Netiquette & Marketing Political Campaigns

There are two types of marketing on the internet:
1) Interruption Based Marketing
2) Permission Based Marketing

Interruption Based Marketing is when companies or corporations blast you with ads that they want you to see. These ads are prevalent on one of my favorite websites, ESPN.com. At the top of their main page, you always see an ad for a few brief seconds before you can actually click on the main page. (I can't imagine this hastle on dial-up.) Another website with invasive advertising is MLB.com. If you go to the Washington Nationals homepage, you will see replays from the night before. You can turn them off, but it's set to automatically start with sound and video. This is distracting and annoying.

Permission Based Marketing is a more adventurous type of advertising because instead of blasting you with advertisements, PBM hope to attract you to a message you want to hear. Visiting a website on world hunger? How about advertisements telling you how to help in your local community? Permission Based Marketing is the most successful form of advertising online.

Political Advertising should almost always stick to permission based marketing. You want to tailor your message to suit voters, not blast them with what you think the audience should hear. If you anger your audience, they probably won't vote for you on election day.

If I get sick of the Nationals highlights, I might not come back to their website - but the Nationals know that plenty of other people will visit to buy tickets or see scores. They are not worried about losing one customer. Politicians, however, cannot think in those types of terms. They must be worried about every vote. After all, one vote makes the different in 50 percent + 1.

Banner Ads on Campaign Websites

Can you name any ads on the Washington Post web site?

I know I can't.

I've visited the site 4 times today and yet I can't remember a single advertisement. Political candidates face the same problems with banner advertisements.

Banner ads are interruption based advertising. Like television advertisements, banner ads can be annoying and frustrating. Ireland/Nash point out that most internet users do not pay attention to banner ads.

So why do campaigns continue to pay for these ads? They've certainly gotten much cheaper as advertisements have declined due to a lack of traffic (clicks). Perhaps this declining rate led to the infamous "pop-up" advertisement. While McCain was able to use "pop-up" ads to raise almost $6.8 million in 2000, many voters in the 2004 elections would never have seen these ads because of "pop-up" blockers.

The only advantage that I can see for banner ads are that they provide cheap visibility. I usually didn't take notice of banner ads, but during campaign 2000, I can tell you that John Kerry was on the Washington Post and New York Times websites a lot. And there were Bush ads on the Fox News website as well as the Drudge Report.

I will admit that I have clicked on advertisements on some blogs to see some of those candidates. They're running such underdog campaigns, that it's kind of fun to find out who is running for Sheriff in Tom DeLay's home district in Texas or who is trying to topple an established Senate candidate. I tend to click on ads when I don't know much about them and want to find out more. Is it possible to run a prominent campaign such as race for President and have your ads ignored? The answer seems to be an emphatic "yes."

Can I get a Credible Witness?

Democrats held a mock hearing today on the "Downing Street Memo." While this conference was carried live by CSPAN3, and covered on other MSM outlets such as CNN.com, the hearing was a complete farce.

Rep. John Conyers said: "We have some witnesses that I think will be able to shed some light on [the Downing Street Memo]."

But who were these so-called "witnesses?"

1) John Bonifaz, who wrote a book entitled "Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush." Bonifaz sued the U.S. government over the constitutionality of the Iraq war, and testified in mock hearings on the Ohio recount.

Credibility of witness #1 = zero.

2) Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was a former ambassador to Iraq. Unfortunately, Wilson has an axe to grind with President Bush. His wife is Valarie Plame, a covert agent famously outed by the W.H.

Credibility of witness #2 = zero.

Other witnesses were just as lacking...

Conyers took his fight to the blogs, and the blogs finally got their day in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, the MSM tuned into a complete sham. Calling a slate of witnesses with such overtly partisan motives only serves to damage the any credibility of the "Downing Street Memo." This was a forum for political grandstanding for anti-war candidate Dennis Kucinich and others.

The saddest fact is that blogs haven't contributed to the dialogue with the Downing Street Memo, but they have detracted from it. By promoting insular and partisan politics, the blogs and this farce of a hearing only detracted from a reasonable conversation about the war.

No Free Internet Campaigns

The problem with current internet campaigns is that they are niche markets at the moment. Older generation politicians realize the need for a website, but they are clueless about the internet.

Enter the hustlers.

Like sharks in the water, some companies approach candidates and offer their services for free. But what does that mean?

Free means:
1) Upgrades cost you serious money, as vendors get the check they should have gotten at the start. This includes the inability to customize your website or post media files (a key component of any campaign website).
2) The website is housed on their servers. So if you want to move to a different company, you have to recreate the site from scratch. And chances are, the original "free" vendor already has your campaign domain name.
3) You could have ads on your campaign web site! Gasp! Ads on your website not only make you look like an amateur candidate, but they are annoying to potential visitors and voters.

And the clincher is:
4) Vendors control your data. All those volunteers on your website? All those people who donated to your campaign? The vendor can sell your information to many sources, even to your own opponent! That blows my mind!

There is no such thing as a free lunch, or a campaign website for that matter.

From Choosing an Online Fundraising System (10)

A test picture

Take It To The Blogs

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was trashing the MSM and money-hungry reporters in the Washington Post this weekend (scroll down - 3rd item). She accused the MSM of ignoring and distorting the story saying:

"If you depend on the print press, they will either leave you out of the story, or mischaracterize what you are saying, or you get two sentences in a 25-paragraph story which doesn't give weight to the argument that you have," Pelosi said to RawStory.com, a left-leaning Drudge lookalike.

The Minority Leader advocated using the blogging community to provide in-depth material to arguments like Social Security since the MSM wouldn't report the story to her satisfaction. This is a similar view to Henry Jenkins "Challenging the Consensus,"in which Jenkins says that blogs add to the dialogue rather than destroying it all together. Pelosi's motivations are deeply partisan and not entirely scholarly like Jenkins, but it is interesting to find a connection between our readings and modern politics.

To me, the interesting part of Pelosi's remarks was her comments about journalists. She says that journalists ignore the Democrat's message because they've got "orthodontics, tuition, a mortgage..." They report the Republican message because they give them "access."

If it's all about access, as Pelosi seems to claim, why doesn't she give bloggers better access?

Pelosi does not even have a blog on her official Minority Leader web site. If John Conyers can have a blog, why can't Pelosi? Arguably, she has a much more visible role in the House because of her leadership position. Having an official blog would also prove that she's serious about blog outreach and access, and not just talking.

NYT: No War Decision Made

To their credit, the bloggers are finally getting their day in the court of public opinion as the MSM picks up on stories "The Downing Street Memo" and pre-war intelligence in Iraq. Today, the New York Times wrote an article on pre-war intelligence based off of a British cabinet-level memo which seems to leave the "Downing Street Memo" on shaky ground

This memo written in late July 2002 states that "no political decisions" had been made to invade Iraq. Like many intelligence experts in 2002, the memo makes assumptions that Saddam had WMD's, and that military operations would remove these weapons from his regime.

While everyone is focusing on the decision to go to war (which seems like a given during that time period any way you look at it), few seem focused on the lack of post war planning. The most interesting portion of this memo in my mind, is the explicit warning about the lack of a plan once Saddam was removed from power:

U.S. military plans are virtually silent on [post-war occupation]. Washington could look to us [Great Britain] to share a disproportionate share of the burden.

Does this new intelligence revelation finally debunk the "Downing Street Memo?" The blogosphere put the pressure on the MSM to report this, but their "smoking gun" is looking flimsier by the minute. If the blogging community wants respectability, they've got to focus on the facts and not make the facts fit their ideology.

Downing Street Memo: No Smoking Gun

Today's Washington Post had a great article that tied into my last post about smoking guns and blogs. The blogosphere, and Rep. John Conyers, have been making a lot of noise lately about the infamous Downing Street Memo. This memo, taken from minutes in a meeting between British and U.S. officials, says that intelligence was "fixed" to make a case for war.

Today, Michael Kinsley writes a great article debunking the Downing Street Memo saying that it is NOT the smoking gun people claim.

Among Kinsley's points:

1) The Downing Street Memo offered no specifics, just an allegation that intelligence was "fixed."

2) MSM newspapers covered the rise the war well before the Downing Street Memo:
a) LA Times calls Iraq war "much planned for" in 2002!
b) NYT editorial called war "inevitable."
c) WSJ editorial claims that "the drums of war beat louder."

All of this happened in 2002. So while, the blogosphere rants and raves about the Downing Street Memo, the MSM refuses to cover it.

Why? They already have.