Campaign-in-a-box

In a discussion among local party people about "how to bring the Republican party back", one idea crystallized that I would like help to flesh out. We discussed the fact that campaigns - in this particular context local campaigns -  need better support in terms of technology, communications, infrastructure and a lot more besides. The challenge is how to implement such great ideas in the context of campaigns that cannot afford huge budgets. Technology is making things cheaper, but there is a yawning gap between what is possible and what people know how to do.

So we came up with the concept of "Campaign-in-a-box" -  a manifest of all of the elements needed to support a basic political campaign (e.g., local-type campaign, state representative, county commissioner, etc.), that would enable a candidate not to get lost in the 'nuts and bolts' concerns of how to set up all the technology and communications infrastructure to support the campaign. It would be a manifest and implementation that provides all the basics to him or her so they dont have to build from scratch.

Consider it from this perspective. We are telling campaigns "get on facebook; get a YouTube account, post video there; get a way to issue press releases; ID your voters; build a website; etc." Well, giving such advice is useless to a candidate who is neither expert, nor does he even know where to start on these things.

So, let's collate that advice in the umbrella of ALL the advice and specific supporting implementations that a candidate would need. Can a local campaign leverage standard infrastructure for an effective campaign, and would such a concept lower the barrier for them to utilize more effective technology?
In other words, what should be the manifest for the "campaign in a box"?

Some specifics:

• Campaign website infrastructure and templates, e.g., can a Drupal implementation be templated to create a baseline campaign website to leverage? Many congressional campaigns use Drupal (e.g., Chet Edwards) so it or a CMS like it is a good starting point. What would be the must-have features, and what is a good implementation (low-cost/no-cost), so that a campaign wouldn't have to start from scratch? What Web 2.0/user generated content to have?
• YouTube, Facebook, twitter; what is the set of must-have online communications channels? Optional/maybe-do communication channels? Encourage use of videos and posting them
• How to interact with bloggers? Websites, forums and online groups to leverage?
• Communications / press office: The 'campaign in a box' includes a Press Release Kit - What's in it? How to establish good press relations?
• Voter database: Voter data should be a part of the package, so the question would be, what sort of database should be used, how should it be managed and integrated? What voter data is important? Mostly getting the "R" and "D" affiliation is just a first step, can more precise data be gathered? Should the candidate bother trying that? Is an integrated database important? How sophisticated should it be? (Again, think local-type race, where you might have 10,000 - 50,000 voters total).
• Campaign  basic strategy: Should the campaign-in-a-box have a basic strategy and what would it entail? What methods of outreach have the best ROI, and how should the local candidate be directed: Phone calls, blockwalking, neighborhood forums, finding key influencers, etc. Which to prioritize or should that be left to the candidate to figure out?

The reason this idea is important is that many campaigns with even good candidates flounder for the lack of a 'good campaign', and they rarely fail for lack of hard effort. They fail because the candidate, while they may know the issues, doesn't know how to run a campaign, and doesnt have the money to pay big-buck consultants to figure it out. A "campaign-in-a-box" would be a simple pared-down version of whatever its that Obama spent tens of millions of dollars putting together and which costs a hundred thousand or more for a Congressional candidate to put together.

A simple "How To" and manifest for a local candidate could go a long way towards making many of these campaigns more effective.

So ... Time to think INSIDE the box.  What should be in the Campaign-in-a-Box? What technology components are particularly effective/needed in this?