Following the election, many practitioners are being asked about the role generative artificial intelligence tools played this cycle. After all, 2024 has been called the “first AI election.”
But practitioners, even those who were deeply engaged in 2024, are struggling to address that question because of how diversely AI tools were adopted, if adopted at all, throughout the industry.
Some firms made concerted efforts to incorporate AI tools into their workflows while others found little use for them. Still other consultants spent the cycle pioneering their own sets of tools for campaigns. Mike Nellis, a Democratic fundraiser who last year launched Quiller, an AI tool for email fundraising, falls into the latter category.
In an interview with C&E, he reflected on whether 2024 was truly an AI election.
“I would say the overall impact was probably like a two or a three out of 10,” he said, noting that many practitioners were afraid to use the current generation of tools. “It just had a minimal impact, and I think anybody arguing otherwise broadly is lying or mistaken.”
The clients who used Quiller, he said, were “able to save an incredible amount of time and raise an incredible amount of money because of [it].”
He added: “We work with Democratic municipal officers and officials, and they would not have been able to run an email program period without Quiller.”
Those clients are outliers in the industry, though, Nellis said. Overall, practitioners may have used AI to save time and increase their efficiency while, say, drafting scripts of emails for clients.
“But I think, broadly, throughout the cycle, it was pretty low [adoption],” he said. “And it was low because … people were afraid of the technology.”
That fear, he noted, was likely because many still don’t understand the technology or how it could benefit them and their clients.
“By the time they were able to wrap their heads around it, we were so deep into the cycle that people were underwater – they really didn’t have time to change their workflows,” said Nellis.
Another concern may have stemmed from billing. For instance, if you’re billing a client for a copywriter or designer’s time and the staffer is able to significantly reduce how long they spend working on deliverables because of AI tools, that could be problematic. In fact, the commercial advertising industry is grappling with that exact problem.
Now, Nellis says a campaign firm’s successful deployment of AI starts with the culture. “People have to feel safe that their jobs aren’t going to be eliminated because of AI,” he said. “They need to feel like they can embrace this technology and learn this technology with freedom and a safety net, which is key.”
He added: “That culture piece is not permeating either political party right now. There are certainly spaces where people are innovating, but it is very confined.”
