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At 8/12/2007 11:40 AM,  Jonathan Trenn said...

hScott

Four years ago I hooked up with a group of top online marketers who formed Pericles. We ended up getting the Bush Cheney account, the agency of record for online media planning and buying.

In 2004, the Bush campaign installed an excellent email outreach program via email. Much of politics is local or related to demographics or related to specific issues. They did a damn good job of getting people to have house parties, raise funds, and develop grassroots support. The Kerry campaign just sat there and didn't do much in the way of grassroots. That's one of the reason they lost.

On the other hand, the Kerry campaign did an excellent job in direct fundraising appeals. They collected a trenendous amount of money because of it. But that didn't necessarily solidfy or extend support.

The Republicans, who tend to be much more top-down and organized tend to adopt organizational didgital strategies...pushing out pertinant messages to their grassroots. That makes sense. They don't howerver, feel all that comfortable with the snowman thing. Stupid.

My guess is that they'll come along. The CNN connection to the YouTube debate is likley what got the Dems involved and I think the momentum is now going to be too strong for the GOP to ignore.

 

Presidential Candidates & Social Media, Part 2

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how effectively the presidential candidates were using social media as part of their campaigns. The conclusion, by and large, was that they were embracing it but that they were using it like any other paid media placement - as a one-way message, rather than as a conversation.

Today, I received a message on Twitter from Fred Thompson that his site I'm With Fred has been updated - it's the 2.0 version, according to the statement. This is somewhat interesting, since he's not a declared candidate yet. Having taken a look at his site, here's what I see that he's doing well.

The posts are all enabled with comments, del.icio.us tagging abilities, and Digg and Facebook links. This is now pretty much standard fare among all of the candidates, in addition to having YouTube, MySpace and Flickr accounts. Here are a couple of notable points regarding Fred:

You can get widgets for your site that contain headlines of the latest blog posts and that state "I'm With Fred." There are some alternative ones, like "The Latest from the Fredosphere," which sounds a little too much like The Godfather or "Connect With Fred," which is much more appealing to potential voters.

The other thing that's interesting is the URL of his site: imwithfred.com. I know it's supposed to be "I'm with Fred," but there's a whole generation out there - first-time voters, in fact - who will see this as "IM with Fred." It's a good thing that he's got a Twitter account, but if I were advising the team, I'd implore them to get a Meebo account and to make IM'ing a major feature of the site.

If I'm not mistaken, they ask for your IM address when you register there. They might be planning something yet.

This brings me to one final point. The CNN-YouTube debate has been covered extensively, so I'm not going to rehash it. The one thing that stuck out is the Snowman question. If you haven't had a chance to see it, here you go:



Now, this was a silly appearance but a great question. It undoubtedly highlighted how zany the Internet can allow people to be, but it also made the point that candidates need to take this space seriously. In fact, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page article called Snowman Video In YouTube Debate Chills Some Politicos, adding the subtitle "Brothers who created it are all the rage, but GOP doesn't entirely get it."

Boy, is that an understatement. Mitt Romney - even though he has a YouTube channel (clearly for push-marketing only) said "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman." Romney just doesn't get it. The questioner isn't as important as the question in this case.

By and large, the Democrats have been embracing social media and they've been doing a good job with it. Obama has raised millions of dollars online through social networking groups alone.

The Republicans' refusal to completely embrace social media reminds me of the way corporate America has been resistant while their customers are running circles around them. I've often said that those who ignore social media do so at their own peril. Conversations are taking place, whether they like it or not, and joining in will help them in the long run.

I predict that the GOP will lose the White House next year and it will be in no small part because of their lack of enthusiasm with regard to social media.

Labels: barackobama, fredthompson, mittromney, New Media, presidential, social media, strategy

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