In the political world, it’s easy to demonize the other side. Those bastards want to abolish the social safety net! Those freaks want to let men marry men! We often forget that, in most cases, the freaks and bastards aren’t being evil but instead sincerely believe that they’re working to make the world a better place.
If you’re involved in politics, regardless of which side you’re on, you likely started doing it because you wanted to advance some noble goal. Of course there are sleazoids out there, and of course humans are very good at rationalizing actions whose results will be bad for the rest of us, but I honestly believe that the majority of people in the political world are acting out of a reasonably sincere desire to improve things. Very few of us are villains in our own stories or our own minds.
With that reminder, let’s take a second to look at one of those moments when a person and his words really did change the world, when someone did succeed in making lives easier and prospects brighter, when someone did help make this often-ugly political process yield to a higher cause. On MLK Day, take a few minutes to watch, to listen and to dream of futures better.
MarketingSherpa’s 2007 Wisdom Report. According to the site, it covers: “email campaign segmentation tests and results, blogging, podcasting and mobile marketing tips, search marketing tactics and offline advertising, web site design and social networking done right.” I haven’t had a chance to read it (60 pages!) but it looks to be well worth checking out.
Consultants’ Corner: Keeping An Open Mind. Hotline reports that political consultants are more open to online campaigning and plan to spend more money on it in the future.
Geek-heaven link of the day: Take an Airship into Orbit. Who needs rockets when you have balloons and ion propulsion? Very close to being blimp porn (mmmmm, blimp porn…).
Being an executive at a traditional media outlet these days must be a little like trying to stay afloat in a flood — menaced by debris, surrounded by chaos, contantly looking for something solid to stand on. Two articles in today’s Post freeze moments in the swirl of change and hint at new opportunities for those of us trying to spread ideas in the public mind.
Frank Ahrens’ piece (“Newspaper-TV Marriage Shows Signs of Strain”) starts with a compelling hook — Belo Broadcasting (home of the Dallas Morning News and a string of newspapers and television stations) is laying off two television reporters and replacing them with videographers who’ll be producing short pieces for the company’s newspaper websites. Local TV stations had been a profit center for newspaper chains, but as Times Company Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr indicates, in the new world of journalism, “the future of video [is] in short form and on the Web, as opposed to long form and on television.” (more…)
The New Politics Institute and film producer Julie Bergman Sender have put together a detailed look at the stories behind several successful viral political videos. What do you need to get your labor of love to spread around the world and shake the pillars of power? What’s better, amateur video, social-media style, or a high-end slick professional product? Overall, what works? The conclusion sums it up:
While amateur or user-generated content is a powerful emerging phenomenon, and with time can be designed to feed the needs of campaigns and organizations, the higher-end, often professionally produced viral content still has an important role to play. This high-end content is where the story is designed as part of a complex communications strategy, and the material is planned to be used in various distribution avenues to intentionally reach a wide audience. The use of celebrity talent and a carefully researched approach to branding a campaign does not have to be done instead of a user-generated content campaign. In fact, the best approach would be to combine both of these tools…
In the end, no matter whether you use amateurs or professionals, with a top-down or bottom-up strategy, you must have compelling content that moves people, and gets them to move the message to others. One thing is certain: No matter what the size of the screen, content is still king.
ONE NIGHT ONLY! Friday, January 19th! Burning Sensation, DC’s Most Startling Sonic Entity, takes the stage at Solly’s on U Street, ready to ram some serious Rock and Roll deep into your Soul!
Yes, Burning Sensation returns to DC after a brief hiatus, armed with some new songs but still sporting the same old Bad Attitude. The time: we play at 11, with House of Echoes opening at 9. The cover: a measly $6. The place: Solly’s is at the corner of 11th and U Streets, mere blocks from the U Street Metro. It’s a new bar with a great vibe.
You’ll have the best night you’ll have all year, I guaran-damn-tee! (Until we play again, that is…) And remember, wear fresh underwear, not just to throw at the stage, but ’cause We’ll Blow Your Pants Clean Off! Repeat after me: “I have seen the light! I BELIEVE in the redemptive power of Rock and Roll!” See you next week.
Nancy Schwartz at Getting Attention writes in to pitch a survey that you might be interested in helping her with:
I’m starting off the year by surveying nonprofit communicators on key goals and challenges. Here are a few of the questions:
Looking back at 2006, what was your biggest disappointment or frustration? And what was your greatest success?
What are your top three communications goals for 2007?
As you look ahead to 2007, please rate these marketing and communications challenges as they relate to your organization…
My report back on responses (which I’ll be glad to share) will highlight trends and models, so nonprofit communicators can be more effective than ever. And will help those of us who publish for nonprofit communicators to home in on what’s important to them. You’ll find the survey here.
Getting attention? I think Nancy practices what she preaches.
Hot on the heels of naming “you” as the Person of the Year, Time Magazine has unveiled a new site architecture and layout that focuses more on blogs and content aggregation than before. For instance, a new politics blog called Swampland features Ana Marie Cox and Joe Klein, among other authors, and uses at least a few standard blog features such as reader comments and permalinks. No trackbacks, though — c’mon guys, give us a little sugar here. (Andrew Sullivan’s pre-existing blog is the other way around, supporting trackbacks but with no reader comments allowed.)
The content aggregation seems limited to a section called The Ag (get it?), which reminds me a bit of Slate’s long-running “Today’s Papers” feature except done in a blog format. The site design also emphasizes advertising, with ads running “above the fold” apparently for the first time. Overall impression? Not a bad start — the design is clean and relatively easy to navigate, and it does use some basic participatory media concepts, since it includes social bookmarking along with unique blogs and blog-like content aggregating. Still, without trackbacks and any kind of audience input other than reader comments on blogs, Time is lagging behind the Post and other organizations that have dived into the new web world head-first.
Want to be President? Step 1: Buy a Video Camera. The Bivings Report suggests that video-blogging may be a better fit for politicians than that whole writing thing, which I hear is time-consuming.
Hmmmmm, I’ve been a little slower to recover from the long weekend than expected and am behind on writing (nurse, get me a bourbon I.V., stat!), so today’s article will be a super-duper number-one happy fun time Quick Hits catch-up edition. Though some of these articles are a week or two old, they’re far from stale and have been carefully sugar-coated for your protection.
The Year-End Frenzy:
Ten moments the web shook the world. LA Times reporter Richard Rushfield wraps up the highs and lows of 2006, from Britney’s nethers to Foley’s nosedive.
Hey guys, the folks over at Squidoo asked me to take a look at using their site, so I just finished creating a “lens” page for online political advocacy. What is Squidoo? A site that simultaneously tries to sort through the mass of information on the web by allowing “experts” to set up overview pages (lenses) on particular topics (kind of like a wiki) while also raising money for charities (lens owners can dedicate the revenue from Google ads on their pages to a select list of nonprofits).
At the moment, I’ve set up the online politics lens to see what kind of traffic it will draw and to experiment with features. Later, we’ll set up an environmentally-themed lens on behalf of my day job (National Environmental Trust) and see how effective IT is. I’ll keep you guys posted about how things go, and in the meantime you might consider setting up your own lenses to see what you can find. Establishing a lens may be a good way to position you or your campaign as a go-to source on your chosen topic.
Hmmm, I wonder if there’s a need for lenses on sloth and beer? Extensive near-lethal experimentation would be required…but I’d try to bear up nobly under the strain.
Online campaigners unite! You have nothing to lose but oh, about 30 seconds of your time. A group of folks in the field, inspired by a discussion at RootsCampDC, has put together a brief manifesto about how nice it would be if our advocacy applications could share data easily, and they’re asking practitioners to sign on. I just did — who wouldn’t want all the parts of an online campaign to work together? Here’s a quick blurb from the organizers, among them our own Ha-Hoa Dang:
If you work for a progressive organization or campaign, you probably
struggle with technology. You probably have multiple databases and
tech tools that half-work, but don’t work together. Thousands of us
have struggled for years with fragmented systems that don’t fully get
the job done. If you want the progressive movement to have the
toolsuites we need to win, you should sign The Integration
Proclamation.
I’ll see you at the barricades. BTW, like the site, guys — nice and simple, good logo.
At least, according to this little online quiz. Should I be concerned that Catwoman is the third-closest match for my personality, behind Spidey and the Green Lantern and a full step ahead of Iron Man? And me a Sabbath fan since I was 16. Happy New Year! Thought we’d start 2007 out with some fun.
The genius bit about the whole thing is the leave-behind, a little snippet of code that you can insert on your website:
Your results: You are Spider-Man
Spider-Man: 95%
Green Lantern: 80%
Catwoman: 75%
Iron Man: 65%
Robin: 60%
The Flash: 50%
Supergirl: 45%
Superman: 45%
Hulk: 40%
Wonder Woman: 35%
Batman: 20%
You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.
Nice! I’ll believe the “bit geeky” part, no doubt. The quiz is clever, takes no time at all, sells itself and has this nice picture you can put on stuff. Advocacy campaigns can do things like this! Not the superhero part specifically (it’s kinda been done at this point), but the idea of the takeaway that brands you, widget-like. Something that might help you grab some of those email addresses I hear all the kids are talking about these days. Don’t forget a healthy dose of that whole “fun” thing while you’re at it. Note: be careful how you build takeaway code. In this case, it contained nested HTML tables and clashed with my stylesheet, so I had to rewrite it to get it to display even vaguely correctly. Watch out for things like that — test widely.
