{"id":117310,"date":"2021-01-21T12:24:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T17:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//?p=117310"},"modified":"2022-03-04T15:57:03","modified_gmt":"2022-03-04T20:57:03","slug":"how-a-ucf-alum-helped-a-presidential-election-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310///news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//www.ucf.edu/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//news/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//how-a-ucf-alum-helped-a-presidential-election-campaign/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310//","title":{"rendered":"How a UCF Alum Helped a Presidential Election Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Mariutto /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u201912 spent the past six months working on a mail targeting program for a presidential election campaign from his family/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u2019s house in Plantation, Florida. Sitting at a borrowed desk and chair, he nailed down the logistics and details that went into sending millions of dollars of mail to individuals across over a dozen states./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n

Mariutto was the senior mail analyst for President Joe Biden/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u2019s presidential election campaign. He coordinated efforts with a team that spanned the country. /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u201cIt was amazing, and it was very overwhelming,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u201d says Mariutto, who received his bachelor/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u2019s degree in public administration from UCF./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n

Despite the rise of social media and digital marketing, direct mail efforts still have a strong hold in campaigning. According to a 2018 Political Digital Advertising Report, 50 percent of total campaign and PAC budgets were spent on television and direct mail./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n

/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u201cMy responsibility as the senior mail analyst was to design the logic behind our computer programs that would say, /news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u2018This person lives in this place and they have these characteristics and these models scores, so they should get this amount of mail, they should receive mail with this content, and they should receive it at this time,/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u2019/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/u201d Mariutto says./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n

What did you do between graduating from UCF and landing this position?
/news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/nMy involvement at UCF led to my future career path, which took me specifically toward political communications and messaging strategy. After graduation, I interned at the statewide office for Obama for Florida. I was there for a few months, and then moved on to graduate school at the London School of Economics, where I studied politics and communication./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n

I came back to the U.S. and moved to Washington, D.C., where I worked at a polling firm as an analyst. I was there for three and a half years, then I moved in 2018, for that election cycle, to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. I was a regional targeting director, which is a regional analytics position for the Midwest and Mountain West, [focused on helping] elect all the congressional candidates that we were working with. That was an extremely interesting and enlightening experience that covered the gamut of polling, paid communications, targeting and opinion research and melding them together in order to deliver messages to the right people at the right time in the right format./news/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/117310/n