Name: High Tech Lobbying | Full Measure
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High Tech Lobbying | Full Measure

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When Donald Trump came to Washington, it shook up the long-established money system that both Democrats and Republicans established to influence policy. Traditional lobbying routes were disrupted. Luke Mullens of Washingtonian magazine finds lobbyists have invented fascinating new high tech ways to reach the President and his circle.Luke Mullens: The basic issue is that when Trump was elected, all of the typical channels that would have been available to most presidents, like, you know, like a Jeb Bush, he would have had people on this campaign that were familiar with folks on K street and lobbyists. So they would have had sort of some more traditional access channels. That wasn't the case with the Trump administration. There was an urgency to get to him and with those traditional channels not being there, the industry innovated. Sharyl: What are some of the tactics that they developed that were new and innovative? Luke Mullens: So one of the tactics that we talked about here is a tactic called Geo fencing. Basically what you're able to do is sort of create a grid around a specific geographic area and then serve ads using Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, just social media platforms to that specific geographic location. Sharyl: Why would somebody or an industry want to target particular ads to a geographic location and the people there? Luke Mullens: If you don't have a way to get a meeting with that person, this is one way to do it. Now, one of the reasons that this was used more is because Trump's, sort of media consumption. Obviously he does use Twitter and there was a feeling in the industry that hey, this is a medium that we can reach out to him. Sharyl: Would an example be that if he is an a Trump building and we know the President is in there, that industry interests are able to deliver ads to everybody around him in the building? Luke Mullens: Exactly. That's how it works. So you can geo fence the White House, which is, which is geo fenced all the time. You know, Congress has constantly geo-fenced. What was different here was that we were, industry was targeting ads specifically designed for Trump himself and you're going to capture other people around him. But the idea was to get directly to him and that's something we didn't see in previous eras. Sharyl: Do you know which industries did this and did they meet with any success? Luke Mullens: What the Hotel Association was doing was following him basically wherever he went. So they geo fenced the White House when he was there, Mar a Lago when he was in Florida. And even when he went to Davos, they geo-fenced the hotel that he was around and again, and they also cut an ad that used his own language from the speech in Davos to try to get his attention. They're able to do it really, really quickly. Sharyl: Is there any way to tell whether this is effective? Luke Mullens: It's so hard to know. Well, just the influence business in general is difficult to measure. This particular tactic I think is most effective when it's used in conjunction with other efforts. You wouldn't just run a geo-fencing campaign, you would use it to bolster other sort of traditional lobbying and other efforts. The big takeaway is that this is a fundamental tool in the toolbox for influencing people in Washington. What's different about what's happening now is it's all sort of being centered on Trump and the idea is to reach Trump who's known in the industry as the 'audience of one' sort of through his media consumption habits. Sharyl: Is there anything that we in the general public should be concerned when it comes to using these tactics? Luke Mullens: All of these tactics fall under the sort of broader category of sort of what's known as shadow lobbying. The concern is that we have no idea who's doing this, how much they're spending and that's a big concern. That should be a concern.Mullens is investigating even more high tech ways lobbyists plan to narrow-cast their messages to Washington’s power players in a way that happens outside normal disclosure and oversight.component-footer-debug-v1-01

When Donald Trump came to Washington, it shook up the long-established money system that both Democrats and Republicans established to influence policy. Traditional lobbying routes were disrupted. Luke Mullens of Washingtonian magazine finds lobbyists have invented fascinating new high tech ways to reach the President and his circle.Luke Mullens: The basic issue is that when Trump was elected, all of the typical channels that would have been available to most presidents, like, you know, like a Jeb Bush, he would have had people on this campaign that were familiar with folks on K street and...

High Tech Lobbying | Full Measure

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