Differentiating Strategy from Tactics in Digital Campaigns with Garima Verma | Hello Merge Tag Ep. 40

“I’ve always believed in the power of storytelling and storytelling as a means for kind of creating understanding across difference.”

Garima Verma is a strategist and storyteller who bridges the worlds of culture, politics, media and social change. With over 10 years of experience spanning entertainment, political campaigns, and impact organizations, she specializes in transforming visionary ideas into actionable strategies, impactful programming and compelling narratives on-and-offline.

She’s worked across entertainment and politics—leading digital campaigns for Mission: Impossible – Fallout, black-ish, and The Oscars, as well as for Stacey Abrams’ 2022 gubernatorial run, Dr. Jill Biden’s FLOTUS office, and the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign.

Today, she partners with mission-driven leaders and organizations—from the DCCC to GoFundMe—to help them be more strategic online and maximize their impact in the digital age.

Her and I connected to talk about the importance of differentiating between digital strategy and digital tactics, setting appropriate KPIs, what DC can learn from Hollywood, how Zohran’s campaign helped digital strategists everywhere and so much more.

Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.

Find all episodes at HelloMergeTag.com or wherever you stream podcasts.

Links

Website: garimaverma.me
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/vermagarima/
Grief Substack: https://substack.com/@gverma0518

 

Here’s the blog post I wrote comparing Zohran’s digital strategy with Cuomo’s, along with the accompanying YouTube video.

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Civic Shout. Learn more about the great work they’re doing to help Democratic campaigns and progressive nonprofits build their lists ethically at civicshout.com/partners.

Campaign Deputy. Built by progressives, for progressives, their platform gives campaigns and organizations the tools to achieve their fundraising goals. Learn more at campaigndeputy.com.

 

Episode Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and has not been copy-edited. While it can serve as a helpful guide to our conversation, it may contain errors or omissions. For the most accurate representation, we recommend listening to (or watching) the full episode.

Josh Klemons: Gerima Verma is a strategist and storyteller who bridges the worlds of culture, politics, media, and social change. With over 10 years of experience spanning entertainment, political campaigns, and impact organizations, she specializes in transforming visionary ideas into actionable strategies, impactful programming, and compelling narratives on and offline. She’s worked across entertainment and politics leading digital campaigns for Mission Impossible Fallout, Blackish, and the Oscars, as well as Stacy Abrams 2022 ginatorial run, Dr. Joel Biden’s Flotus Office, and the Biden Harris 2020 campaign.

Josh Klemons: Today, she partners with missiondriven leaders and organizations from the DRIP to GoFundMe to help them be more strategic online, and maximize their impact in the digital age. So, first of all, thank you so much for joining me here today. I’m super excited to have you on. Uh, let’s start with the big picture. You’ve worked at the intersection of culture, politics, and storytelling from Mission Impossible to the Biden campaign. Um, I too work in and outside of politics, which isn’t too not of too many of people in our field don’t. But I would like to know for you like what throughine connects the worlds of view of like Tom Cruz and Joe Biden.
Garima Verma: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: How do you approach that world when you’re going back and forth between such like extremes of like how we approach the internet?
Garima Verma: Yeah. I mean, you know, for me, even the reason I wanted to get into entertainment is because I’ve always believed in the power of storytelling and storytelling as a means for kind of creating understanding across difference.

Garima Verma: And you know, for me, knowing that the way that stories are told and the way that they’re presented is incredibly important and getting them to resonate, right? Especially when people are feeling a little bit scared or defensive or concerned and they don’t necessarily have the capacity to kind of sit with things. And I think that’s, you know, that’s something entertainment does really well often is how do we create stories that are going to get people to maybe have their guards down a little bit and understand something that they may not have. Right. I think I think often about the Hope episode of Blackish being one of the most impactful episodes on television. Like that entire show took a a black family and told their story in a way that other people can relate to them and to connect with them. And unfortunately, a lot of people off the bat see that and they don’t feel connected. And I think comedy, for example, is a really good way to be able to do that. Connecting um with families, with shared experiences, and then also learning about where your experiences differ.

Garima Verma: And I think for me, that is just the through line. Like I’ve always said in my entire career that you people can deny statistics. It’s much harder to deny stories. And I think that’s that was something that was really important to me also to bring in uh to politics because we are telling a story, right? I we as a party especially we have really great values. We are in my opinion at least better for most people in the country. But a lot of people don’t know that it’s it does isn’t enough anymore to have the right values or the good policies or good candidates. It’s how are you telling the story in connecting with the people that need to hear it in a way that is going to compel them to actually take action and get involved and and I think that that’s so important especially now when we’re living in a time in which so much is competing for limited attention is why would somebody engage with you know a a campaign or a social issue when the environment is unstable when they’re struggling financially, why would they do that over just watching a new episode of Love Island, right?

Garima Verma: And so feeling like how do we connect stories in the way we’re talking about our policies, the way we’re creating a vision for the future that people can believe in and make sure that they’re feeling everything that they want to feel. And then eventually we’ll, you know, pay more attention
Josh Klemons: um talk talk more about like so you were involved in like Blackish, right? So like how do you think that campaigns can be learning from the type of storytelling that you know Netflix and CBS are so good at um but that campaigns struggle with? And I will clarify and say like I started my own agency years ago. I could have called myself anything I wanted. What I call myself is a digital storyteller. That is how I approach everything that I do. It’s like how do we tell stories online? But you’ve been doing it at like a very large scale for again a lot of different types of organizations which is very unique I think in our industry to have somebody who like worked in movies also working on campaigns.

Josh Klemons: So like how do you take what you’re learning from like the Hollywoods of the world and bring them into the the DCs and you know whatever of the world?
Garima Verma: I think to me it’s personalizing things, Right. It’s like when you show when you show somebody’s story and people are able to find that emotional connection to that story or find that like shared experience or shared understanding then they’re more likely to be engaged and support or you know take whatever action that you want. And I think especially now we exist in a moment where people can’t afford anything. People can’t afford to live. people are struggling really really hard and that means that they’re kind of tuning out the noise right every day we read the news and it’s overwhelming and so it’s like why why should we engage and I think that the single most important thing that I think we need to do in politics is make policy personal make our campaigning personal like don’t think just about like what it is that we want people to care about actually show them why they should care right instead of talking about um a certain like social issue, explain it to them of how this directly relates to their daily lives, right?

Garima Verma: And like making sure that they understand that like we’re not just saying big words that people don’t understand and we’re not just creating policy that policy is actually a mechanism for improving people’s lives. And I think often we use all these jar jargony words. We we don’t meet people like I firmly believe in the idea of meeting people where they are. And some of that is right in digital we talk often about where are the people that you’re trying to reach. But I think part of that is also meeting them in their understanding and in their care and in their their cognitive capacity, right? Like my one of my majors in college was psychology. And I was telling somebody to the other day somehow that that was like a thing I did as a backup major because at UCLA when you get into the school you have to then get into the communications major
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Garima Verma: and it’s very it’s a very high bar. So they tell you to do a backup major and I did it and then I liked it and I kept doing it.

Garima Verma: I actually think it’s like the single most useful thing that I’ve ever done because it’s like understanding human behavior, right? And when we are when our cognitive loads are really really high, like now when we can’t afford anything, the news is overwhelming, the world feels like it’s falling apart, there’s a new natural disaster every day that we’re having to cope with, it’s really really hard for us to go and care about things that are not in our immediate like vicinity, that are not in our hierarchy of needs because our we’re really not even able to meet
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Garima Verma: basic needs. And so we need to show people how our stories and our policies are meeting their basic needs and actually making them feel seen, right? Like it’s even I remember working on Brush Off the Boat and showing my uh parents this like clip uh from the show and they were like, “Are we sure they’re not Indian?” Uh and it’s just because it was this like shared immigrant experience, right, that they they showed like that show wasn’t just about Asian-American families.

Garima Verma: it was really told us the immigrant experience and they were like wait that’s us you know and they felt connected to to a community that wasn’t their own and I feel like how do we connect all of our policies and things that we want to do directly back to people’s lives like I think often you know our in Georgia our like launch uh kind of tour that we had I say yes sorry um and like we
Josh Klemons: First, Stacy Abrams. That’s okay.
Garima Verma: one of the first stops we had was at hospital in um Cupert, Georgia. And the hospital had closed in 2020. And we heard the story about this woman who had lost her aunt who shouldn’t have lost her aunt, right? Because the closest hospital was in the next state. And she told us the story. And I think that to me was like the driving force of everything that I held with me the rest of the campaign. Because to me it was like we shouldn’t just talk about Medicaid expansion. we should talk about how her aunt would have lived and she would still be here with us today if that hadn’t happened.

Garima Verma: Right? And then that that connects emotionally with people, but it also makes them feel seen because it’s like, yeah, my, you know, relative didn’t get the care they needed because I couldn’t get to a hospital or so like what what does it mean for us to expand Medicaid and how do how does it relate to people’s stories?
Josh Klemons: on a scale of 1 to 10, how good is the Democratic Party at uh doing what you’re talking about in your opinion?
Garima Verma: I don’t want to assign a number. Um, but it’s definitely in the bottom half.
Josh Klemons: That’s fine. Are they in the top half or the bottom half as you see it?
Garima Verma: Um, and again, like it’s for me it’s it’s just it comes down to it’s not that we’re not our values are not correct, right?
Josh Klemons: Okay. All
Garima Verma: And it’s not that like we have bad policies. It’s because people don’t know about it. People don’t know that we’re fighting for them and they don’t understand.
Josh Klemons: right.

Garima Verma: And I think like a really big thing that I thought a lot about and I was thinking a lot about especially last cycle is like uh in in a hierarchy of needs, right? If I can’t afford to pay my rent, then I can’t also afford mentally to think about my reproductive rights. That’s just not what is possible, right? Like that’s not what happens. And so I think that we were we sometimes we fight the wrong fights, right? and we tell the wrong stories or we tell them in the wrong way because we aren’t necessarily seeing exactly what people in this moment need and want from us and knowing that like there were so many like post uh cycle interviews right last cycle that were like yeah I know Donald Trump is is a little nuts I don’t like a lot of the things he says but he says he’s going to make my groceries cheaper right and like that’s and it’s like people are going to when again on their cognitive load high, they’re going to vote for the thing that is going to immediately give them relief.

Josh Klemons: I’m sure said it right.
Garima Verma: And we just we’re not telling that story about how we are actually going to be the people that give them the relief because obviously we’re seeing it, right? That’s not true. Like the the story that they’re telling isn’t necessarily true, but it’s the story that resonated. And so that’s what people stuck with because that is what met them right in front of them and in the immediate need that they saw.
Josh Klemons: Yep. Um, okay. Let’s talk about strategy versus tactics. I know you’ve talked like I’ve heard you talk about like digital strategy and digital tactics often get like conflated and people struggle to differentiate between the two. So, why don’t we like define the difference and then sort of talk about how you approach one versus the other and like where they fall into building a digital strategy.
Garima Verma: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Garima Verma: I, you know, it’s funny. I’ve actually sat with this question a lot. I did a training um where we were like, you know, what we actually need to do is explain to people what strategy is.

Garima Verma: And it’s it’s this like weird concept even whether it’s in digital or not, right? It’s this weird concept that feels less tangible than tactics. So it’s hard for people to grasp um often. And I think you know it strategy really is an intentional plan to achieve very specific goals, right? It’s very like tangible, measurable goals and then it’s like a road map. It’s a direction u and it’s like a foundation from which you can work to be able to be more proactive and maximize your resources. invest time and energy in the right places. Uh, you know, stand out and also actually reach your audiences. I think often people feel like, okay, we just like need to post on social media and or we just need to make like a really cool video or we need to do, you know, XY like work with this like amazing creator. But what I always tell people is like take a step back and think about like when you’re making a really cool video, right? Who is it for?
Garima Verma: What platform is it going to go on? and will it actually have the impact um that you’re trying to get it to have? And like every time I’ve worked with creative teams, I’m like, you can make the coolest video in the world, but if it’s not reaching anybody, then it’s not actually it wasn’t worth the time, energy, and resources. And so, it’s like, how do we proactively think about those very like tangible parts of our plans and our goals and then approach the rest of our tactics in a more meaningful way? And I think it also helps with, you know, making sure that you’re not spreading yourself too thin and you’re actually going deep and having an impact. Like I did a training recently for New American Leaders and a few of the candidates came up to me and were like, I’m doing my own stuff. I don’t know how to post on every platform.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Garima Verma: I don’t know how to do this. And that was and she was like, I’m overwhelmed, right? And I was like, take a step back, figure out like where are your people, right?

Garima Verma: Where in your community are people actually getting their information? like the the key constituents, right, in your district, where are they getting their information and focus until you have more resources? Focus on doing that one really well or that those two really well instead of trying to be everything for everyone, right?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah. I always tell folks like, you know, don’t be on two social platforms if you’re struggling to do one, you know, like the goal is not to be everywhere. The goal is to be doing good work someplace uh and expanding as you can.
Garima Verma: Exactly.
Josh Klemons: And I mean, I I think there is a tactics question to that, like understanding how to post correctly and, you know, making sure that you’re doing it correctly.
Garima Verma: Move on.
Josh Klemons: But let’s talk about the strategy side because I think that’s something you have like a lot of experience u building digital strategies for very like diverse and broad you know uh organizations. So let’s start with blank sheet of paper. How do you start building a strategy for again for the Oscars or Mission Impossible or you know Stacy Abrams when it comes to digital strategy like where do you start?

Josh Klemons: Um yeah take us from the beginning. How do you start something like that?
Garima Verma: To me, it’s it’s information gathering at first, right? It’s like getting the full picture and then figuring out how to piece it together. And I think it’s understanding like who are you trying to talk to, right? If you’re re and like what are the goals? Are you trying to for the Oscars? Are you trying to expand the audience or are you trying to get existing people to tune in? And um are you trying within a campaign? It’s like in this exact moment in time, are you trying to get donations or are you trying to get volunteers or are you trying to get people to vote, right? Like what are the what are the specific pieces that we’re trying to do in this moment and who are the people that we can actually get them to, you know, get to do it? What are other people doing in the space, right? Like what are you competing against?

Garima Verma: Uh what are your audience’s most immediate needs? It’s like it’s doing all of those deep dives really, especially like now, right? It’s so complicated to reach anybody. We’re being driven deeper and deeper into our echo chambers. We’re in such a like hyperfragmented environment. People are people’s like actions and behaviors are really unpredictable and it so it’s even more important that we’re creating specifically for our the moment and our audiences. And so really it’s like doing all of that information, understanding where the opportunities are. What does success look like? I think that’s another piece that a lot of people miss is they’re like, “Okay, we have these goals, but what are what does it look like if you actually accomplish those goals?” Uh how specific can you be? Whether it’s qualitative or quantitative metrics, even if it’s just moving sentiment or, you know, whatever it is, like how do you match also the success metric to the correct like action that you’re trying to get people to take? And then after you have a bunch of information, understanding like where are those people?

Garima Verma: What are the tactics that you can use to reach them? Is it that there are creators in the community that are really uh well like trusted and those are the people you need to reach out to uh to run a creator campaign? Is it that you might need to run some ad campaigns in like specific uh areas that like are hyperargeted by like demographic or location? Is it that you just need to go it really hard on Facebook groups? Like people forget about Facebook, but there’s a lot of places where people are still using it. Like where I grew up, people are still using Facebook. Um my mom is constantly in Facebook groups uh too. And that’s like how all the people are communicating, right? And so it’s like where really gathering that information and then and then allocating resources like you have x amount of money, you have x amount of time and people and resources to expend it. Where do you expend it in the best way? And then at what points in your campaign can you get more information or resources or position especially digital people in inside of it instead of an afterthought.

Garima Verma: I think often we’ve all struggled as to show people to be like you get the information so late that you can’t actually do what you need to accomplish their goals and then you’re trying to like scramble um you know so it’s really like how do we then try to get the appropriate access and information and opportunities to then be able to accomplish those goals. So, I think it’s like really just thinking intentionally about everything you do, especially knowing that right now if you are not thinking intentionally, you’re losing people because everyone is so deep in their echo chambers.
Josh Klemons: you um what are key performance indicators you look to other than winning your election like a specifically for a campaign but I guess even for the Oscars like if they want to like increase you know viewership okay but like how do you approach that for a political campaign obviously the goal is to win the election but if you’re only focused on that you’re going to have a really hard time getting there right like there’s got to
Garima Verma: Yep.
Josh Klemons: be other ways to be thinking about this so do you have like set KPIs that you think about um on a day-to-day basis or is it is it completely determined based on the campaign and like what their particular goals are and their theory of the case

Garima Verma: It’s it’s it’s completely determined. I’ve actually been in some of these trainings describing uh like get perfecting like your digital strategy as uh almost being like dating where it’s like all of these stars have to align for you to actually meet your person, right? Some which you can control and some that you can’t. And I think that because of that now and because of how difficult it is to get people to go and take action, right? Especially like like voting is a very high effort, high barrier to entry action. the same way honestly going to the movies was when we were working in theatrical like people don’t want to go to the movies anymore. So you have to really compel them to go. And so it really depends on the circumstance of the campaign, of the district, of the moment we’re in, of the type of audiences that you need to move, right? But what I do think about often is what are the series of smaller actions that we can get people to take that will then ultimately make it so that voting feels like less of an action, right?

Garima Verma: And it can be as small as and again it depends on like how much name ID does the does the candidate already have? How much engagement do they already have? Are they starting from scratch? Do they already have uh donors? Like what does that look like? And then okay knowing where the people are. What small things can you do? Like I to me like digital is not meant to replace any other aspects of campaigning. It’s meant to enhance the impact, right? Like if your goal right now is to get volunteers because you’re really early on, like you can go and get warm leads by looking at your DMs, right, on your social accounts or the people that are frequently commenting and then you’re more likely to get people to actually uh come and volunteer because they’ve already taken that smaller action of DMing you or engaging with your social accounts. And so I think again it really depends, but I think it’s like how do you find smaller KPIs that then will move people and progress them into making the bigger one like voting or going to the movies a lot seem like less effort.

Josh Klemons: I’d love to dig deeper as somebody who’s like worked with Hollywood like on that idea of like going to the movies like because it’s an interesting it’s an interesting connection, right? Like I wouldn’t necessarily compare it to voting, but I would compare it to like volunteering or even donating like you know Hollywood’s trying to get us to go to the movies and political campaigns are trying to get us
Garima Verma: No. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: to get involved. Have you seen any strategies from Hollywood that you think we could be implementing as it comes to like moving people down that like you know that funnel um as as you will?
Garima Verma: And I do really talk to I I continue to talk to my friends in entertainment to get kind of a a pulse check because everything I do kind of comes from that space, right? Like comes from that uh background.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Garima Verma: And my first job was at a media agency, like learning the intricacies of like it was half at Disney, half at this media agency. So like really learned both like what it means to be doing paid media and then also um like in-house.

Garima Verma: Uh like it was it was interesting. It was like a really cool kind of job straddling both. And so I still talk to a lot of them and I think that they are being much more like tailored and focused with the way that they’re expending their resources, right? or like strategic. There are still things, you know, my friends at Entertainment say that they wish they had more of, right? But they do have a lot more intentionality with the way that they’re targeting specific audiences, with the way that they’re expending resources, and also the way that they’re like message testing and understanding that, you know, people don’t read messages or perceive messages in isolation. They see they perceive them in the context, right? where they’re seeing it, what they saw before and after, who they’re seeing it from, is it a video, is it a podcast, like what is it? Like the format matters. And so they are doing a lot more of that like in context message testing, which we don’t do a ton of.

Garima Verma: Um, and they’re being political campaigns.
Josh Klemons: We we being political campaigns and advocacy works. Got it.
Garima Verma: Yeah. Yeah. We often do, right, like isolated message testing that it’s not within context.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Garima Verma: And I think that has value, but in this fragmented world, it’s more it’s important that context is also like resonating right across audiences. And so they’re doing a lot more of that. Like I, you know, I think a really big kind of indicator of this is like Netflix is ch like is rolling out a new interface, right, for the first time I think I think since their founding. Don’t quote me on that. Um, but like they’re Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I mean DV DVDs I guess was the first interface but okay since going streaming I didn’t know that like walk us through what’s it going to look like what are they changing yeah I haven’t seen it oh interesting
Garima Verma: So, I actually I actually haven’t gotten it yet, but I my friend did, so I actually like explored it.
Garima Verma: I’ve read about it, but I I actually explored it. It’s extremely tailored to your to your needs. Like, they already were doing stuff, right? They were already the key art that you see all Exactly.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I knew that they show they show actors based on who they think you’ll be most interested, which is like a wild way to think about like consuming movies and TV shows is like some random like literally I’ll
Garima Verma: Right. Like, Yep.
Josh Klemons: sometimes see like a random background character and there the one on the cover and it’s like okay I guess you know I like the office so there’s Jim whatever.
Garima Verma: I know sometimes you feel deceived, right, where you’re like, I that person was in one scene.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Right. I mean literally I’ve had that happen. Um, so
Garima Verma: Um, yeah, but like, right, it’s it’s kind of interesting because it was already like a little bit they were even when even when I was in our team, I remember like learning about how they had dynamic banner ads and that was something we weren’t doing yet, right?

Garima Verma: and they’ve always been kind of a little bit ahead of that and they they’re now it’s just it’s meant to be a personalized hub, right? It’s like more recom more more hyper tailored recommendations like you’re not even necessarily always uh going to see everything everyone else sees. It’s the way that right like algorithms are built for time spent on platform and so they want to serve you content that you’re interested in and will engage in so you stay on their platform. That’s I that’s my theory of what they’re trying to to fix, right? That sometimes we all spend so much time scrolling trying to find the right show or movie that we then give up and go somewhere else. And but if they if your home page now is hyper tailored to your interests and it’s only it’s not going to serve you just the top stuff, it’s going to serve you actual really deep recommendations by category and things like that, then you’re more likely to actually find something that you want to watch without effort.
Josh Klemons: It’s going to feel more like Tik Tok.

Garima Verma: Yeah. I think I again don’t quote me on this. I I think I saw somewhere that he like that they said in their announcement that they want to be more like Tik Tok.
Josh Klemons: Interesting. Um, yeah. I mean, I totally get it. like why not show me things that I want to watch instead of like I don’t care what the top 10 shows are on Netflix if they know that nine of them are not going to be interesting to me and it’s true how many times have I spent like searching for something on Netflix found nothing and just turned it off you know like which obviously is like they they hate to see it you know it is what it is um no it’s really interesting so and okay can you talk about um how you ensure that digital is woven into every part of a campaign um like as folks are developing these strategies and I think like movies it’s interesting but also campaigns obviously like we have policy, we have field, we have comms like digital has to like play a role in all of that and I assume like in movies as well but how do

Garima Verma: Yeah. Is it If I’m totally honest with you, almost every digital person I talk to feels like they have never gotten the kind of um information access integration
Josh Klemons: you help organizations make sure that digital is like assisting in every component of their larger program
Garima Verma: that they needed to succeed. And I can say that I feel the same way. And I think it’s like a few things that are interesting, right? Is like one, and this is something I’ve actually been working with people on is when like when I started in digital, you had to be a generalist, right? like that just was the case. You had to do everything and people didn’t really know what it meant. So, you really did a lot of stuff, right? And now people are hyper specialized, which is really cool and like really awesome that people know a lot about creators or a lot about paid or a lot about email or a lot about social. Um, but because of that, often like people can’t see the bigger picture of how they all need to work together and then how they need to work within a campaign.

Garima Verma: And so as much as I can try to get people to think about, you know, how if there’s like a big moment that usually I’ll take like a big moment, right? If there’s a big moment for your campaign, if there’s a big policy launch that you know is going to be really important in your district, like even from the early stages, how do you talk to your digital team and like with your policy team and understand that right so much is timely. We know how quickly things get lost. So how do you make sure that this policy launch like maybe the digital team can give you a sense of what is going to be timing like conversationally where this is going to like land more because it’s going to be relevant to um the thing that you’re talking you know you want to talk about how then as you’re going through and writing out the policy can you work with them to figure out early on how to adapt that into messaging that will work for the website work for um you know different digital platforms work for your ads and then also like test things out.

Garima Verma: Like that’s one thing I really like telling people too, right? Is it takes a really long time for us to get focus groups or polling data back. Digital gives you real time information. Like it’s so cool. Like that’s that’s amazing. And it’s it’s also a really interesting way to then in in that policy launch once you figured that all out, how do you test out what pieces of it are resonating and where and with whom? And then you can use that to one reach more people, two like maximize the you know the impact of it and reach of it and then also you can take some of those learnings and put it in your next speeches or help it shape your next event and then overall like your policy has a greater impact because it’s really probably fantastic but then people can understand it right like we we say like we have what two to four seconds online to get people’s attention and then I think it’s like 54 seconds is the average time spent on websites but now it’s even less because of AI and because we are all being uh whether we are adopting uh AI or it is being forced upon us like within Google search or yeah like we’re it’s kind of clear whether we like it or not and there have been a lot of studies recently showing that

Josh Klemons: We’re being adopted by it, baby. Right. Right. Getting the summer.
Garima Verma: people are clicking on websites less because they’re just reading those summaries and so now it’s like how do we make sure that the language on the website is going to be something that gets pulled into those like those
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Garima Verma: responses or if somebody sees something or hears something at a speech and they go to the website they can very quickly find the information that they need. It’s not hard to sift through. Uh and then it just overall that has a greater impact, right? It it makes it makes it more accessible for people. I mean like even like an anecdotal example like I was canvasing um for uh Soron’s campaign in New York City and if people had like if I if I was you know people people don’t like talking to strangers
Josh Klemons: All
Garima Verma: especially in New York but like nobody wants to answer the doors nobody wants to talk to strangers like everyone’s just kind of like this right but if I I you know I’m just a persistent person and if I went up to somebody and they I’d said his name and they were like oh I saw a video of him online they were more to stop and talk to me and like want to learn more, right?

Josh Klemons: right.
Garima Verma: And that was just like to me an anecdotal example of like wow our canvasing is more impactful because I still think canvasing is like one of the most important things that we can do, right? Human connection cannot be replaced in that way. But it’s almost like how do you then lower the barrier to entry for somebody to talk to a stranger? They’ve seen your thing online. They saw an interview with him with their favorite influencer or you know something like that. and that and then they were going to talk to me more often and then they were like so some people have like very specific questions about something they had seen right and that’s cool because they saw one thing about him and they were like I saw this but what does that mean or how does that work and I was like yeah let’s talk about it and it just makes it more it it made it more likely that somebody was going to talk to me and that I could actually convert them into a supporter right

Josh Klemons: This audience has heard me talk often about the fact that like I am a firm believer that Facebook ads can get people to open the doors. Um, and I’ve had candidates literally like go to neighborhoods and like parts of town they’ve never been to and people are opening their doors not just saying I know you, but that I’m voting for you based on like their familiarity from Facebook. I’m a huge advocate that like name ID and like recognition is absolutely the first like awareness like if you don’t have awareness, you don’t have interest, you don’t have desire, you don’t have action, right?
Garima Verma: What?
Josh Klemons: Um, since you brought up Zoron because I didn’t want to like put you on the spot and I still don’t want to. So, let me know. But since you brought up Zoron, I think he’s a really interesting example because everybody in the world is following his campaign in a very weird way for like a, you know, like what’s essentially a down ballot campaign. Um, let’s talk about his campaign as an example of strategies versus tactics.

Josh Klemons: Um, because he’s clearly got a hell of a strategy and then he’s clearly got a whole lot of tactics. And I think it might be helpful going back to that idea like differentiating between the two like which of the parts of the campaign would you like clarify as strategy or how would you define the Zoron strategy versus the many many many fascinating tactics that his team are clearly like innovating in front of our eyes.
Garima Verma: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one, I’m very grateful to them because I don’t know about you, but I feel like after his primary win, everybody started caring about digital in a way that I’ve never seen before.
Josh Klemons: I know it’s so funny. I’m like hello. We’ve been talking about this for years. I’ve been telling you to do this for years, but I’m so glad they’re on board now.
Garima Verma: I know. I feel the same way where I’m like, “Wow, it’s like we’ve been doing this for over a decade and trying to get you to see this and now finally people see it.”

Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Garima Verma: And I’m I’m very grateful to their campaign for that.
Josh Klemons: 100% positive way of saying that.
Garima Verma: Like, it really opened the doors, right?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Garima Verma: um which is really I’m very grateful for that. Um I think you know they they really thought about who they needed to convert and where they needed to go and how to make how to like really understand what people need. Right? His early videos were going around New York uh post election being like what do you need? Like what is important to you? What do you care about?
Josh Klemons: post 2024 election.
Garima Verma: Yeah. I I think it was again like no no before Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. The Trump election. But yeah. Yeah. Not not his election like before before he was running. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Garima Verma: before he even like officially ran, he was going around New York City and asking people and posting videos about this is what matters to New Yorkers, right?

Josh Klemons: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm.
Garima Verma: And then he would ask them, would you vote for somebody who like prioritize these things? So like even from the get-go, his policies were built by listening to New Yorkers. Um, and part of that listening was like you post the video and then you see how people react, right? And like it’s not just in-person listening. It’s he didn’t just ask people, he went around and posted it so that other people could also join the conversation. And I think just even starting there, that’s how you get to the root of what people care about. And then it was like, how do we take those messages and those policies, right? Knowing that people need affordable housing, that’s like one of the biggest things in New York is none of us can afford to live here uh most of the time.
Josh Klemons: Yes.
Garima Verma: And knowing that that was a theme that he saw from all of those people, he was like, “How do I take that and then message it into something meaningful?”

Garima Verma: and and consistent. I think like one of the biggest things that I try to explain to people is like strategy is not rigid. It actually just gives you a foundation and a north star and a baseline to then be able to react correctly. Like we’re being as a campaign and especially his campaign like was inundated with so much stuff and pushed in so many directions and pushed in like and asked a lot of questions that maybe they probably shouldn’t have asked him, right? and he stuck to his foundation, but he still adapted his answer to the answers and content and whatever to the environment, right? It was like, I am still going to stick with my values, but I’m know that in this case, like I need to react or not react. This case, I need to make a video or not make a video. Um, and then I think like also strategically being transparent with people, right? Even the fact that he makes videos that are like, don’t give me money anymore, like that’s question.

Josh Klemons: I mean, it’s a special situation that he can do it, but like you never see a political campaign do that, right? Like outside New York, that’s a very hard thing to do.
Garima Verma: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: But like, yeah, he went super viral for his first post saying, “Please stop giving me money.” And it’s like just such a wild thing to hear a candidate say, you know?
Garima Verma: And I think that’s like that’s transparency because that’s it’s really smart to me because it’s like then if people want to help and their default is giving money, you’re now telling them that they’re that they can’t do that anymore. So go do something else, right?
Josh Klemons: Got to find something else. Yeah. Yeah.
Garima Verma: and like most people think feel the don donating is a much lower barrier entry than volunteering right and it was like oh if you actually care about him go donate your time and not your money and I think it was really like understanding the environment look we’re talking about affordability the people that are probably going to vote for him are not or like there were a lot of young people right can’t afford always to be donating anyways but hey you can donate your time right um and a lot of the partnerships that they did the cross endorsements that they did like it you know a lot of the the content that they did with like
Josh Klemons: Right.
Garima Verma: influencers and things like that, like that was all that all felt very targeted and intentional and it created conversation in a way that was really meaningful. And again, even with creators, right, it was like he still had his core message, but the message was then adaptable to the audiences and the places in which he was showing up and the people that he was showing up with. And I think that I actually think um a really good example of tactics versus strategy is Andrew Cromo’s independent launch video, right?
Josh Klemons: I was I was going to ask if you could talk about Cuomo strategy.
Garima Verma: I use that there. That’s exactly what I was going to Well, you I’m way ahead of you.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Garima Verma: Um I literally included it in my last presentation because I was like, you know, the fundamental to me is like what works for one candidate and one campaign isn’t going to necessarily work for another, right?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No, I love it. I love it.
Garima Verma: You have to find your intersection of like opportunity and authenticity.

Garima Verma: And I think that vid independent launch video was the perfect example of that, right? He took uh a lot of what Soon’s videos were and then he tried to just copy and paste it, right? And put himself in that scenario and without again thinking about who are the people that he needs to connect with as now he’s launching independent campaign. Who is he as a person, right? who is he as a a candidate and how does he relate to people and knowing that like his way of relating to people is not the same as Zoron’s, right? And so literally taking Zoron’s concept of walking around and meeting people in the community didn’t work for him. It was awkward. It was uncomfortable. And like all the interviews before he launched, he was like, “You know what? I’ve learned I’ve learned I need to do social media.” And I think that’s what people do, right? They’re like now what the learnings they’re taking from Zoron’s campaign is like oh we need to do social media but they’re wanting to copy and paste it and you see this example right here where you know Andrew Kuo in you know Zoran did the video where he walks fully down um all of Manhattan and that’s I would say the closest one to one with uh what Andrew Kuo’s video was and he’s walking in a similar block

Josh Klemons: Okay.
Garima Verma: like we live in New York we can identify like every time I watch a movie I’m like oh that’s there oh I wonder what like neighborhood this is in because like we all here right And you can kind of see it. His is just kind of in a similar neighborhood. His interactions with the voters are uncomfortable and awkward and not warm and authentic and enthusiastic. And there is a way for him to do digital that could work for him as a candidate with his relationship to the city and understanding of the city and the things that he cares about. But instead, like they he he went and did the tactic, right? He was like, I need to do more more social media. but he didn’t think about it strategically and probably spent a ton of time and money and energy on a video that frankly just got dragged on the internet because it is not good.
Josh Klemons: dragged. Yep.
Garima Verma: It’s just really
Josh Klemons: So, I talk often about how like C for candidates like you’re not a superhero, you’re a megaphone.

Josh Klemons: And I wound up writing a blog post and doing a YouTube video about using the Zoron versus Cuomo like video programs because what most people miss about Zoron, like yes, they see video, but video was actually never the point. It was the tactic. The strategy was lifting up other people’s voices. And he literally I’ve never seen a candidate do such a good job of being a megaphone for the people they want to serve. And he literally was saying, “What are your issues? How can I listen to you better?” Whereas Cuomo, it was all about him. If you watch so many of his videos or people coming up, “Love you, man. Love you, man.” And I say in my my blog post in the video, like I’m sure Zoran could break the freaking servers of Twitter showing videos of people saying they love him, but he never shows any of that because it’s not the point. He doesn’t need to be the the star of the show. Instead, he’s the one like lifting up the microphone for the people.

Josh Klemons: And I think that is like Cuomo completely missed that. He thinks video was the strategy. Video was the tactic that lifted up the strategy.
Garima Verma: Exactly. Exactly right. Like and and I think that when people think about tactics, they just think about posting on social, but there’s content strategy and tactics and there’s like more of that like execution like implementation like there and you know, especially now, right? Like again the moment that we’re in there’s significant distrust in our institutions in like our political parties and our government like I think there was a Pew study that was like 85% of Americans don’t think elected officials care what people like them think right and so he met the moment it was like people don’t think that the government can work for them people don’t think that their elected officials actually care what they think and so he took that and was like I’m going to show you that I there and I’m going to show you that I’m one of you. Like that’s one of the biggest things I think I’ve been telling, you know, candidates that I’ve been working with is people because people don’t trust parties or politicians or government anymore.

Garima Verma: How do you show people that you are one of them, that you are from there, right, from your district, that you are like actually listening to them and have their best interest at heart and that’s that’s how you
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Garima Verma: win, right? We can’t win anymore by just campaigning as a party or campaigning on party values because people don’t trust us anymore.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Garima Verma: People don’t trust people. I mean, but that’s like true of like the news too, right? Like people don’t trust uh information anymore when it comes from like news networks and uh editorial platforms that they used to. They trust individuals and they trust people. And that’s like even that it’s like there is generally a distrust overall of any kind of institution and system and so and there’s trust in individuals. So how do you create a vision of the future that people can believe in and show them that you’re one of them and that you care about them like Zon did. It’s like oh I’m from here I I grew up here.

Garima Verma: My story is the New York story and I care about what you think. I know that it’s expensive to live here. I know that, you know, it it can it’s the greatest city in the world that has a lot of potential, but only if we’re our systems and our government are supposed are able to help you reach your potential. And I think that is like such a beautiful thing. It’s like he became a trusted figure. It wasn’t necessarily just him as the Democrat that’s running, right, from Zoran’s campaign or just in general?
Josh Klemons: All right. Uh, if folks listening to our conversation take just one thing away from it, what would you want it to be? No. From you, from this conversation. Yeah. Like what’s the one thing people should be thinking about when they’re developing a digital strategy?
Garima Verma: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: when they’re differentiating between uh strategy and tactics, when they’re trying to figure out how to navigate like building trust and raising name ID in order to be like taken seriously when they knock the door, like what’s like and it doesn’t have to be one.

Josh Klemons: You can give us three, but like what do you want people to do actionably like walking away from this conversation?
Garima Verma: Absolutely. So I always tell people that uh my passion in life is making people more strategic. Um, and it’s because again strategy is this abstract con concept. And I think that one of the most important things I think for people to understand is that we live in a complicated media environment where the same person and the same household is not even getting their information from the same places or the same people. We are living in this environment in which we used to be able to have a linear path from uh awareness to action. Right now I think Google’s new study said it looks like a pinball machine.
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Garima Verma: people are unpredictable. Getting them to do anything is very, very hard. And all of that means that if you aren’t being strategic, you’re not playing to win. If you aren’t investing, like we have limited resources, right? We’re in a poor economic time.

Garima Verma: Uh which means that it’s more important than ever to invest your resources, time, and energy into the places where it’s actually going to work. And I think that that is the most important thing is that take a beat, think about how, where, why, what, right, you need to be doing and then execute and take action. Be more proactive so that when you do have to be reactive, you already have things in place to be able to guide you and you’re not just panicking. Like I think often in politics, right, we’re just reacting to the news of the day and trying to to figure out what to say, how to pivot, what to do. But if you have that early integration and that early investment in strategy, it makes it easier to handle anything that comes and to also like deploy your tactics or your resources when you need them and actually reach people, actually engage them, and then hopefully move them into action. It’s it’s not you don’t get short-term like feedback, right? You’re not necessarily like doing the strategy work isn’t going to give you a like on a post, but the strategy work will make what you do more impactful, help you actually reach your audiences and then hopefully win and not waste a lot of time, money, energy that you could be using elsewhere for other things.

Josh Klemons: Uh, anyone you think is doing a great job at digital right now other than Zoro? And Andrew Cuomo, of course.
Garima Verma: Oh yes, 100%. Um, I think we’re starting to see it. I still think I think my my biggest feeling right now is what I was saying you to earlier is that we’ve all become so specialized in campaigning in digital that I think a lot of people they’re doing certain aspects of it really well, like aspects of digital really well, but they’re not necessarily doing the overall strategy really well. And it’s, you know, often I talk to a lot of like people who are specialists. They’re social specialists, paid specialists, uh, creator specialists, and they feel also that they’re like not able to do their best work because people don’t understand and don’t have a strategy in place.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Garima Verma: And so it’s hard to say that like, oh, you know, one person is doing this really, really well. I think some people are doing parts of it well, right? I think like they’re not a lot of people are not doing the whole picture well and seeing how each of the pieces needs to work with each other.

Garima Verma: How you’re not duplicating efforts, how you’re not like how you’re creating the biggest possible cohesive impact of your digital instead of like, okay, we’re doing a really good creator program or we’re really good on TikTok or we’re have really cool ads. um how do you make sure each of them works together and is actually making that even that greatest impact within digital, right? It’s not to me it’s not just like are you integrating digital into uh the rest of your campaign. It’s also are you integrating each piece of like what digital means because it’s so many things into an overall strategy as well. And so it’s hard because I feel like some people are doing specific things really well but not a lot of people are seeing the whole picture, right? their email program isn’t necessarily complementing their like paid ads or you know even like as little as like I remember coming into a campaign and being surprised that the the direct to donate ads and the uh persuasion ad
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Garima Verma: people and mobilization ad people didn’t exchange information because right like we talk about frequency often but there’s an optimal frequency you can spam people too much and ask too many things of them uh as much as you can

Josh Klemons: You definitely can.
Garima Verma: not message them enough and it’s like but those some so if they’re not talking to each other the same people are getting a donation message and a mobilization message and when you’re in the goot TV window you want
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Garima Verma: them to be voting and you want to go hard on the voting message you don’t want to overwhelm them with multiple messages and so like that kind of thing is where I think it’s hard because it’s like then you’re you might lose people right who you had one way or another because each of the aspects aren’t talking to each
Josh Klemons: Yeah, absolutely. How can folks keep in touch with you moving forward if they’re looking to develop a better strategy? Should they give you a call or are you uh are you looking to meet folks? But mostly, how can folks find you online?
Garima Verma: Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, I I guess my email, I don’t know. I have a website, but uh LinkedIn, honestly, anything is good.
Josh Klemons: LinkedIn, whatever you want.

Josh Klemons: up to you. What’s your website?
Garima Verma: Uh, it’s by firstname last name.me um gammodorma.me.
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Garima Verma: And yes, I again my passion in life is making people more strategic. And so I love to work with people on individual level. I’m doing like trainings and panels, but then I’m also right now developing like what are long-term kind of uh systems level solutions that we can create that are scalable and help make this easier, right? Like is there a way for us to use like AI chatbots to ask people the right kinds of questions to then give them uh the template that they need? Everybody I talked to, right? mostly we don’t have the time, energy, knowledge to be able to build strategy often. So, I’ve been thinking a lot about how do you how do we lower even lower the barrier to entry to campaigns? Like, how everyone I work with wants a template? And I’m like, but I can’t give you a template because, you know, the stars need to align.

Garima Verma: It’s complicated and there’s too many considerations.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Garima Verma: And so, that’s another thing I’ve been thinking about is like how do we develop those kind of like longer term solutions where people it can be easier and remove the blockers for people to be able to think strategically.
Josh Klemons: If you develop that or when you finish developing that, come back on the pod and tell us about it. I’d love to hear more about it. It sounds super interesting. Uh because I agree like I worked 30 campaigns last cycle, you know, like and not no two campaigns have the same exact strategy. I mean the end goal is the end goal is always the same.
Garima Verma: Come on.
Josh Klemons: Um but the process to get there is always different. So the idea of having like a toolkit like developing my toolkit to figure out like how do we like figure out what our goals are here today, you know, like beyond just winning is always something that I’m working
Garima Verma: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: on and always looking to improve.

Josh Klemons: So yeah, this was super fun and like I I think it’s a really interesting again like I’m very interested in like your background leading to like what you’re working on now. Um I too like not at the level of like dealing with the Oscars but like you know like working in like corporate world and like nonprofit world and like a lot of other spaces and bringing that into politics
Garima Verma: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I think makes our party stronger and I think a lot of folks in our party have just like worked in the party their whole life. And so like it’s we’ve got to like look outside of it to learn what’s working elsewhere. So that’s why I’m so excited to have you on and uh I really appreciate you coming on and uh I’ll make sure to have your website in the uh show notes.
Garima Verma: Yeah. Wait, it’s my last name and then first name.
Josh Klemons: Um did did you want to tell is your LinkedIn just your name? I can put that in the show notes.
Garima Verma: Um, I can give it to you.

Josh Klemons: Okay, cool. I’ll put that in the show notes as well.
Garima Verma: I mean, I, you know, at some point I’m like, I have a substack, too, if anybody wants to go, but it has, it has nothing to do with this.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Yeah, whatever. Promote it. What’s it called?
Garima Verma: It’s I write about grief, uh, because I think that we don’t talk about grief enough, and it is extremely taboo and it’s a lonely experience, especially when you’re young. So that that’s also I I mean it’s also just my uh let me just let me I’ll just send you all the links.
Josh Klemons: What’s it called? Your name.
Garima Verma: Hold on. Let me let me look and double check.
Josh Klemons: All the links will be in the show notes uh which you can find at hello.
Garima Verma: Uh it’s 0518.

Josh Klemons: Well, thank you so much for coming on the pod and I look forward to learning more from you in the years to come.
Garima Verma: It’s been such a delight and really happy to be here.