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.
Media criticism in context: “Yes, it would be nice if the press spent less time on inanities and more time on how candidates planned to actually run the country. But this view of the media is just too simplistic.” Via Salon.
Kudos to satirical(?) website Stuff White People Like: judging from the number and distribution of people who’ve forwarded it or mentioned it in conversation over the past month or two, the site has built up a level of general viral spread. Searching email, it’s been forwarded by my friend Brad from college and later Austin, my friend Gina from high school, and longtime friend-of-e.politics Burt Edwards. Plus, I swear at least one or two people have brought it up in conversation lately, though I can’t document it.
I mention the site today because Gina just emailed it, giving me three examples, which as any journalistic observer will tell you is one more than you need for a trend story. Plus, the site’s funny as hell, though more in a wry-smile way than a laugh-out-loud way. Editorial strategy note — pitching the stories as survival guides allows us observations like this one, from #91 San Francisco:
Yet another online channel to keep in mind: embedded PowerPoint. Salon’s War Room critiques the online version of a stategy presentation delivered by House Republican Leader John Boehner. The kicker: you can watch his PowerPoint embedded directly into a web page, giving his talk longer legs than if it’d been kept to the people in the room (or if it were a downloadable file rather than an embed). The embedding tool uses Flash, just as YouTube and other video sites do, and it’s a clever extension of the idea of in-line presentation. Combine with an embedded clip of the actual speech for A/V geek nirvana.
Henry Copeland of Blogads: “As the social media winter looms, the winners will be the folks with strong relationships, low overheads, a strong commitment on innovation rather than coat-tail riding, and, most of all, a indelible passion for the business. We’re looking forward to seeing you after the bust.”
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.
This just in from a Drudge Report Siren Alert email: “Controlled excitement is building inside of Clinton’s inner circle… Developing… CLINTON INTERNALS SHOW 11-POINT LEAD IN PA.”
Ah, sweet spin…you gotta love phrases like “controlled excitement,” particularly the day BEFORE the primary election, when there’s still time for a campaign to hope to get late-deciding voters to jump on the bandwagon. The online tie-in, of course, is both the Drudge Report’s involvement itself (remember those mutterings earlier in the election season about a Drudge/Hillary connection?) and the more general vast explosion of channels for distributing a message (see pro wrestling, below). Obviously we have no way of judging the validity of an internal poll whose methodology is opaque, and the Clintonistas have every incentive to get out a positive message at this critical point in their candidate’s political life (Update:they’re denying it). So, who knows how valid this story is. Still, think about the 1988 presidential campaign: it was only 20 years ago, but in media terms, it now seems like an ancient, remote and alien era.
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.”
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.”
Here’s a fun new Flash-based toy from Joseph Gordon and some of my other former NET colleagues at the Conserve Our Ocean Legacy Campaign: see if you Have What It Takes to be an Ocean Survivor. Guide your tuna through an ocean full of hooks and nets while you also dig the dramatic soundtrack and exciting 3-D backdrop (with moody clouds and stab-of-sunshine lighting effects). Once you cruise to a brutally high score, you can leave it online for others to read and weep. The game does a good job of integrating the learning component, since you get a brief educational bit about each nasty tool that eventually does in your brave fish, and you’re also encouraged to sign on to an email petition (hello, list-building). Nice work all around, guys.
Well, it’s been an interesting last couple of weeks — while in the midst of a full-on conference frenzy, I’ve also been designing, building and (finally) launching a brand-new advocacy site, the first I’ve tried to build using the Joomla content management system. It’s alive! The Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development is a coalition site aimed at hunting and fishing groups in the Rocky Mountains, trying to get the groups signed on to good energy-development practices in the Mountain West. The site’s quite simple and a CMS like Joomla is almost overkill, but it makes the thing very easy to maintain, which I hope will help the campaign use it as an actual communications tool — over the years, I’ve seen too many of these things essentially sit on a shelf once built.
The process was definitely fun — in the few days between traveling for SXSW Interactive and Nonprofit Technology, I learned the essentials of both CSS page layout and Joomla templating, which I do not recommend doing at the same time unless you’re really into teeth-grinding frustration. But everything’s worked out fine and the client’s happy, so cha-ching! and we don’t have to eat the cat THIS month. BTW, Joomla and CSS purists will note that I cheated in a couple of places if they view source on the site (image map? what image map?), but what is a rule if it can’t be broken?
Greetings from New Orleans and the Nonprofit Technology Conference, where e.politics is bearing up nobly under the strain of going to fantastic cities and hanging out with bright and interesting people. Rough life, I know
As a takeaway for the participants in our online advocacy panel on Friday, below are a ton of articles on various aspects of the question of spreading a message and working to change politics and policy online.
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.”
