e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Brilliant Jane Corwin Parody Campaign Site (Or, Why Campaigns Should Buy Alternate URLs)

May 1st, 2011

Earlier this weekend Eli Pariser linked to one of the funniest damn things I’ve seen in a while: a brilliant parody of erstwhile Republican Congressmember Jane Corwin’s campaign website. JaneCorwin.ORG (the fake) mimics JaneCorwin.COM (the real deal) down to small details, but where the official site is typical political pablum, the parody blasts the candidate with humor that veers from rude to surreal to unabashedly juvenile.

For instance, while the real site’s splash screen asks people to “Sign up and be the first to receive updates from Jane Corwin” because “Together we can build a bright future that is lit with prosperity and opportunity,” the parody version informs us that “Together we can make delicious soup from the bones of the poor” and invites the reader to “Sign up now to be served by Jane Corwin,” asking for both blood type and taste. Campaign slogan? “Challenging the Status Quo & Protecting Your Tax Dollars” becomes “Protecting the Status Quo & Taking Your Tax Dollars.”

Drilling down, individual pages use the official site’s own imagery but with captions like “Jane Corwin — Standing Beside Fire Trucks for Some Reason,” “A proven millionaire. A real homophobe. The ruler we fear,” and “An Energy Plan that Puts Producers First.” In the site navigation, Volunteer and Contact options become Surrender and Grovel, the Donate page is titled “All your money is Belong to Jane,” and so on down to each line of individual text. Features, too: don’t miss the “campaign’s” Tweets and Facebook friends on the bottom-right of most pages.

All around, JaneCorwin.org is political critique with a graffiti artist’s sensibility, and whether or not it makes a difference in the special election in which Corwin is running, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Few things need the piss taken out of them more than the pretensions of American politics and American politicians.

And as Eli points out in his Facebook comment, this is a perfect example of why a campaign should always buy at least the .com, .net and .org versions of its domain name — some fraction of people will type in the wrong version, and the results may be sub-optimal for the candidate if it’s been snatched-up by an opponent or prankster. Heil Corwin!

– cpd

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8 Comments Add your own

1. Stan Olshefski | May 1st, 2011 at 5:48 pm

This is actually a poor example of the need to purchase alternate domain names.

People are much more likely to enter .com than .org, which makes this parody (that’s not funny) site only viewable to the five left-wing Yahoos who think it’s funny.

Now if the alternate domain name were something like CorwinForCongress.com, we’d be talking about something that matters.

Still, she should at least purchased the the .org of the main URL…
2. cpd | May 1st, 2011 at 7:13 pm

Hey man, I’m sure that relatively few people will type in the .org rather than the .com, but I also bet Corwin’s new media director is smacking himself in the forehead. And that’s more than enough proof to me that this is a good example of what a campaign should NOT do.
3. Bob | May 1st, 2011 at 7:45 pm

“People are much more likely to enter .com than .org, which makes this parody (that’s not funny) site only viewable to the five left-wing Yahoos who think it’s funny.”

Ho ho ho, silly satirists, will you ever learn? Oh wait, now the parody .org’s traffic is ranked at 150k on Alexa compared to the legit .com’s 700k. Sounds like a lot more than “five left wing Yahoos” found it funny.

And for the record, the site is pretty funny, especially a couple of the tweets. Someone calling it “juvenile” almost implies they took offense.
4. cpd | May 1st, 2011 at 7:50 pm

Just for the record, Epolitics.com has a very firm editorial stance in favor of juvenile humor.
5. Bob | May 1st, 2011 at 8:05 pm

Fair enough
6. Tuesday’s political&hellip | May 3rd, 2011 at 7:09 am

[...] PARODY SITE DRAWS ATTENTION. E.politics highlights a campaign parody website here. [...]
7. e.politics: online advoca&hellip | June 28th, 2011 at 1:48 pm

[...] being a true joy to tell you about, this particular screw-up is worse than the oopsie that led to that excellent Jane Corwin parody campaign site a couple of months ago, since at least Corwin’s staff had bought her OWN domain. Hey kids! Be [...]
8. Quora&hellip | July 20th, 2011 at 10:48 am

How do you control the use of your brand in Digital Media?…

Laurence McCahill is correct. Honesty is the most effective strategy. The more honest the brand, the more difficult it is to hijack because audiences will detect and respond negatively to misuse of your brand. That said, you should keep the following i…

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