Catalyst Campaigns believes that communications and marketing strategies must evolve to meet today’s consumer where they are paying attention. Therefore it is critical to continually experiment, learn and evolve… because what worked well yesterday, will not necessarily work the same way tomorrow.
Scott Goodstein, the founder of Catalyst Campaigns, has led development teams to achieve greatness. His accolades include over two-dozen Pollies, an award bestowed by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), and he has received over a dozen Reed Awards from Campaigns & Elections Magazine.
Goodstein helped modernize the labor movement by developing a mobile hiring hall for the International Union of Painters & Allied Trades, which, in 2012 allowed members to pursue meaningful employment opportunities through text messaging job announcements based on certification and region. This innovation won a Global Silver Smartie Award for Mobile Messaging from the Mobile Marketing Association and was also the North American Gold Medal Smartie Award winner for Messaging.
In 2016, Goodstein also led the political agency he founded to become the AAPC’s Political Agency of the Year. That same year, the agency was recognized by the European Association of Political Consultants for the Best Global Presidential Campaign for the work the firm did in building Bernie Sander’s online campaign.
Innovations in Mobile Technology
- Pioneered the use of Short Message Service (SMS) for political campaigns and issue advocacy
- Built first union SMS hiring hall for the International Union of Painters & Allied Trades
- Introduced peer-to-peer (P2P) text messaging to presidential campaigns in 2016
- Created first cell phone ringtones for politics and advocacy in 2007
- Developed the first political MobileApp (with an all-volunteer team) for Obama 2008
- Implemented the first Zip Code-based SMS for regional messaging for Obama 2008.
- Created the first text messaging system for emergency shelter notifications for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2009
- Initiated the first use of text to live-broadcast for the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee
- Worked with the NAACP immediately after Treyvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African-American high school student, was shot and killed in Florida in 2012 to create the largest mobile petition signing.
Innovations in Calling Technology
- First to deploy “Call Congress” technology to easily connected citizens directly with their Members of Congress
- First state legislative calling civic technology created for every US state legislative chamber.
- First to utilize Interactive Voice Response (IVR), an automated phone system technology, to direct voters to early vote locations in 2008.
- Co-founded DailyAction — An innovative SMS alert system with daily voice message to help activists take focused actions during Donald Trump first 100 days.
Innovations in the Political Industry
- Helped pioneer independent expenditure campaigns for political messaging in the US
- Ran the first independent expenditure campaigns in Brazil and Israel
- Testified before the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to modernize their federal disclaimer requirements for mobile advertising.
- Created the first Facebook ads for issue advocacy targeting Congress
- Developed a 100% union-made-in-America online store for a presidential campaign
- Built the first major-party presidential campaign website entirely in Spanish-language
- Designed some of the first courses in digital organizing offered by the Center for Congressional & Presidential Studies at the American University
- Succesffuly pettitioned Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to allow political campaigns to receive contributions by text messaging
- Led the fight to compell reforms of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in the interest of ending political text-messaging spam.
Scott Goodstein frequently writes about advances in technology for politics at TheHill.com