Hmmm, somebody better check on Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency appointees: they must be frothing at the mouth — or unconscious from shock. Yes, an email just arrived from John McCain’s campaign touting the candidate’s enviro-friendly promo gear:
In our new store section, we’re proud to offer eco-friendly t-shirts and polo shirts made from biodegradable fabric, as well as organic cotton hats and shopping bags. You can also buy travel mugs and notebooks made from recycled materials.
Wonder what Rush will have to say about this one…Operation Chaos is over, Operation Cognitive Dissonance has begun. (Note: the online store address didn’t end up in the PDF, but here it is.) BTW, dig the shampoo-bottle logo:
John McCain, from Hanoi Hilton to New Age fashion mogul…$50 for a polo shirt? THAT’S change we can believe in.
Interesting new GOP anti-Obama site, via the The Caucus: CanWeAsk.com mixes social media techniques and video to try to undermine Obama’s credibility. The social media approach is the most interesting part of the site, since it’s soliciting text and video questions for the now-presumed nominee (The Caucus correctly notes that the very existence of the site helps to cement the impression that Obama has crossed the finish line). Participants can upload text questions directly to the site, but the video submission process requests YouTube links instead (free product placement!). The site also has a Donate link and a list of unfavorable GOP news articles about Obama.
To me, the video is the weakest part of the presentation, since it shows Barack in still images that are surely intended to paint him in a bad light, but except for the first one (in which his furrowed brow almost suggests devil horns), to me they actually generally make him look serious and sincere (he’s on-screen throughout the whole clip). The video also uses standard negative-ad “concerned” music, and tries to turn an Obama crowd’s “Yes We Can” chant into an affirmation of our right to ask the candidate tough questions, but in the end it actually just reminds me of the guy’s own message. I have to say, this clip feels like a backfire-in-progress. See what you think:
Update: While I was editing this piece, I let the video run in the background, where I could hear it but not see it, and it felt more effective that way. Still, every time the chant of “Yes We Can” came along, it still seemed to undermine the overall feeling of negativity. Maybe it’s just me.
Read Scott Martin continues doing yeoman’s work over at his political Ad of the Day site, and with Indiana and North Carolina in mind, take a look at how Obama’s been pushing voter turnout. His paid search ads on “Indiana primary,” for instance, have been pushing early voting in the state, while Clinton’s are generic and point to her main website. Also, check out the display ads each is running: again, Obama’s ads are focused on helping people get to the polls, while Clinton’s are general fundraising spots. As in other examples of his online campaigning, Obama’s strategy is more focused than Clinton’s and also more of-the-moment. How much it helps, we’ll know soon.
Freed from the pressure to win votes immediately, McCain can sit back and work on differentiating himself from the Dems — well, at least from Obama. His online display ads are hitting the gas tax moratorium hard, with a petition for list-building. Thinking about the Fall? Not a luxury the Dems can afford much of, at least for another agonizing month.
In her presentation this morning, Morra Aarons-Mele made an excellent observation: internet staffers for political campaigns are expected to do everything and to know everything. The same is true in the advocacy world: when I was at the former National Environmental Trust, at various times I was a graphic designer, an HTML coder, an online communications strategist, an email advocacy guy, a database manager, a blog outreacher, a site statistics analyst, a social networking pro, an online advertiser and a trainer of interns — sometimes all in the same day. About the only things I didn’t do were to blog for the organization and to raise money online, and that was only because NET didn’t do those things.
Web staffers are expected to have a broader range of skills than any other part of a campaign or organization (example: do you expect your press relations folks to be fundraising experts?), and yet they’re still often underpaid and kept out of critical communications decisions until late in the process. Bizarre. Oh, and BTW, I can’t fix your computer — it amazed me how often people confused my job with that of our actual (and excellent) IT guy.
I can only assume that this situation exists because the ‘net seems like voodoo to traditional political staff, who often seem to have little idea what actually goes into online communications. As the ‘net insinuates itself more and more into politics at all levels, a change had better come — as Zack Exley put it, you won’t hire an internet person and put him or her in a box, you’ll hire communications staff who actually understand how to use the internet.
Along with Dennis Johnson, Karen Jagoda and Morra Aarons-Mele, I had the pleasure of giving a presentation this morning on congressional and local online campaigns for the assembled journalists at the Knight Digital Media Center’s symposium, Election ’08: Unleashing the Cyber-watchdogs (i.e., after a week of luxuriating in the California sun, it was time to sing for my supper and justify the trip). My notes are below; if they’re too cryptic, drop me a note for details.
It’s always fun when dueling campaign emails arrive in the e.politics inbox only minutes apart, particularly when they’re so gently massaging the same issues-of-the-moment. Today’s edition: Obama vs. McCain. The weapons: “bitter” vs. “out of touch.” The immediate stakes: the contents of thousands of wallets. The long-term stakes: the public perception of each man, and ultimately his electoral fate. Today, Barack hit first, fast and jujitsu-style, seeking to define his San Francisco comments as a hymn of love to the great America heartland and his rivals as shady opportunists for trying to take advantage of them:
But our opponents have been spinning the media and peddling fake outrage around the clock. John McCain’s campaign, which will continue the George Bush economic policies that have devastated the middle class, called Barack out of touch and elitist. And Hillary Clinton, who is the candidate who said lobbyists represent real people, didn’t just echo the Republican candidate’s talking points: she actually used the very same words to pile on with more attacks.
Bonus points for the McCain-Clinton combo strike! Four head-spinning minutes later, John McCain went to DefCon One and dropped the E-bomb — the dreaded charge of Democratic Elitism:
If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions - Senator Obama’s liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain’s faith in the small town values that continue to make America great. John McCain will not forget them or write them off. Neither should Barack Obama.
Who will win this contest of wills, this battle of generational champions, this struggle for the Very Soul of Middle America? Don’t touch that dial…
Jake Tapper’s smoke detector goes off at ABC News. “That fact simply highlights a growing narcissistic disease within the campaign press corps in which members increasingly see themselves as central players in the unfolding political production. Specifically, with regard to the Democratic primary, the press clearly views itself as the third candidate on the stage.”
Hi y’all, I gave a social media marketing training in New York on Monday, and I developed something for it that you might be able to use. The training was for the web staff of the local chapters of a large national nonprofit, and we covered the basics of using tools like blogs, online video, social networking sites and email lists and discussion groups to promote their activities and help with membership and fundraising. As a takeaway (a trick I learned from Michael Bassik — if you can, leave a little something behind for the crowd), I created a cheap sheet that looks at the basic social media marketing tools, their pros and cons, and the essential considerations involved in a social media campaign. Here’s a link to the PDF; details are below.
Okay, it’s not exactly a robot zombie army, but it might have a similar effect on the world of political action — an email arrived today from the Obama campaign about a training program they’re starting which aims to educate a cadre of activists in the essentials of community organizing. Using Obama’s own organizing experience as a hook, the campaign pitches the Obama Organizing Fellowships as “a program that’s going to train a new generation of leaders — not only to help us win this election, but to help strengthen our democracy in communities across the country.”
The message doesn’t say how many Fellows will be trained or where, but it does give you the opportunity to make a donation, to invite a friend to help or even to volunteer to house a Fellow. Obviously the campaign is investing in this project in order to help get Obama elected, and a Fellow’s most important job will be to help that task along (note that the program is a tool for the general election at this point, not the primaries), but after that they’ll be turned loose to wander the Earth on their own, where some will no doubt use their new-found powers for good or ill.
Seriously, with an unprecedented number of people politically activated this year, and with the campaigns as well as outside groups like my friends at the New Organizing Institute training campaign workers and volunteers in the essentials of political action online and off, I can’t help but think that we’re going to be left with a ton of new people fired up about politics and armed with the tools to put their ideas to work. Some will fail and others will lose interest, but the rest may just start to change the ways things are done locally and up the political chain. THAT would be robot-zombie-army fun to watch.
Science Link of the Day: “There you have it: the world’s most sensitive eyes allow them to be simple! And smash things! And it’s worked for 400 million years.”
Check out today’s Post for a good look at HOW Barack Obama has raised over $100 million so far this year — spoiler: it wasn’t by accident. Matthew Mosk examines how the campaign has used both Google ads and display ads in online publications ranging from Daily Kos to the Washington Times to bring supporters into the fold:
Obama’s online investment has not come cheap. In January, he spent $768,000 on Web ads, while Clinton spent $171,000 and McCain spent $151,000, campaign finance records show. In February, when Obama spent $2.6 million on ads, Clinton spent $198,000 and McCain spent $111,000.
As Zack Exley notes, the ads are tied to an often-subtle email strategy to build connections with list members over time:
“If you just look at the e-mails and the rhythm — the Obama campaign has not asked for money every time they could have,” Exley said. “They’ve tried to really show people that they’re not just after your money. They’re not treating you like an ATM.”
The result: tens of millions of dollars from small donors, people that the campaign can go back to over and over for money. The takeaways: 1) guess what, the internet can connect a candidate with motivated supporters and donors, 2) if you do it right, you can multiply those rewards with a relatively small investment of time and money. Good tactics matter!
Crowd Enabling, the Obama way. A mighty bold claim: “Even if Obama fails to achieve his goal of becoming President of the United States, I predict he will have a deeper and more powerful understanding of the American people than anyone in the history of politics.”
Quote of the week: “‘It’s a love tap compared to the Wu-Tang fist of fury that’s coming at this guy in the fall,’ said Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant.”
Facebook Launches Band Pages. “MySpace also might start to get worried — I’m sure I’m not the only one who uses that site solely for auditioning bands.”
Update from the Politics Online Conference: some quick numbers from Patrick Quinn of PQMedia on how candidates are expected to spend their money online in 2008. First, online spending should total roughly $73 million at all levels in the ‘08 elections. Second, email marketing is still dominates expenditures, taking up 62% of campaigns’ online spending. Web development is next on the list at 27%, with display, search and video ads taking up the remaining 11% of online budgets. For comparison, the 2004 numbers were 74% for email, 19% for web development and 7% for ads.
Update:Primary Season Signals Adoption of Online Ads by Political Campaigns. “Not only are those ads relatively inexpensive; they’ve allowed often cash-strapped campaigns to determine whether their dollars were well spent, before voters went to the polls.” Lots of details in this one.
Politics and tax top US search league. Also note that Huckabee’s site outdrew McCain’s by 50% in January, and that Obama’s site had double the traffic of Hillary’s and four times that of McCain’s.
U.S. Spies Want to Find Terrorists in World of Warcraft. Juan Cole replies:
“The recent alarmism about terrorist activity in virtual worlds seems designed to prey on the fears of the Internet common among the Great Unwired. Most of the concerns are simply unreasonable.”
From the beginning of Campaign 2008, liberal media pundits have fawned over the Democrat presidential candidates while ignoring their lack of substance on the issues. You can be certain that as the campaign heats up they will continue to mislead voters with their anti-Republican agenda.
Joe, Republicans must fight back against the mainstream media’s clear liberal bias — and we need your help to do it.
According to every TV type I heard last night, one of the few things the Far Right seems to hate more than John McCain is the Times, so perhaps this (potential) scandal will provide an effective hook for coaxing some bucks out of the faithful. At the very least, it’s won over Rush Limbaugh for a couple of days. And note how quickly it blew the Obama/Patrick plagiarism affair off the air.
Seeing more dollar signs, the McCain campaign and the RNC decided to jump at the chance to take advantage of the distraction they had created to raise money. They had spent the day firing their supporters up, trying desperately to change the subject, and then they literally cashed in on it. It was textbook sleaze.
The Obama campaign seems to have shifted at least some of its online ad buying towards a general election strategy, at least judging from the display ad below, which I saw on an article on Space.com:
Ink Different. On the subject of cults of personality and Obama tattoos: “Shouldn’t this guy at least have waited for the general? Imagine someone walking around right now with a Lieberman tat.”
