Listening to NPR while packing boxes and emptying closets this weekend, I picked up a juicy political-technological morsel indeed: during the 1970s CB radio craze, President Gerald Ford’s wife Betty apparently campaigned over the citizen’s band. She was a big CB lover (her handle: “First Mama”) and apparently used some of her radio time touting her husband’s 1976 campaign. A Google search turned up a handful of references to her CB fandom, for instance this CBS Evening News story summary and an acount of a campaign trip that included an airport meeting with a local CB enthusiasts’ club. I couldn’t find details of her actual on-air comments — if anyone knows more, I’d love to hear about it.
– cpd
November 26th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
The email advocacy frenzy continues apace — hot on the heels of yesterday’s Post article, techPresident announces that it’s started collecting campaign emails via Michael Whitney’s Politikr application, letting us get a consistent look at how often the presidential candidates are messaging their lists and what they’re sending, information that’s more useful than, say, how many MySpace friends someone has. The first fruits: Michael analyzes recent campaign emails in terms of widely accepted rules of thumb for email marketing. Who makes the grade? Whose messages deserve to languish unopened?
If that’s only whetted your appetite, check out Kate Kaye’s recent Clickz article on candidates’ holiday-themed email campaigns, part of the online marketing website’s excellent recent coverage of the world of selling candidates. We usually hear analysis of political marketing from politicos or political journalists; it’s useful to get the perspective of people who normally cover commercial online marketing.
– cpd
November 26th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
At least, according to Christopher Beam at Slate: he reviews questions from two recent Mike Huckabee conference calls, one for reporters and one for bloggers, and finds that the bloggers asked much more substantive questions. Looking at the list, the reporter questions often focused on the horserace rather than the issues: “Is the drop in violence in Iraq making it a less important campaign issue?” “What’s it like facing the Clinton political machine?” “Why aren’t you spending more time in Iowa right now?” By contrast, bloggers tended to ask about policy, often around relatively obscure issues, and eschewed the usual fluff.
Several of us noticed a similar effect during the Democratic YouTube debate this summer — citizens asked better and more substantive questions of politicians than had reporters or the moderator at previous candidate debates. Traditional media outlets often wonder these days why their audience is steadily deserting them — perhaps a part of it is that people really do look to politics for more than just entertainment, and when they want meat for dinner rather than cotton candy, they have plenty of places online to get a good meal.
– cpd
November 26th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
A couple of articles of note popped up this weekend about what I still claim is generally the most useful online political organizing tool: email. First off, judging from Sunday’s Post article on presidentail campaign email subject lines, list exhaustion is already setting in, as campaign staffs are being forced to get more clever in their use of subject lines and senders. Over time, just about any email list “wears out” as addresses go dead and as recipients get tired of seeing campaign messages over and over. Advocacy groups have been dealing with this problem for years, since they frequently build up lists over long periods of time and contact the same activists and donors repeatedly.
In the past, most electoral campaigns have typically lasted only relatively a short time and haven’t have to worry much about list exhaustion, but with this year’s extended political season, Obama, Romney, Clinton, Giuliani, et al, have already been sending emails to the same people for months on end. Getting supporters to click and then to donate is clearly already becoming an issue, and if the campaigns they think the problem’s bad now, wait until the spring and summer, when senatorial, gubernatorial, congressional, and other state and local campaigns get into the list-building and fundraising act. Once the full game is on, cutting through the email clutter will have to become a major concern for online organizers. Here’s a start, y’all: some initial tips for building and managing lists.
Next up, check out this sentence from an article about Mike Huckabee, also in Sunday’s Post:
Without the funds to lay the kind of groundwork other candidates are laying in South Carolina, the former Arkansas governor is relying on a sort of “viral marketing” there, in which supporters e-mail information about Huckabee to their friends, said Rep. Bob Inglis (S.C.), a supporter. By contrast, Romney is blitzing South Carolina Republicans with expensive mailings that highlight his tough stance on issues such as immigration, and has blanketed the state with television ads.
While this is certainly not the first time a campaign has pinned its hopes on supporter activism rather than top-down advertising, the email component is noteworthy. Of course, I bet that Huckabee is counting on a little more than just supporter emails to spread the word — an Iowa or New Hampshire win ought to bring in some cash for a last-minute ad blitz. For more on Huckabee, see why Zephyr Teachout thinks he has the best online campaign.
– cpd
November 26th, 2007
Trackback
Bookmark on del.icio.us
