Candidate/Campaign Relationship Management

Doc Searls has recently been talking a lot about Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), the user-centric business concept that a potential customer of several vendors can express their interests to a set of vendors (in the form of a RFP) and have the vendors respond to the potential customer with competing bids for their business. He's even convinced the good folks at the Berkman Center to house ProjectVRM, where this idea can grow.

In a session at IIW2006B on politics and digital identity, we discussed the concept of Candidate Relationship Management (or Campaign Relationship Management) "CaRM" - a concept inspired by VRM that takes a person's political interests (as opposed to product or service-oriented interests) and invites campaigns or candidates to bid for their attention, time, money, or opinion. Just as in the consumer retail space, political campaigns spend a ton of effort trying to reach out to those who are willing listeners and can be turned into active supporters (at whatever level of support). CaRM lets me express to candidates and campaigns what issues and topics I'm concerned about so that I can have a more meaningful two-way exchange with the campaigns seeking my support. It seems really obvious to me that this is just like VRM...

I'm curious what other people think, and whether the VRM discussion should be expanded to include non-monetary intention harvesting (i.e. political intention harvesting)?

Comments

[Pedro S. Silva II]

Gabe,

I came across your page when doing research on Candidate relationship management. I am the Candidate Relationship manager at JCSI, which is a recruitment process supplement company. I started this position at the beginning of last quarter after stating my case for the position several times with the leadership. I am now in the position of justifying my role and trying to get total corporate buy-in from the recruiters and Account managers I am trying to serve. I was wondering if you had any thoughts.