“You’re basically seeing your psyche projected back at you when you open any of these social apps these days.”
Ryan Davis is a longtime progressive digital strategist. He got his start as an internet organizer on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, worked on Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign, and later founded Blue State Digital’s social media team. Since then, he’s worked with hundreds of nonprofits and campaigns around the world. Today, he’s the Founder and CEO of People First, one of the largest social impact influencer agencies in the US, and the author of The Month in Digital.
In this episode, Ryan and I get nerdy about what influencer work actually looks like heading into 2026—especially for campaigns that don’t have a huge budget, a big staff, or celebrities on speed dial.
We talk about why “influencers” shouldn’t be treated like a replacement for celebrity endorsements, why micro and nano creators can be more useful than the biggest names on your feed, and why the real point isn’t “going viral.” The point is scaling persuasion the same way you scale field: more trusted messengers, more conversations, more communities, more repetition.
We also dig into platform fragmentation (your internet is not my internet), why Nextdoor is an underrated battleground for hyperlocal issue conversations, and why campaigns and orgs should be investing in owned content like email and blogs—not just to fundraise, but to tell stories and show up in the places people are now getting information (including AI-driven search).
If you’re trying to run a modern comms program without losing your mind, this one’s for you.
Some key takeaways from my conversation with Ryan
- How campaigns are using influencer relationships right now
Ryan’s big macro observation: influencer work is finally getting “a seat at the table” earlier in the cycle. Not just as a last-minute launch stunt, but as an integrated part of campaign communications—at least for the better-funded and more strategic shops. - How the TikTok sale affected influencer work (it’s not how you think)
Instead of “killing” influencer work, the uncertainty pushed campaigns to remember something obvious: there are other networks. Ryan said he’s now seeing more openness to prefer , X, Nextdoor, podcasts, Substack communities, and other channels where people actually spend time. - We nerded out on Nextdoor (yes, it’s a thing)
Nextdoor is hyperlocal by design, which makes it powerful for geographic organizing and issue advocacy—especially when other platforms make it hard to get truly local reach. But you can’t treat it like an ad platform. You have to approach it like a subreddit or a neighborhood Facebook group: start a real conversation, don’t be salesy, and lead with the issue. - Big influencers vs micro/nano influencers
Ryan described it as a “pyramid of influence.” The top of the pyramid gets attention, but the bottom of the pyramid moves people—especially in specific geographies and communities. One of the most useful rules of thumb he shared: the bigger the following, the less local the audience tends to be. Creators under ~20,000 followers often have the strongest local density. - Influencers aren’t about “going viral.” They’re about scaling field
One of the best reframes from the episode: influencer work should be thought of as scaling your door-knocking operation, not chasing celebrity endorsements. The goal is credible messengers reaching the people you need to reach—not racking up arbitrary view counts that don’t translate into votes, persuasion, or action. - Why your internet is different than everyone else’s (and why that matters)
Ryan nailed a hard truth campaigns forget constantly: the feed is personalized. If you’re politically engaged, you’re going to see political content—and you’ll overestimate how well your candidate’s content is doing because you’re sending all the signals that you want more of it. The real challenge is getting into the feeds of the people who aren’t already “in the room.” - Why it’s time to think beyond the viral launch video
A launch video can be great. But Ryan argued it’s often more powerful to have creators from the specific communities you need reach introduce the candidate (for example, via green screen, commentary, or community-specific storytelling) rather than hoping a single polished bio video does the work. - How to do influencer work with a small budget
For downballot races, Ryan emphasized treating creator outreach like organizing. Do the search work. Build a list. Reach out. Be a human. Use what you have that isn’t money: access, relationships, community, events, VIP-ish moments, and recognition. You can sometimes start with simple things (like covering transit/transportation, inviting someone in, giving them access), but scaling a serious program requires real budget. - The new tool People First launched for small campaigns: Val
People First recently launched Val—an AI agent designed to help smaller campaigns and orgs find and connect with local creators without needing a full-service agency team. The concept is straightforward: help campaigns identify creators, write briefs, manage outreach, and run lightweight influencer programs that would otherwise be too complex or too expensive. - Email still matters—but your email can’t only be fundraising
We talked about the decline in small-dollar performance and the broader “fundraising-only email” problem. Ryan’s point was simple: if every email is just “GIVE NOW,” you’re training people to ignore you. The best programs mix fundraising with storytelling, persuasion, and real updates that make people actually want to open the next message. - Blogging, Substack, and the new reality of SEO/AEO
Ryan and I got aligned fast here: Substack is great for community, but it doesn’t help organizations in the same way a real website blog does for discoverability—especially in an era where AI tools are synthesizing answers from indexed web content. If your organization wants to show up in search and in AI-driven answers, you need owned, indexable content on your site. - Serialization that isn’t about the candidate
One of my favorite ideas from the conversation: serialized content that’s about the campaign or the issues, but not dependent on the candidate being the main character. Ryan floated the idea of docu-style vertical series where a staffer or organizer becomes the through-line—letting campaigns produce consistent, platform-friendly storytelling without needing the candidate to carry every single episode.
My favorite quote (and the mindset shift it demands): “You’re basically seeing your psyche projected back at you when you open any of these social apps these days,” he wasn’t just describing algorithmic personalization—he was describing a strategic trap campaigns fall into.
If the people on your team are highly engaged political consumers, your internal sense of “what’s breaking through” is going to be skewed. You’re in the bubble by definition. The job isn’t to dominate the bubble. The job is to build enough credible, distributed messengers (and enough repeatable content) to reach the people who aren’t thinking about you at all.
If you’re running digital for a campaign or nonprofit and you’re trying to build something sustainable—something that reaches beyond the choir—this conversation will give you a bunch of practical ways to think about creator strategy, platform fragmentation, and scaling persuasion.
Watch the video version or listen to the audio version wherever you get your podcasts, and if you found this episode useful, share it with the digital director, comms director, or organizer in your life who is tired of hearing “can we just make it go viral?” and wants a real plan instead.
Listen to the full episode right here, or wherever you stream podcasts.
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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: Ryan Davis is a longtime progressive digital strategist. He got his start as an internet organizer on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, worked on Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign, and later founded Blue State Digital social media team. Since then, he’s worked with hundreds of nonprofits and campaigns around the world. Today, he’s the founder and CEO of People First, the largest social impact influencer agency in the world, uh, excuse me, in the US, as well as the author of This Month, uh, the month in digital, maybe in the world, I don’t know, but we’ll we’ll stick to the US for now.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: thank you so much for joining me. Uh let’s start with the current moment. What would you say is the uh is the state of influencer marketing uh marketing right now and what role is it playing in the 2026
Ryan Davis: Well, you know, it’s interesting.
Josh Klemons: midterms?
Ryan Davis: I’ve been in the influencer marketing game for like six or seven years now. when we started people first that we were like the only game in town in politics there wasn’t anybody else doing sort of influencer in politics and now you know six years in on both sides of the aisle there are quite a few firms that are that are all doing influencer so I think you know one of the big learnings was in 2020 we were trying to explain to people why influencer mattered what it was 2022 we’re trying to get people to integrate more by 24 people were you We were doing lots of political influencer work but not at like a huge scale. And now now what’s happening is everybody is thinking about influencer super early.
Ryan Davis: So we started to have conversations with you know campaigns and organizations you know at the end of last year which compared to you know all the other cycles they thought of influence at the very last minute. So I think you know in the same way that 200 the 2008 campaign you know saw digital kind of get a seat at the table and in a place it really belonged. I think influencer is getting that same seat at the table now that we head into into
Josh Klemons: That’s interesting. I I have seen that as well some I think we’re seeing more of like big national campaigns or you know statewide but
Ryan Davis: 26
Josh Klemons: nationalized campaigns like seemingly I mean I don’t know who’s doing what but it seems like a lot of campaigns are using them for launch. Are you seeing them use them like are are you seeing campaigns lean into influencer relationships in an ongoing way or is it more like hey help us launch strong or maybe finish the quarter strong as opposed to like an ongoing relationship where they’re actually like trying to like reach new audiences and tell new
Ryan Davis: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: stories.
Ryan Davis: I think that there are, you know, like with any strategy, there are some some folks who’ve really leaned in and are using influencer kind of more ongoing as part of an ongoing comm strategy. And then, you know, other groups that are using it around launch, around fundraising, around key moments. Um, you know, you know, I I tend to think that it’s it’s great to have those those big moments and you can align more people to kind of get out your message, but you know, you should have an always on sort of, you know, baseline of comm so you’re so folks are getting the message from all those decentralized channels sort of all the time. But we see both
Josh Klemons: Yeah, that makes sense. I’m also curious like influencer having a seat at the table is different than digital having a seat at the table, right? Because with digital you have a digital director who sort of sees a team. With influencer it’s like a whole lot of potential people that you could be talking to.
Josh Klemons: Are you seeing campaigns invest in the concept of influencers or actually like building relationships with individuals? Like how much is it like consistent versus okay, we’ll do a quick one-off with this person and then a quick one-off with that person. We get that influencer like that needs to be part of the entire campaign, but there’s a big difference between using 15 over 10 months and using one in an ongoing like you know actually like long-lasting
Ryan Davis: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: relationship.
Ryan Davis: I think the the better funded more strategic campaigns are, you know, they have somebody in their digital or their press team who is now sort of got influencer in their title and their job is to kind of maintain some influencer relationships and kind of keep keep that going. Um, other campaigns, you know, uh, you know, the digital director might be doing that, but I am certainly seeing a lot more statewide campaigns have somebody dedicated to influencer at some at some
Josh Klemons: Okay. No, it’s really helpful um context like the idea that you’re seeing like influence manager or whatever the title
Ryan Davis: level.
Josh Klemons: is like showing up on campaigns. Um you know that is how you make sure that like every conversation happens in the context of like how do we do it? So just like digital was first you know answered to comms and now is its own thing. Uh that’s interesting to think of that like spinning out. Um has the tic tac has the Tik Tok sale affected the folks you’re working with?
Ryan Davis: I think the Tik Tok sale it did a good thing. It it it let people know there are other networks. you know, there there a year and a half ago,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Ryan Davis: people would only come to us about Tik Tok and Instagram. And now we’re finally getting to to do more more work on YouTube and X and Next Door and you know these other places that people spend time because you know the big my big message is you know Tik Tok’s a huge platform YouTube’s a huge platform but the the real sort of like theme of 2026 social is like decentralization more community you know so you can speak to broad folks on those big networks but you can also speak to folks on these these smaller networks that that they’re using.
Ryan Davis: So, if I’m designing a strategy for a campaign, I would like, okay, how do I talk to my Tik Tockers? How do I talk to my Instagram reels, YouTube shorts people? How do I talk to my, you know, text folks on Substack or my audio folks over over podcasts? So, you know, the the the market is super fragmented and influencers can help plug you into a lot of these different networks.
Josh Klemons: No, I love that and I totally agree like we live in such a fragmented space which is a problem but also you know it is what it is like it’s a problem because it makes it much harder to have one conversation now you have to have like a thousand small conversations. I am fascinated. Did you just say that there are nextoor influencers? Is that a thing?
Ryan Davis: Well, next next Door is great because it’s hyper local. So, if if you’re running for Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Hyper
Ryan Davis: If you’re running for Congress, you know, we we’ve gotten people to have conversations about issues inside of of Next Door.
Josh Klemons: local.
Ryan Davis: And it’s, you know, it’s an interesting place to to do it because you don’t expect to see those conversations necessarily. And so yeah, I mean any, you know, there’s a 100 million Americans on on Next Door. It’s that’s a that’s a lot of
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: people.
Josh Klemons: Um but when you say so like you’re getting candidates on there themselves doing like almost AMA style
Ryan Davis: No.
Josh Klemons: things.
Ryan Davis: Or getting people to talk about issues on on there. So getting getting people in in Wisconsin to post in their local uh nextdoor communities about issue XYZ. And we’ve done that. We’ve done that a couple times. And both times that we’ve done it, it’s been organizations that have a real local advocacy push who who want to make noise
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Ryan Davis: in like Milwaukee, you know, and and a lot of the other social networks. It’s hard to get that uh you know, that specific on geography because people’s people’s followers tend to, you know, the bigger somebody’s, you know, the rule of thumb is the larger the following gets, the less local it gets, the more international it gets.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: So when you we see creators under 20,000 followers, they have the highest percentage of of local, you know, state followers within their state. And then once you get over that, that’s quickly where you see that national or international sort of sort of sprawl.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: But with um with Next Door, it’s not follower based. It’s only location based. So you know, I post in my Ocean City, Maryland thing. I get as much attention as if anybody does. And so you can get in those conversations really easily.
Josh Klemons: Do you approach Next Door similarly to how you would like approach a local subreddit or it’s very or like a Facebook group for like a neighborhood or do you have like a different way to I’ve never heard you’re the first person to ever mention Next
Ryan Davis: I I think that’s Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Door on this podcast so I’m like nerding out on this.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I’m like very interested.
Ryan Davis: No, I think I think you’re exactly right.
Ryan Davis: It has to be approached like a subreddit or like a Facebook group. You can’t be overtly salesy. It has to be, you know, much more about starting a conversation around an issue. you know, letting I mean, a lot of a lot of the stuff we do um with creators when we’re doing our best work is super is
Josh Klemons: All
Ryan Davis: it’ssue forward and then identity and then the call to action, right? So, we’re getting you to care about,
Josh Klemons: right.
Ryan Davis: you know, my son XYZ. I’m a person who is part of your community and that’s why I’m voting for this. So it’s like, you know, we’re trying to get to to folks before it be it’s clear that it’s an ad, you know, and so we we take we take that into the into into next store as well. And, you know, when we work with a creator, we might say, you know, you’re going to post on Insta these three different video series. You’re going to share in two WhatsApp WhatsApp chats with your friends or Facebook Messenger chats with your friends.
Ryan Davis: So, we built in sort of other places to try to get into those kind of more quiet internet spaces and Next Door is one of
Josh Klemons: Um, what percentage of the work that like you’re helping campaigns and organizations tap into is sort of
Ryan Davis: them.
Josh Klemons: like big influencers versus more micro
Ryan Davis: So, we work all up and down. So, we think about it as like a pyramid of influence.
Josh Klemons: influencers.
Ryan Davis: And at the top, you’ve got, you know, Michelle Obama, the biggest, you know, you got you’ve got Bad Bunny. And then and then you kind of you go down from that celebrity to to sort of the the macro creators who have millions of
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: followers to those mid-tiers who have hundreds of thousands and down to micro nano. We work up and down the the the pyramid. You know, I I’ve always thought there are, you know, there are two way there are two ways that digital comms works. It works top down,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: but it also works bottom up.
Ryan Davis: And if you if you run an influencer program the right way, you can you can sort of have both those conversations happening through your program. And you can do fun things like have those big creators like do collaborations with the smaller creators or share on their stories of the smaller creators. So then it kind of gives you that kind of community vibe too. So So to answer your question, we work across but we do love we have a special place in our heart for the for the micro
Josh Klemons: Um,
Ryan Davis: creators.
Josh Klemons: do you have to convince campaigns the value of working with microcreators or are more campaigns understanding the power of that than like maybe did two years
Ryan Davis: Uh yeah, I think people understand the the the val certainly in local campaigns,
Josh Klemons: ago?
Ryan Davis: people understand the value of of of smaller creators. I I think one of the things when we explain like the real value in the content. So, you know, it’s great to have a creator who has 6,000 followers make a piece of content.
Ryan Davis: So, so imagine we’re working with an organization and trying to get out uh Gen Z Latinos in Atlanta. It’s a campaign that we ran last cycle and you know we we we could find a bunch of Gen Z Latinos who have a ton of followers but they might not want to talk about this issue. They might not be that interested. So what really works you go find those folks who have fewer followers who are great messengers and then you boost that content um you know directly to your to your to the voter file of of Gen Z Latinos.
Josh Klemons: You’re saying put like use money but put money behind it.
Ryan Davis: So yeah.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Exactly.
Josh Klemons: Got it.
Ryan Davis: So the real the real magic, you know, you’ve got that organic reach,
Josh Klemons: Cool.
Ryan Davis: you’ve got that authentic storytelling, but the content scales incredibly well. Uh because these days you barely see people that you follow anyway on social. So like no, nobody thinks any differently of it.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: If it if it looks like somebody they would follow and they’re a gamer and they live in Atlanta, you know, might as well be your friend, might as well be somebody you follow. So we find that works incredibly well especially in this age where following and and
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: and and uh you know the amount of views are not necessarily as correlated as they were two
Josh Klemons: I I mean,
Ryan Davis: years ago.
Josh Klemons: so I have a question. I have my list of questions and I was going to come back to like the idea of smaller local campaigns,
Ryan Davis: Sure.
Josh Klemons: but like you’re you got us there, so let’s just jump in there. Like what would be your me? My guess is it’s a harder cell to the down ballot races to understand that they should be doing this as well. Correct me if I’m wrong, but like the statewide races know they need, you know, Graham Platiners of the world need that national morality to bring in the kind of grassroots funding they need to go against, you know, the establishment, whatever.
Josh Klemons: Um the same with, you know, the Nate Stages of the world. I don’t know if they work with you or other agencies, but I’m assuming they’re working with influencer agencies, but the smaller down ballot races that are, you know, it’s hard enough just to like get organic social out the door. They barely are sending emails. Like, are you finding that those folks are recognizing the need to work with you or are you having to like sort of convince them? Um, are they showing up? Are they ready to go? And if they are, like, do they understand, you know, that this could be done at a micro scale or is that a hard thing to understand when you’re running for, you know, state assembly or even, you know,
Ryan Davis: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: city council?
Ryan Davis: I mean it it’s been tough for us because we’re like a full service agency.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: So there’s only so there only we can only take on projects that
Josh Klemons: Only so small you can go.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. But but but we have been working really hard on you know we’re launching a product actually just came out
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: um last week called Val. And what Val is is an AI agent that connects small medium-sized businesses, campaigns, organizations to local creators. And so we’ve made this because, you know, we can’t really do a state assembly race. I can’t assign a team to it. It’s just too expensive. But if you’re running for state assembly in Kansas, you know, you’re in your districts in Kansas City, you can go to Val and say, “I’m looking for five progressives to talk about the launch of my campaign that’s coming up who live in Kansas City.” and Val will help you write the brief and come up with all the instructions and reach out and contact the creators. So, and do all that without like a a sort of monthly subscription. So, it’s like it’s like we want to create a way for small smaller campaigns and organizations to
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: use influencer right now. It’s prohibited, but we prohibitive in in in cost and comp or complexity. And we’re trying to to fix that for folks because, you know, we really don’t it’s just tough for us to offer much below, you know, congressional big big mayor’s race, that that kind of
Josh Klemons: Sure. Um, Val launch like I I did not see that anywhere on your site.
Ryan Davis: thing.
Josh Klemons: Did I miss that? Like um is that brand new or
Ryan Davis: It’s brand brand new last week. Yeah. Um, so it’s called it’s called it’s called Val and and yeah,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Ryan Davis: it’s a she’s a a lovely giraffe AI agent um who does sort of end to end
Josh Klemons: Nice.
Ryan Davis: influencer and yeah, we just we just rolled it out and we’ve uh you know, we’ve been working with a couple organizations who were too small to work with people first, but but um you know uh can really make use of a tool like
Josh Klemons: That’s cool.
Ryan Davis: this.
Josh Klemons: And it actually helps identify relevant um creators in the area. Like if you’re like dealing with Kansas City, it would like find micro influencers in Kansas City or you’re still working on
Ryan Davis: Yeah. So,
Josh Klemons: that.
Ryan Davis: we’ve built we’ve built Val on top of both she has access to the people first database, which is, you know, millions of creators, but then also um she’s built on top of Insta and Tik Tok and YouTube.
Ryan Davis: And so, you can go out there and kind of live search. So, when you when you request creators, you might get a creator or two who’s in the database, but we’ll also pull some live creators who, you know, are are new we think will be a fit. the client approves those and then Val will do the outreach and CC you and and you know the idea is you can be as involved or not involved as you want um you know as these things go.
Josh Klemons: That’s super cool. Let’s take Val out of it because that’s kind of the answer to my next question. But I want to ask like beyond Val, what are the best ways for campaigns to find relevant influencers for them to work with,
Ryan Davis: Sure.
Josh Klemons: especially for like these down ballot races? Like is it just doing Tik Tok and Instagram searches or is there like a a smarter way to be searching in your
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: opinion?
Ryan Davis: I mean I think like you know the so you know we have a lot of tech and we have a lot of access to databases and all that stuff and you know the the way we often find the best creators is we just go out and and and look.
Ryan Davis: So we have like a real team of organizers who are like doing that. So I think any small campaign you know have somebody go and see who’s really driving the conversations in your county in your district you know make a list of the top 50 and then you know do do the outreach. um that that can take a lot of time, but it’s literally like like organizing.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: I mean, these are your voters, too, right? So, if they’re in your district, you should be calling them anyway because you’re going to need their vote. You might want their money.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: Um but you could have a it is it is I think, you know, like um something I would approach almost like an organizing challenge with a small
Josh Klemons: Cool. Um,
Ryan Davis: campaign
Josh Klemons: are you seeing I get this goes against what you’re doing, but are you seeing campaigns achieve verality right now without influencer support or do we live in a world where there is no such thing as verality anymore without like working with alongside the
Ryan Davis: No,
Josh Klemons: industry?
Ryan Davis: I think I think a campaign can can definitely create content that gets a ton of attention. I think, you know, Zorad’s obviously a great example. Um, but if we look overseas just two weeks ago, there was a a Green Party candidate in the UK who released a vir awesome viral video that I saw all over over my feed. So yeah, I do think that candidates can can go viral, campaigns can still go viral. I think going viral, you know, is not really the point,
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I agree with that.
Ryan Davis: but but um
Josh Klemons: I I I just know so many clients so many campaigns are still thinking in those terms and I have
Ryan Davis: yeah.
Josh Klemons: seen not exclusively but I’ve seen more and more again you don’t always know what’s happening under the hood but I see these big launches and these big moments and it like feels like there was like influencers involved even if you can’t always tell looking just at their you know oh you don’t know everybody that shared that post necessarily but wow this brand new candidate got you know a stupid amount of views on their launch video how did this happen you know and things so I’m just kind of like I’m curious
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: for fols who like don’t understand how this all works if like how to they can make sense of it and you’re saying good enough content can still break through but obviously like working with influencers can help.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: That’s the the big
Ryan Davis: Yeah. I mean, I also think I also think that people,
Josh Klemons: takeway.
Ryan Davis: you know, everyone needs to understand that the internet that you are engaged in is made for you. If you’re on Instagram or LinkedIn or X or whatever, you’re getting you’re getting fed what you want to see. And so people actually overestimate how well our content is doing because like oh I see content from the candidate all the time. Yeah,
Josh Klemons: Great.
Ryan Davis: you do because every signal you send is that you’re interested in Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Right. Every time you like one of those, you see three more. Yeah, for sure.
Ryan Davis: So so I you know you should be wanting to make content that you don’t see about your candidate because that that’s actually how you get out of that out of that that bubble.
Ryan Davis: But yeah, everyone everyone thinks that their issue matters more than it does to other people because they’re seeing their issues that you know, you’re basically seeing your psyche projected back at you when you open up any of these social apps these days. So, yeah, everybody’s talking about this. Well, yeah, everybody’s talking about that because that that’s the internet that you’re on, but you know, somebody down the street is probably seeing zero of that content. And how do you get in that person’s feed?
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Uh that is a struggle. Like I have to help my the candidates. I I work with a lot of campaigns and I’m always talking about stories versus values. Stories is things that are about you. That’s relevant to somebody who already likes you, already knows you. Values should speak to somebody who’s never heard of you. And if you can’t create content that’s relevant to the folks that like don’t know who you are, you’re not going to reach the folks who don’t know who you are and expand that base.
Josh Klemons: And I, you know, it’s a hard thing to understand sometimes because like,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: well, isn’t this about me? It’s like, it’s absolutely not about you. It’s about them. Can you speak in a way that’s going to make other people want to talk about you, get excited about you? And the, you know, the successful campaigns figure it out and the rest, you know, struggle with
Ryan Davis: Yeah, I I I think,
Josh Klemons: it.
Ryan Davis: you know, another example of that is like is, you know, the campaign makes a really fancy bio video and they want to get as many views on that bio video as they can. And I would be like, I’d rather get a bunch of influencers from different communities that I need to reach to like do a green screen and talk
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: about maybe show a little of the video, but talk about why that candidate connects to the Latino community, connects to the gay community, whatever, you know, whatever you’re trying to accomplish. And then you’ve got a credible messenger who from that that community who is like introducing your candidate.
Ryan Davis: And that to me is like much more powerful than just like a random view on a video that you know and a view is
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: two seconds folks. Like it doesn’t mean that you’ve that you’ve accomplished anything,
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: you know. So I feel like we sometimes the digital metrics become this sort of arbitrary goal that we’re trying to reach when they’re not actually connected to, you know, getting the votes to win the election or getting the support to pass the bill. And you’ve got to like really kind of refocus and be like, “Okay, what’s going to actually move the needle here?” It’s probably not video views, you know, on on a specific
Josh Klemons: Yeah. No, I I totally that all uh makes sense to me.
Ryan Davis: video.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. So, I mean, what are what do you think some of the other biggest misconceptions folks have when it comes to working with creators are like for campaigns in
Ryan Davis: Yeah. I think there’s like,
Josh Klemons: particular?
Ryan Davis: and this happens also in the commercial world, is people know big creators and they’ve heard of them or they’re aware of them and and and they want to work with them because they think it’s kind of cool. Um, and there’s a there’s a real there’s a real movement on some some part of the Democratic party right now to sort of replace like they’re they’re thinking of influencer marketing as a replacement for celebrity endorsements. And I think to think about that is like the complete like wrong way. It’s a top- down approach. I think about it as uh scaling your door knockocking operation. So it’s not about having Lady Gaga or some famous person endorse your candidate. It’s about scaling real people who connect with your voters talking about your candidate and in the same ways they would talk about your candidate if they had knocked on the door and they were talk,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: you know, having that. You know, you and I probably door knocked a lot of times, right?
Josh Klemons: A
Ryan Davis: we’ve had those you have those conversations and that’s that’s really when I think it’s like the most
Josh Klemons: lot.
Ryan Davis: it’s like the most effective and the Democratic party it focuses I think too much on celebrity creators and certainly too much on overtly political creators whose audiences are super bubbleified you know um and and overlap so much so when you’re getting like you know that guy Aaron the lawyer who does the Tik Tok videos and Keith Edwards both to talk about something those audiences overlap 98% like you’re reaching the choir and we need to break out of that and and what I think Republicans understood is that like you know I think Steve Bannon I hate to quote Steve Bannon but politics runs downstream of culture 100% right you know and I think we need to lean we need to lean in more to that we we need to kind of lean into more cultural
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: creators and sprinkle in some politics not make politics the only meal at the
Josh Klemons: Um, I knew Aaron Parnes back when he was just um hiring campaigns to get them to he would retweet them with fundraising asks and he he did really well, you know, helping campaigns raise money off of like his Twitter audience.
Josh Klemons: Um, it’s been pretty wild watching him like grow it into he’s grown Ryan Davis: Right.
Josh Klemons: but you know, whatever. Um,
Ryan Davis: No.
Josh Klemons: he’s grown a huge audience for sure.
Ryan Davis: And I think but I think that I think that’s great. But I think we need to have an honest conversation about like the you know Aaron Aaron’s doing something really valuable. He’s he’s building the base. He’s educating folks on issues. He’s he’s around to help with things like fundraising and volunteer. But you know, you can’t win an election with just the people who follow Aaron. You know,
Josh Klemons: Definitely not.
Ryan Davis: you gotta you gotta win an election with all the people who either don’t know Aaron exists, don’t care about political influencers,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: you know, most people just trying to get by.
Josh Klemons: Get through the day.
Ryan Davis: They’re not like Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, for sure. No, trust me.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I I get that for sure.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah. So I do think like you know and that the party needs to be honest with themselves about about where in the process are are the the base creators the political creators the most valuable lean in then but then really have a general election plan that branches outside of those um creators and gets to audiences that are either apolitical or moderate um you know or like most people are following like you know people they think are attractive or funny or or talk about their niche interest. How do you get into those conversations? You know, not that Aaron isn’t attractive and funny,
Josh Klemons: So,
Ryan Davis: but he
Josh Klemons: I don’t know for sure. So, there’s a running through line that has come up on this podcast many times,
Ryan Davis: is.
Josh Klemons: which is that um you know, Democrats wait till the last second to hire influencers or content creators and like, you know, folks who aren’t like we understand we need the non-political folks to help us, but we can’t ask them in October to promote us in November.
Josh Klemons: Like, that’s just not going to work. Like, what do you like? It’s not just a question of when’s the right time to start, but what’s the right approach? Like how do you get those non-political folks to say yes to your campaign even if they agree with you on an issue when like they might not agree with you on all issues or they might say well I’m apolitical it’s like sure you’re apolitical but you’re against fascism like do you want to talk about that like how how would you recommend campaigns in 2026 with all the s*** that’s going on in the world like start these conversations with these creators to help them understand why it’s important to bring them in assuming that they’re doing it early and not waiting till you know three weeks before election day and asking for a gov
Ryan Davis: Yeah, I think it you you meet them where they are. So, when we’re doing a campaign for an environmental organization that wants to to reach white men, we go out and we find uh fishermen and hunters to talk about the importance of protecting our public lands, right?
Ryan Davis: And these are not folks who go around talking about public lands. They’re probably not even super progressive folks, but they do know that when they go out outside in the wilderness and in their state parks that they want them to be clean and and safe and and and kept up. And so, you know, and there’s an example of that for every category, right? There there are people who their their interests make them relevant for certain issues and they can talk about them in ways that doesn’t feel super political. But you got to start way earlier. And you have to understand one thing, and this is something that clients are often ask me. They’re like, “Well, yeah, but our issue is XYZ, and we do good work, so why is a creator going to gonna make us pay them?” And it’s like, “Well, if you, you know, if you hired canvasers, they would they would be they would be paid. You I’m sure you have comm staff that is also paid.” But it’s also like you’re not the only,
Josh Klemons: Correct.
Ryan Davis: you know, proclimate organization there is. If I’m a creator, I’m getting multiple, you know, I’m not I’m like a little I have a travel podcast and it gets 5,000 downloads an episode,
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Ryan Davis: which is pretty good. Um,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: the amount of requests that I get in the travel world to talk about products, it’s in it’s wild. You would think that I’m like I’m I’m famous, right? It’s just it’s just people need people are always asking.
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Ryan Davis: So, you’re not the only person asking these creators. If you want to get their attention, you have to have a more creative offer. you have to you have to go to them with uh you know with a real you know a payment that makes sense for the work and effort they’re going to put into creating the content and taking the space in their feed. You know they only get to publish so many so many things. So, you know, being realistic about about what’s possible, I think, is super important when you when you go into a creator, but definitely don’t wait till the last minute, especially this cycle, because every creator who is remotely seen as uh somebody who’s not MAGA is going to be asked by a Democrat to like do something for them.
Ryan Davis: So, you’re you’re competing with like the whole space at this point. And that’s why we’ve like put together this like big,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: you know, we have the attention of these 22,000 social impact creators. We can get them on, we, you know, we can text them, we can talk to them. And that that’s really valuable because just sending out an email as some kind of random campaign, you might not even get get a response.
Josh Klemons: Yeah. Okay. I mean, you brought up money. I am curious like for especially for down ballot races like what’s the minimum budget you think you need to like people say ask me how much to spend on Facebook ads. I’m like, “Well, how much money do you have?” Because the more we spend, the better. So, I get it’s a hard question,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but we’re talking about people here, not like a system or a program. Like, is there sort of a minimum amount of campaign needs to be allocated towards this in order for it to be beneficial or like you’ve seen it work with just a few hundred dollars or like like what’s the starting line for a small
Ryan Davis: Yeah, I think for a few hundred dollars,
Josh Klemons: campaign?
Ryan Davis: you might be able to get a couple local creators to to to do something for you, attend an event. You know, again, if you’re a small campaign, you could you could say, “Hey, we’ll take you to dinner after this. You get to meet the candidate.” You know, think about the assets that you have that are not money and try those first. you know,
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Ryan Davis: ultimately like you can sometimes get away with a roundtrip Uber to the event and you know, you know, hair makeup credit or something something, you know, as like thank you. Um,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: but you know, as you scale those programs, that’s that’s really where it gets like really expensive. Um, you know, we’ve had campaigns where we worked with 500 creators. When we worked for the Harris campaign, we did like 500 pieces of user generated content that they used in all their paid media. And that’s like a huge scale. And you know, you can’t do that with free dinners.
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: You got to like figure out a better way to to do that.
Josh Klemons: for sure.
Ryan Davis: But yeah, I think again, if you’re a small campaign,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: think about thinking super locally, like how do you get, you know, those those folks to events or make them feel special? You know, the it was it was fun because the first first few months after Zoron’s victory, all the Dems were like, “We can all just do the Zuron thing.” Like, well, he’s like also a once in a generation,
Josh Klemons: Once in a generation.
Ryan Davis: you know,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: talent.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: Um, so yeah, things work for Obama and for Zuron that don’t work for everybody. That’s just the reality of how of the world.
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: He’s more charismatic than than most folks. So, but I I I do think that all candidates can be doing direct to camera in the way that is comfortable to them. You know, like um you don’t have to be Zuron like running around the city.
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: You know,
Josh Klemons: for sure.
Ryan Davis: you you can come up with you could do a c a coffee shop visit where you sit at your local coffee shop and talk to a resident. You know, there’s all sorts of ways you can humanize your content and and kind of like bring other people into it where you’re not doing that sort of high intensity
Josh Klemons: Um,
Ryan Davis: thing.
Josh Klemons: I have not a huge following, but like a a bit of a following on TikTok and I do mostly Wisconsin political news. Um, and the Biden and Harris campaign actually tapped me as a like a micro influencer, whatever you want to call it. And all I had was access, but it was great. Like I got to skip the lines. I got invited to VIP rooms to like just go to the events. Like that was it. But it’s occurring to me. I haven’t really even thought about it. I’ve never had another campaign ask me to do anything for them.
Josh Klemons: um despite the fact that I’m out there every day talking about voting for down ballot races and I work with a lot of down ballot races but like yeah like it took a campaign that had like an influencer uh director to say like well let’s go
Ryan Davis: Right.
Josh Klemons: find the folks you know the smaller campaign just aren’t doing it and I think that’s not your problem that’s a cultural problem we have in the party is like
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: we’re thinking influencer as an afterthought instead of or content creator as an afterthought instead of like building it into the like
Ryan Davis: Right.
Josh Klemons: okay everybody knows they need digital everybody knows they need comms well we should be thinking about influencer early you
Ryan Davis: Right. But but or or they’re thinking that, oh, why live in Cleveland? There are no influencers,
Josh Klemons: Wait.
Ryan Davis: you know. No, of course there are. like like everybody has influence. The question is how much influence and where and and you know there there are always uh accounts even if there are like you know even if you’re somebody who uh reviews all the Cleveland restaurants and bars you know you could be right to talk about the importance of a local issue around nightife
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: or around you know what you can imagine that there are so many ways you could loop these more cultural accounts more these more city-based accounts into your you know obviously if they agree with you if they want to be a part of your
Josh Klemons: Of course. Yeah. You don’t want to fill in some alt-right person like talk about your issue.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: But you know what we’ve noticed in the last cycle and I think it’s going to be worse this cycle is the people are going to want to talk about politics less because the risk of talking about politics in the Trump era seems more real. I think it is more real too. But it does seem more real. Like it it seems like you can get a lot more hate online by kind of expressing your normie liberal views. And you know, hopefully we can have more we can kind of like pick up some steam in the culture so folks don’t feel that way.
Ryan Davis: But it’s always the hardest. If you give me a list of what are the hardest campaigns, the hardest ones are specific candidate campaigns. They’re much harder than even like a pack or uh any issue advocacy,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: you know, but when you have to back, you know, Bill Jones for Congress in Illinois 7 or whatever, people that that to people it’s like, oh well, I’m like endorsing Bill. Who is Bill? You know, so like that becomes like the hardest that’s the hardest cell. It’s always easier on the soft side for for you know creators are more inclined to do those softer messages.
Josh Klemons: Um, yeah, that’s interesting. Um, what types of content are you seeing work really well with like your content creators right now? Like like obviously we’ve talked about micro influencers, which is its own thing, but like meme accounts, interview style, like there are folks that like Erin style that like they’re mostly just breaking news, you know, quote unquote, like obviously he’s not breaking news, but that’s what he’s doing.
Josh Klemons: Um, is there like a specific type of content and obviously like is short form content, short form video still the champ when it comes to like just overall reach or are you seeing different anything surprising jumping out to you when you’re looking at like the content landscape these
Ryan Davis: You know, even two or three years ago,
Josh Klemons: days?
Ryan Davis: we had static photography posts do really well and generate a lot of engagement and and clicks when we use them in ads. And and that’s kind of all gone away. Now, it’s basically vertical video is the only the only game in town. And you know, we work with creators who who do any and all of the above that you talked about. You know, they all have different kind of styles from the interview, from the you know, we work with creators who do last year we did a get out the vote campaign for Los Angeles County and, you know, it was just nonpartisan and we just got the funniest young creators to make sketches, little skits about like the importance of voting and early voting and it was and some of them are really legit kind of funny.
Ryan Davis: So again, I think it’s like all that all those types of content work with certain audiences. So if you’re if you’re, you know, you really need to kind of like work backwards and say if you’re going to reach Gen Z and alphas, it’s going to have to be quick vertical video memes, you know, that. But if you’re going to re if you’re trying to reach, you know, seniors, you can do more direct to camera, more talky. You know, that’s that’s sort of like more the kind of content they’d be into. So it it really just depends on who you’re trying to talk to because it again like in the way that like the networks of are decentralizing the types of content that works is so dependent upon the
Josh Klemons: Yeah, makes total sense.
Ryan Davis: audience.
Josh Klemons: Um, so once upon a time if you wanted to fund raise off social media, um, organic Twitter and paid meta ads, that was like the way to do it. Both of those have gotten much harder. I talked to a very large creator who told me he used to help campaigns fundra on Twitter and now that fundraising seems to have moved to threads for him.
Josh Klemons: Cat Abu actually mentioned to me on the podcast that uh Blue Sky has been the best platform for her for fundraising. I’m just curious like a are your content creators helping with fundraising? Is that a service you offer? And if so, are you seeing any platforms being particularly impactful there? Um or it’s just just like everything else. It’s completely spread out across, you know, a hundred different channels depending on the campaign.
Ryan Davis: Yeah, I think it would it would really depend on the campaign. Like Blue Sky, if I was working for like a leftist challenging an establishment then in a primary, that would probably be where I would where I would go. But like we do a lot of um more like nonprofit fundraising stuff. And so we did a big campaign um for the American Cancer Society and we still work with them you know ongoing fundraising campaign and and for that we recruited um you know men and women who had had uh experienced cancer either them or or their family and they talked about the value of American Cancer Society in a small dollar way.
Ryan Davis: So did you know that like every $50 uh donated can get somebody a round trip to their chemotherapy appointment and and things like that? like little things you don’t think about that really affect people’s lives and that ACS was there to help these people. So, we worked with all these creators. I mean, you know, and you see really good organic performance like um in terms of of donations from the followers, but what what we really see work is when you take that content and you scale it through paid media and put it up against a lookalike of of donors who look like the creators that we’re working with. And we’ve had like return on ad spend like 3 to 450% on some of those uh those campaigns.
Josh Klemons: for meta in particular or in other places.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. From from meta. Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: So I feel like I’m hearing from several I I’ve talked to a bunch of orgs recently that are seeing that like 3x
Ryan Davis: Um,
Josh Klemons: row on meta, but I feel like campaigns are not getting that these days.
Josh Klemons: like you know I’m not saying none but like as a rule that doesn’t seem to be like there was a time where I was getting that kind of
Ryan Davis: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: row for campaigns but then Facebook made everything much harder. Are you seeing candidates get that kind of return on ad spend on meta or not the way that ACS might be able
Ryan Davis: I’m Yeah,
Josh Klemons: to
Ryan Davis: I’m I’m I’m not I’m not running any of those campaigns myself, so I can’t like, you know,
Josh Klemons: fair
Ryan Davis: but I mean I’ve read I’m sure that you have of like the small dollar kind of like uh decline. Um you know,
Josh Klemons: apocalypse is the word f****
Ryan Davis: hopefully it it will come back.
Josh Klemons: I think.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I do think that that the era of Bernie Sanders like direct to camera
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: donation is over. And if you want it, if you want to work, like, you know, if I’m Zach Walls running for for Senate in Iowa and I want to raise a lot of money, I’m going to go find a bunch of millennial gays like myself to talk about how meaningful it was when when when Zach,
Josh Klemons: sure.
Ryan Davis: you know, stood up for us in in Iowa 15 years ago and why that matters and why and and
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: so I think that there are lots of ways you could do fundraising to lean into a candidate’s strengths in a national way, working with creators, mixing in paid media, and then using things like many chat or um Amplify is another product
Josh Klemons: Oh,
Ryan Davis: where they do that direct.
Josh Klemons: by amplify.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: Another product where you can, you know, uh in the comment type in donate and you’ll get a you’ll get a DM kind of thing. So,
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: I think campaign shouldn’t give up on meta yet because there, you know, there’s, you know,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: there’s not that many other games in town. So,
Josh Klemons: I know.
Ryan Davis: uh um so I maybe just like
Josh Klemons: I I’m always looking for that magic answer. It’s like, no, everybody’s that we’re working with is raising money here.
Josh Klemons: But yeah, nobody has it. meta has become a slog. We still do it, of course, but it’s just not what it once was and every cycle seems to be harder. Um, but no, that’s super helpful context and and like I said, I’ve talked to numerous organizations that are seeing success uh with fundraising ads on Meta compared to campaigns, which again, some are doing it, but most of them are struggling, at least in comparison to where they were two,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: three cycles
Ryan Davis: Well,
Josh Klemons: ago.
Ryan Davis: I look I I it’s funny that I’ve been given the same advice since 2003 when I got into this game, but like your email list is where it’s at,
Josh Klemons: Okay.
Ryan Davis: you know,
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: and and and maybe now your SMS list is also where it’s at, but you know,
Josh Klemons: sure.
Ryan Davis: email is still where you’re going to get most of your your fundraising. And so I think that instead of like thinking you can always mine meta, it’s let’s let’s get back to the capturing of emails, building out a real comm’s program because you know I I don’t want to complain about any of my colleagues, but I feel like a lot of the emails I get from campaigns and organizations now are only about money and I I don’t have I used to have like in the Obama era, we taught like this idea about storytelling across,
Josh Klemons: Mhm.
Ryan Davis: you know, cadences and and different senders had different calls to action and and tone and I feel like
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: all that has been replaced by like the craziest subject line imaginable with a lot of bold and I can’t tell if Donald Trump sent any of these democra you know you know what I mean though it just seems like we’ve lost the storytelling entirely and then we’re like why
Josh Klemons: Yeah, I do.
Ryan Davis: aren’t our email list work as well anymore it’s like because you don’t give any people a reason to open it and email has exploded back again as like something I read now I read a lot more newsletters than I did a few years ago and I feel like you know it’s time to go back to those like those like storytelling social media campaigns that are not just fundraising. Fundraising a big part of it, right? But you got to like give people more if you want them to to to give money
Josh Klemons: I I I’m so happy that Jeff Jackson, you know, made it to attorney general of North Carolina,
Ryan Davis: later.
Josh Klemons: but damn if I don’t miss his congressional email program. Like I I genuinely loved his quick notes. Like that was what it was called, the Substack that he started where he just told you what was going on in Congress in a like real way that felt like an actual person like experiencing an actual emotion. And I like I I’ve talked about this a lot, but like I didn’t just like his emails. I genuinely got excited to see his emails. And like now, sure, he’s still doing the same thing. It’s just not relevant to me in the same way. Like his attorney general of North Carolina role is not as interesting to me personally as his role in Congress. But um yeah, so I I I’ve tried to get many of my clients and many of my friends and colleagues and other folks to like think more like Jeff Jackson and certainly less like Donald Trump. But I would argue we as a party are much more like Donald Trump than we are like Jeff Jackson at the moment.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Uh to our detriment.
Ryan Davis: Well, you know, to to Donald Trump’s credit, uh he does not use his uh social channels only for fundraising.
Josh Klemons: He he is them for all kinds of
Ryan Davis: All kinds of things.
Josh Klemons: things.
Ryan Davis: He’s always always in persuasion. One in the morning, he’s in persuasion mode. He’s out there. It might persuade people the other direction.
Josh Klemons: I mean, yeah,
Ryan Davis: Uh but but uh he he doesn’t
Josh Klemons: he just Yeah,
Ryan Davis: quit.
Josh Klemons: he doesn’t quit for sure. Um, okay. You mentioned that you’ve been in digital since 03, which obviously is a lifetime in a field that that barely existed. What’s stayed the same in digital? So much has changed, but what’s what’s the constant? Like is there anything that’s still the same?
Ryan Davis: I think yeah I mean it’s funny yeah I think I think well it’s funny because people are so talking about substack
Josh Klemons: I guess you talk about email, but
Ryan Davis: and yeah so email would be one of those things I think has has stayed the same if not
Josh Klemons: okay.
Ryan Davis: you know more people are using it and it’s it’s still the way people buy things and donate Um,
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: we’ve seen the return of blogs,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: whatever you want to call a Substack or a beehive or whatever. I know what it really is. It’s a blog that that comes in my comes in my email.
Josh Klemons: In your inbox. Yeah.
Ryan Davis: And that’s that’s that’s cool. I I love blogs,
Josh Klemons: I blog and Substack. So, no dirty words here,
Ryan Davis: but it’s Yeah.
Josh Klemons: man. Like I I’m a huge advocate of blogging for campa not necessarily for campaigns,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but for organizations. If you’re not blogging,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: you are missing a huge opportunity.
Ryan Davis: Well, you know what I’ve even seen is, you know, we have a blog at at People First and we have a Substack at People First and they’re the same copy.
Josh Klemons: We have
Ryan Davis: We just, you know,
Josh Klemons: content.
Ryan Davis: share the um but the Substack has no value in AI GEO at all. So AI is not pulling from the Substack, but uh when we when you ask Catchy PT questions about political influencers, it pulls directly from our blog to answer you and it credits us at the bottom. And I’m like,
Josh Klemons: Interesting.
Ryan Davis: every organization needs to be thinking about that now because as search kind of like you know it’s not going away but it is changing.
Josh Klemons: Sure. It’s changing
Ryan Davis: It is different. Um you you need to have an a way to get inside these chatbot answers and um
Josh Klemons: drastically.
Ryan Davis: a blog is I think a really good old school way to do that you know. Um so blog yeah blog is still is still on on the list. And you know, I I look back at like how simple some of the Dean campaign stuff was that I feel like we’ve sort of like might be still happening behind the scenes, but I don’t see it enough.
Ryan Davis: But like when when Dean would go to like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and you would speak to 75 people in a room, you would take a picture of those people. We’d write some a blog about it and we’d get it out to the organizers in Ohio and they would all Iowa and they would all the people who were
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: there would share it on their MySpaces at the time. I feel like there’s still the inte some of the integration never developed as as as well as it could and we just don’t do that kind of stuff at scale anymore and it really matters in a local campaign a lot and I I would think it matters you know in early presidential campaign certainly in a state like Iowa it’s all local so you want to make it Yeah.
Josh Klemons: It’s all of them.
Ryan Davis: So yeah, I you know I think I think you know the storytelling stuff needs to come back but the
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: you know if you look at the world the the you know gosh my job on the Dean campaign was to take a lot of the video that Carl Fr was one of our videographers but was out shooting and to to get it on Premiere and to cut it into like little tiny chunks that we could put on this this thing called Howard Dean TV which was like a was like an app you could download and if you had the app
Josh Klemons: Wait, did y’all invent Tik Tok like 20 years ago?
Ryan Davis: wasn’t that it wasn’t as addictive. I don’t think that many people used it. But then these little clips would go up and you have to wait for like 20 minutes to see Howard like you know say hey you know
Josh Klemons: Is there for them to load? Yeah.
Ryan Davis: um but yeah I think getting back to how you integrate the dig online and offline like I I would like to see a lot more of that and I think that um still hasn’t really haven’t really cracked the nut on that yet.
Josh Klemons: Um,
Ryan Davis: Haven’t really figured it out.
Josh Klemons: you mentioned earlier that you’re still seeing mostly short form video like that’s still kind of king. I was curious like yeah if we’re seeing anybody moving into more of like the longer form or the podcast style content as well as like are there any platforms or trends that campaigns are definitely sleeping on that they shouldn’t be? You’ve already mentioned a couple but like should every campaign have a next door strategy or is that really like only specific to some
Ryan Davis: I think if you’re a local campaign, you should definitely um you know be considering Next Door. Uh long form long form video streams.
Ryan Davis: I think certainly something some candidates could do could could do could do well. Um uh Substack and and writing. I think that that I think Substack’s an interesting community because of like the the built-in verality, although that seems to have been turned down a lot in the last year.
Josh Klemons: a lot in my
Ryan Davis: Uh yeah. Um but it was something I think that was that was interesting.
Josh Klemons: experience.
Ryan Davis: But Substack is certainly a place you could put out more substantive things to people who want to read. They’re saying that they they they they want to read.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: Other things I think you could be doing. There’s a moment right now in the commercial world of these series. Have you heard about this? These vertical series.
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Ryan Davis: So yeah,
Josh Klemons: Like dramas.
Ryan Davis: these little dramas and there’s companies that are making them for just entertainment purposes, but there’s also brands that are producing basically like little sitcoms,
Josh Klemons: Yep.
Ryan Davis: but they are pro brand.
Ryan Davis: I think there’s an opportunity to do this in documentary style for campaigns. You know, nobody wants to watch a fictional campaign uh thing,
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: but there’s a lot that happens. You could make a character out of a a camp, you know, you have one of your like digital folks be sort of the lead of that that that project and kind of
Josh Klemons: Without the candidate,
Ryan Davis: like Yeah.
Josh Klemons: you think?
Ryan Davis: without the candidate. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: H because I’ve seen I mean I’ve worked on campaigns to try to create like serialized like serialization is a huge thing
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: right now. It’s a big push. I haven’t really considered the idea of trying to create trying to create content that the candidate’s not in. That’s a really interesting idea. Like make it about the campaign without making it about the candidate. I like that idea.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. make it make it about the the person running the some piece of the digital thing and that would be something that they would they they could own and and and you could set the guard rails so it it didn’t embarrass the campaign but made it seem fun and interesting and exciting you know.
Josh Klemons: Have you seen anybody doing that or is that more an idea you’re excited
Ryan Davis: Um no that’s something I I haven’t seen that done exactly yet.
Josh Klemons: about?
Ryan Davis: I mean, on the on the commercial side, I’ve seen a ton of these series, but I do think like there’s like opportunity to do more kind of like low-level docu style series content around around a campaign where you make make a different character. Um, you know, one of the one of the kind of leads of that and gives give you a kind of different look inside the
Josh Klemons: I I like genuinely love that idea.
Ryan Davis: campaign.
Josh Klemons: Like I said, I’ve like I’ve worked with several campaigns this cycle on creating serialized content because it is just like such a big for a it’s good content and b the platform seem to really like it. So like win-win.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Um but it could be a real challenge and the candidate’s so freaking busy and like you’ve got to like chart it all out. The idea of doing it where the candidate’s not in it, but instead you’re talking about the issues the candidate’s running on.
Josh Klemons: It’s like right in line with my whole thing is like it’s not about the candidate, it’s about the issue. So like I love the concept. I’m gonna be like Stewart on that one for a bit. I really like that one. So, that’s cool.
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Well,
Josh Klemons: Um Oh,
Ryan Davis: if you if you let let me know if you get somebody to do
Josh Klemons: I will for sure. Um and if you wind up doing it, let me know.
Ryan Davis: it.
Josh Klemons: I’d love to see it in action. Um who are some folks you think are running really impressive digital programs this cycle?
Ryan Davis: That’s a that is a great question. I mean, uh we we we spoke earlier about um the candidate in Maine.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: Um uh yeah,
Josh Klemons: Platinum.
Ryan Davis: he you know, great content, great candidate. Um, again, it’s not it’s hard to sometimes separate those. Um, the the the C uh uh in ten uh Texas, I think he’s running a really good Yeah.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Yeah.
Ryan Davis: He But he’s also a really interesting candidate. So, it’s interesting. It might be a little too early to for me to be able to like see Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Oh, yeah. For sure.
Ryan Davis: who’s who’s who is uh kind of going to do interesting stuff.
Josh Klemons: I’m just always interested the folks that have been doing this so long.
Ryan Davis: Um
Josh Klemons: Like, are there still people surprising you? And sometimes the answer is like, “No, we’ll see.” And that’s fine, too. But, you know, like I I talk a lot that I think Cat Abigazel, the Illinois Knights, she’s been on the pod twice, but I genuinely think she’s running one of the most interesting uh digital programs of the cycle and one of the most interesting field
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: programs of the cycle, which is like quite an accomplishment for somebody to be running both. Um, and then but yes, I agree like there are a lot of campaigns that are still kind of finding their legs and we’ll see like Platiner had a phenomenal first couple months.
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: He’s had a controversial next couple months and I’m very curious to see like how he sort of like he seems to be back on message. He still seems to have an audience and I’m very curious to see like what he does with the next,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: you know, couple months. So like I’m watching
Ryan Davis: And what what did we learn from that controversy?
Josh Klemons: that.
Ryan Davis: You know, like um they went after him pretty good and he and he
Josh Klemons: They went after him pretty
Ryan Davis: emerged sort of fine.
Josh Klemons: good.
Ryan Davis: And from what I could tell, the polling didn’t change that much. Um, and probably the attention might have even driven some donations in in his way. So, we live in a weird world where like the the attention,
Josh Klemons: A weird world,
Ryan Davis: the negative attention, you know, has never always been a bad thing, but you want to get the right kind of negative, you know,
Josh Klemons: right?
Ryan Davis: it’s like there’s a new book out about Tucker Carlson hated by all the right people.
Josh Klemons: Yeah, for sure.
Ryan Davis: You know,
Josh Klemons: From crooked media.
Ryan Davis: it falls in that kind of world.
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I mean, yeah, it’s a really interesting one because um you know,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: I mean, Donald Trump does something literally every day that should have them impeached and run out of town and it doesn’t work. So, it’s like I think a lot of Republicans have sort of accepted that that’s actually good politics, which is why we’ve seen so many of them, you know, Nancy Mace went from like supporting the LGBTQ community to to vilifying it because she realized it was good for her base. Um, I think the Platiner one is a really interesting example of like he did kind of weather it. I mean, it’s not over and I don’t know like we’ll see what you know, we’ll see what happens at the end of the day. Um, but he does seem to have just like moved through it and I’m not at all comparing him to Nancy Mace. I’m just saying like controversy in 2026 is not what it was a couple years ago,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: which I would say is a huge detriment to our society, but also something that campaigns should like understand like not things that like I’ve worked with candidates where I was like two
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: years ago I didn’t think you could run statewide because of some of your tweets. And I’m like who cares? Like nobody cares about those old tweets. Like we live in such a different world. Again, a worse world in my personal opinion,
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: but also like we can’t just see like would Al Franken have gotten run out of the Senate today? I don’t know. But like it certainly was like a hell of a thing that we like the party decided had to happen and like I don’t know like
Ryan Davis: Yeah,
Josh Klemons: like would that have happened in 2026?
Ryan Davis: but we it’s it’s complicated too because I’m a Democrat and I’m a Democrat because I
Josh Klemons: I don’t know.
Ryan Davis: believe in a party that has higher standards.
Josh Klemons: Okay exactly.
Ryan Davis: So, so that we can’t throw we but we but to win right but
Josh Klemons: I’m not saying he should or shouldn’t have been. I’m saying would he have been? That is my question.
Ryan Davis: to win n to win national elections, you know, we’re going to have to get votes from people that we don’t agree with about probably a lot of issues and we just got to get more used to that again. And I think that one thing about social media is that it’s made us all so close together that that we now see all these things that we never would have even thought about before.
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: And like we get people’s opinions on things that they never would have heard about before, you know, and so that’s part of the worst things about social media is it just it highlights or differences more than it highlights our similarities, which I think are greater, you know, like we have a lot more in common. Um, but how do you how do you portray that in a good digital program?
Ryan Davis: That’s that’s the challenge.
Josh Klemons: The challenge and so on that um are there lessons from the rights creator ecosystem you think that the progressive needs to be pay progressives needs to be paying more attention to? they have been so good at like funding and supporting and building this infrastructure and I I mean you obviously were early to like recognizing this like you started the first influencer you know content
Ryan Davis: Yeah.
Josh Klemons: creator uh space in the progressive space but we’re still like decades behind I would argue um like what can we learn from them that we are not currently learning from
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Well,
Josh Klemons: them
Ryan Davis: they they’ve always had individual creators. They were just like radio people and then they became cable.
Josh Klemons: the rest of the world
Ryan Davis: Yeah. Then they became cable people and now they’re internet people and and we had people like that but they’re not as cool. So they, you know, like Bill like Bill Press is not going to make a comeback. Um um so yeah,
Josh Klemons: I’m agreeing.
Ryan Davis: but I I I I think that what the right does is they’re way less precious about who they work with and who they appear with. So there’s none of that like and again we have to be somewhat precious but we can’t you know we can’t
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: um you know throw the baby out the bath water right like there has to be we have to let people who we disagree with about some things into the into the conversation and the right the right does that a lot um and they’re just all over the different they’re just all over the full internet like they do the social they do the streaming they do the podcast they do the podcasts that stream they’re incredibly good at clipping you know and you know I I don’t know how I feel yet about the Kamala launch of the new the new brand on on on yeah headquarters.
Josh Klemons: headquarters.
Ryan Davis: We’ll see how that goes. But I I do think that more yeah more prodemocratic clipping is a good thing.
Josh Klemons: We’ll say
Ryan Davis: We need a lot more to get get our content out out in the world more. Um but yeah, I just think that the the the Republicans, you know, here I’ll leave you with this. We had a candidate last cycle um who wanted to work with creators and we have a pretty good vetting process etc. But this this was the only client we’ve ever had that required us to run criminal background checks on the
Josh Klemons: Sure.
Ryan Davis: creators that we were working with. So when we told the creators this many were just like well I don’t have a criminal background but I don’t want you running a criminal background check on me. That’s weird. You know you’re paying me $300 make this content. And I thought it was so ironic. So ironic. I’m like, the Republicans are running a criminal and we’re and we’re and we’re worried that one of our
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: creators get a DUI in 1987,
Josh Klemons: Right.
Ryan Davis: you know? So, it’s like I just don’t know where to go from that,
Josh Klemons: Yeah,
Ryan Davis: but I know that that’s not the way forward. Like like you don’t even run criminal background checks in your door knockers who are who are going to meet with
Josh Klemons: we’re going to people’s houses.
Ryan Davis: your people’s houses. Yeah.
Josh Klemons: Wild. Okay, it sounds like we have a lot to learn.
Ryan Davis: So,
Josh Klemons: How can folks keep in touch with you moving forward? What’s the best way? Is it the newsletter, the podcast, the website,
Ryan Davis: yeah.
Josh Klemons: LinkedIn?
Ryan Davis: Check check out peoplefirst.cc, find me on LinkedIn. We’ve got a couple substacks and and yeah, we we work with uh politics and and advocacy, public health,
Josh Klemons: Cool.
Ryan Davis: all the good stuff.
