By Menachem Wecker
On Saturdays when his friends at large state schools were cheering on their football teams, Brian Donahue, B.A. ’99, and his GW classmates were strategizing how to elect someone to student government or interning on the Hill. “Political management is our football,” he says.
Mr. Donahue, an adjunct professor at GW’s Graduate School of Political Management, is a founder and managing partner of CRAFT Media Digital, a political consulting firm in the District, which works with primarily conservative clients including political candidates, public affairs firms, nonprofits and media outlets.
Two other CRAFT co-founders and co-partners are GW alumni: Matthew Dybwad, B.A. ’99, and Justin Germany, M.A. ’03. Daniel Huey, B.B.A. ’10, is an account executive at the firm.
According to its Web site, CRAFT, which employs eight people, integrates traditional and new media in a unique way.
Although firms should not be judged by their physical office space, the founders of CRAFT have as much personality as their office, which is in a carriage house across from the U.S. Capitol, with a swing set in the backyard. Mr. Germany wears a cowboy hat in his photos, and the firm has a post on its blog Framework titled “Why CRAFT Media Digital does not have a Facebook fan page.” Although many firms don’t use Facebook, few who identify as digital experts actually have the guts to announce they are choosing not to join.
According to Mr. Germany, who was director of online media for the McCain campaign and the eCampaign videographer and editor for Bush-Cheney ’04, some of the YouTube videos CRAFT creates for clients have drawn more than 100,000 viewers. Once on a flight back to Washington from a video shoot, Mr. Germany and Mr. Donahue saw an ad on CNN that Mr. Germany had just cut the day before on his laptop, while helping out on a second camera on the shoot. “How many firms do this?” he says.
Mr. Donahue says CRAFT has been thinking outside the box from its inception, which is why it has the confidence to announce it is abstaining from a Facebook fan page. “We weren’t about to make the decision to be on Facebook just because everyone else is,” he says.
According to Mr. Dybwad, CRAFT’s strength comes from the diversity of its partners’ areas of expertise and its decision to educate people about best communications practices rather than promote itself. CRAFT uses its blog to share those ideas. Recent posts have focused on identifying and creating “compelling content,” avoiding the error of treating e-mail like direct mail and the ways “Your Newsletter Is Killing Your List.”
“Instead of having a Web site that’s full of hundreds of pages of marketing-speak about why we are so great, we can show people that we know what we are doing by teaching them how it’s done,” Mr. Dybwad says. “The site traffic perpetuates itself, because people look at it as a resource that is useful to them.”
Whereas some firms are “trying to grow an apple branch out of an orange tree,” by demanding that people with expertise in one medium become jacks-of-all-trades, CRAFT is unique in that its team consists of experts in print, digital and media services. “It’s not one guy trying to be another, it’s all of us working together representing the best of each channel,” he says. “Just because we offer everything doesn’t mean everything is important for everyone every time.”
Timing is very important for CRAFT as well. With the recent election of Scott Brown (R-Mass.) to the Senate, Mr. Donahue has noticed a shift in the types of campaigns candidates run. “Scott Brown is an example of a larger wave of sea change of attitude and approach that is happening in politics,” he says. “When people say we are cutting edge, or different, I think you can look to the types of campaigns that have been successful and look at our work and see how it is in line with that.”
Although the four GW alumni at the firm did not meet at the university, they all agree their time in Foggy Bottom was a vital part of their professional development.
“The Graduate School of Political Management was very helpful in finding a place for me in Washington,” says Mr. Germany. The Web videos Mr. Germany produced for GW’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet drew the attention of a board member, who forwarded his resume to the electronic campaign manager for the Bush-Cheney campaign. Mr. Germany says the campaign was a “trial by fire,” but he learned how and where to shoot video by watching the photographers for TIME and Newsweek covering the campaign trail.
Mr. Germany says GW politics graduates are hard to avoid in Washington, because there are so many of them. “I think GW has a strong track record of producing people who go into politics and are successful,” he says.
Asked if people who are not GW alumni can apply for jobs at CRAFT, Mr. Dybwad jokes, “as long as they didn’t graduate from Georgetown.”
Mr. Dybwad got into politics when a fraternity brother advised him to get involved in the Politics Online Conference at GW. “That was really the basis of everything I’ve been doing for the past 10 years,” he says.
According to Mr. Dybwad, you can count on GW alumni to have “pretty unique experiences,” including key internships and experience in politics or government. “A GW political communications graduate--this person is going to be valuable,” he says. “We are going to look at them very closely.”
Mr. Donahue, who says his teaching and his work inform each other, has hired GW students as interns for the past four years.
“I aggressively seek out some of the best and brightest students from George Washington University, and have had a wonderful experience with those students,” he says. “GW is a place that we are proud to have a relationship with. We feel like we maintain a connection to the university. Having young fresh, thoughtful students around helps us too.”
One of those students was Mr. Huey, who met Mr. Donahue as an undergraduate. Mr. Huey worked for Mr. Donahue at Jamestown Associates, before moving with him to CRAFT.
Mr. Donahue advises students to “intern as much as humanly possible.”
“You’ve to show up to be put in the game,” he says “Going to GW is your entrance to showing up in D.C. Then it becomes up to the students demonstrate value enough that they can get in the game, if they want to be in the profession of politics.”