand the existing rules related to the Federal Coordination standard on communications, content and conduct. Learn from the experts how to keep your campaign out of trouble and yourself out of jail.

Moderator: Amanda Bowen, Juno Systems

Panelists:
Jason Torchinsky, HoltzmanVogel Josefiak, LLC
Brian Svoboda, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP

Breakouts

MASTER CLASS: The Voter Funnel: How Media Engages & Impacts Potential Voters
Preciosa Ballroom

Wells Fargo Securities projects $6 billion dollars will be spent in media supporting the upcoming 2016 elections. A critical question for political strategists is how does media impact the voter decision process starting from awareness of the candidates through voting?  GFK Research’s “Voter Funnel” study surveyed Kentucky registered voters after their November 2015 gubernatorial election. The goal was to measure the impact of media (traditional and digital) on potential voters, and the actions they took. Which media did they deem as having the most important influence throughout their voter decision stages? How did this differ by age?  Find out from TVB’s Chief Research Officer Hadassa Gerber.

Presenter: Hadassa Gerber, TVB

MASTER CLASS: Facebook
Atlantic Ballroom

198 million Americans log into Facebook every month to connect with the people and things they care about most. Campaigns across the country use the Facebook advertising platform to win hearts, minds, dollars, and votes by delivering compelling political creative in the place where voters spend one out of every five minutes on mobile devices. Hear cutting edge research from Facebook’s top political strategists on how you can use Facebook to deliver proven results and bring your campaign’s message to the palm of every voter’s hand.

Presenters:
James Barnes, Facebook
Chase Mohney, Facebook

Business of Politics Series: Back to the Future
Caribbean Ballroom
Business owners, at all stages of their careers, dish about what they wish they had known when they started out. What was the biggest lesson they learned? What did they wish they knew their first cycle? How did they learn to manage their cash flow and know when to expand? How do they make their buying decisions for campaign services, and how you should—and shouldn’t—try to sell to them.  Take this rare opportunity to travel forward in time and learn now what most don’t learn ‘til later.

Moderator: Jim Innocenzi, Sandler-Innocenzi

Panelists:
Liz Chadderdon, The Chadderdon Group
Michelle Coyle, The Pastorum Group
John Aristotle Phillips, Aristotle
Chris Turner, Stampede Consulting

The New Frontier of Programmatic – Is it Here or Near?
2016 promises to be a watershed moment in this brave new world of data-driven advertising. New tools/platforms that automate ad buying and selling offer political campaigns increased transparency, the ability to activate audiences across multiple channels and access to controlled premium inventory via private marketplaces for the first time.  Simultaneously, “walled garden” (think Facebook and now YouTube) digital eco-systems continue to force advertisers to cede some decision making control because they simply can’t miss reaching audiences here. What happens as traditional media, especially TV, becomes addressable and how close are we to this data-driven “nirvana”?  Hear from several of the experts at the forefront of this revolution to learn what it all means for consultants — what questions should you be asking around what channels to use, inventory quality (includes transparency, fraud and viewability) — and how to truly leverage a “data strategy” going forward.

Moderator: Marty Swant, AdWeek

Panelists:
Carol Davidsen, comScore
Matthew Dybwad, TubeMogul
Mark Failla, D2 Media Sales
Archie Gianunzio, Videa
Theresa Mueller, Rubicon Project

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Full Court Press
How do the journalists and commentators that cover campaigns view the dynamics of this election cycle?  It’s their turn to answer the questions in this fast-paced analysis on what’s going on with voters, how campaigns are being waged, what to look for in the months ahead and how coverage is changing due to a changing news business.  We’ll also look in to the crystal ball at emerging trends, including the end of the dominance of incumbency and the end of a “common public experience”.

Moderator: Doc Sweitzer, The Campaign Group

Panelists:
Molly Ball, The Atlantic
Mark Barabak, Los Angeles Times
Nicco Mele, USC Annenberg School of Journalism
Susan Milligan, US News & World Report

The Beaux Arts building was constructed in 1917 and recently restored to its original grandeur.

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Thursday, April 14, 2016

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Breakouts

MASTER CLASS: I’m a Voter and I Approve of This Media
Preciosa Ballroom

Today’s political campaigns are intense and competitive with key voter groups often driving election results. In the wake of media fragmentation and device proliferation, these voters have access to unlimited amounts of information across more media outlets than ever before. Whether it be listening to a talk radio show, watching local news or surfing the web for the latest election information, campaigns and agencies need to be sure they are effectively allocating their resources across all platforms. In this session we’ll look at the unique media consumption behaviors of key voter segments and highlight insights campaigns can leverage when developing strategies to deliver votes.

Presenters:
Michelle Andreas, Nielsen
Rich Tunkel, Nielsen

MASTER CLASS: Winning with Pandora
Atlantic Ballroom

Gain valuable new information on the Power of Audio, engaging today’s mobile voter, reaching multi-cultural voters and new proprietary data matching solutions available on Pandora, the #1 App in the US for time spent with unparalleled audience scale (74+ million voting age listeners) and engagement (over 22 hours listening per listener/month). You’ll come away with new insights and best practices on GOTV, persuasion and Democrat and Republican voter audiences from leading political media experts and campaign veterans from presidential and statewide campaigns down to local & municipal races.

Presenters:
Jon Phelps, Pandora
Michelle Campbell, Pandora
Kristin Stanley, Pandora
Michele Day, Pandora
Kim Barrett, Pandora
Shannon Lee, Pandora

Digital Bad Rep
Caribbean Ballroom

Digital has become a “dirty” word as too many political campaigns and consultants try to navigate the vague definitions of what digital means and how we measure success. Everyone seems to be doing it? But, are they doing digital right? Our expert panel will discuss the ups and downs of digital after last cycle and emerging best practices ahead.

Presenters:
Lauren Dikis, Senator Cory Booker Campaign
Geoff Mackler, Blueprint Interactive

Breakouts

Stump the Media Buyers!
Preciosa Ballroom

You know that moment, you are on a campaign, and you just went through the grueling process of writing scripts, organizing a shoot, approving the spot…and your candidate calls and tells you his wife’s best friend hasn’t seen the ad, and they all want to know why.  Well turns out there is a method to the madness of media buying. Here is your chance to stump the media buyers.  You think it should be on the nightly news, they think a mid-day slot on cable news. You think it should be on during Grey’s Anatomy, we need the women’s vote after all, but turns out CBS is better than ABC. Read the scenario, the race is Iowa 3.  We have candidates, budgets and timelines.  You make your best guesses about audience and buys and our media buyers will do the same. This should be fun!

Moderator: Janet Katowitz, Mundy Katowitz

Panelists:
Amanda Bloom, BASK Digital Media
Erica Monteith, Bully Pulpit Interactive
Carole Mundy, Mundy Katowitz
Kyle Roberts, Smart Media Group

Anatomy of a Ballot Measure
Atlantic Ballroom

While you don’t have a candidate’s spouse to deal with, ballot initiatives bring their own challenges, ranging from overzealous activist volunteers to petition gathering and the simple fact that it’s easier to get people to say no than yes. Our expert panelists have been there and will talk you through how they overcame these challenges and many more.

Moderator: Rose Kapolczynski, Rose Kapolczynski Consulting

Panelists include:
Nicole Derse, 50+1 Strategies
Elizabeth Lucas, The Initiative Group, LLC
Trey Richardson, Sagac Public Affairs
Richard Temple, McNally Temple Associates, Inc.

MASTER CLASS: Moments that Win Elections: Google’s Role in the Voter’s Decision Making Process
Caribbean Ballroom

Since April 2015, candidate and issues related content has been watched over 110 million hours on YouTube — that’s the equivalent of watching every piece of content ever aired on CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC and FOX News…over 100 times. Beyond the massive voter reach achieved online, voters are telling us that digital sources are increasingly important in helping them make final voting decisions. This Master Class will showcase audience insights from Google and YouTube and findings from research we recently released with Luntz Global and Global Strategy Group.

Presenter: Andrew Roos, Google

Breakouts

Testing, 1, 2, 3
Preciosa Ballroom

Finding your voters and donors comes down to one thing: Data. But are you using your data in the most effective ways? Do you really know what makes your supporters and voters tick? Is targeting based on demographic better than targeted based off of their personality? Are you testing different messages before making unilateral decisions that will impact the outcome of your election? Come and listen to the new frontier of data and voter turnout modeling in the 2016 cycle, and leave with new ideas for reaching out and targeting your supporters and guarantee victory in the fall.

Moderator: Whitney Clark, Campaign Solutions

Panelists include:
Andy Hunn, Resonate
John Hagner, Clarity Campaign Labs
Matthew Oczkowski, Cambridge Analytica
Bryan Whitaker, TargetSmart

Organize This!
Atlantic Ballroom

More than in any election since 2008, this year’s primaries are testing the relative strengths of media focused campaigns versus boots-on-the-ground grassroots organization. In the end, we’re going to learn, once again, that air war needs ground and vice versa. This break-out session features some of the toughest and most aggressive field operatives from both parties. You’ll leave the session with real take-aways and best practices, straight from the campaign trail, that’ll allow you to level up your current ground game efforts.

Moderator: Vinny Minchillo, Glass House Strategy

Panelists:
Sean Gera, CallFire
Chris Godbey, surgeRED
Marco Guido, Terra Strategies
Jennifer Holcomb, Field Strategies
Holly Turner, Stampede Consulting

The Art & Science of Political Direct Mail
Caribbean Ballroom

While the show horses of digital and TV make more headlines – it’s the workhorse of direct-mail that gets the job done in campaigns large and small. Check out the newest innovations including programs that blend digital technology with the art of direct-mail. Find out how mail’s high touch drives voter engagement to new levels using pre-roll video, response and more.

Moderator: Liz Chadderdon, The Chadderon Group

Panelists include:
Brent Buchanan, Cygnal
Anil Mammen, Mammen Group, Inc.
Elena Neely, USPS
Jim Spencer, The Campaign Network

Politics & Pixels: The Future of Communication
As we witness the acceleration of hyper-connectivity–from always on smartphones to technology embedded in our bodies—the ways we communicate will continue to multiply and fragment.  In the meantime, advertising campaigns, increasingly driven by complex machine algorithms, bring us closer to a true science of marketing. Our panel of experts at the forefront of this revolution will address political communications in a world where everyone lives in a “cloud” and everything becomes media.

Moderator: Sasha Issenberg

Panelists include:
Lee Dunn, Google
Crystal Patterson, Facebook/Instagram
Rena Shapiro, Buzzfeed
Sean Duggan, Pandora

Democratic Session presenters include:
Atlantic Ballroom

Lucinda Guinn, EMILY’s List
Kathryn Poindexter, Analyst Institute
Jessica Post, DLCC
Ian Russell, DCCC

Republican Session presenters include:
Preciosa Ballroom

Brian Baker, Ending Spending
Ryan Price, The Trailblazer Group
David Rexrode, RGA
Sean Spicer, RNC

Moderator: Thomas Shepard, Tom Shepard & Associates, Inc.

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