The Kids Aren't Alright

I figured I would join everyone else in the class and comment on Nielsen’s Usability for Teenagers. I guess it might be different if you were concerned about non-profits, but in a campaign, teens just don't matter. They can't vote; also in federal elections they can't donate. Now if there was a greater trade off, I might be more opposed, but in general I don't think there is much use in spending too much time making a campaign website appealing to people under 18. It just doesn't strike me as an efficient use of time. I think there’s really only 3 things a website can get you, votes, volunteers or dollars, and teens could only be volunteers and I think that is unlikely to happen. Any Teen actually interested in volunteering would not be discouraged by something not 100% teen friendly. Considering how tuned out they are already, it would be quite a level of interest for them to be involved either way.

Creating Internet Evangelists

I'm reading Creating Customer Evangelists, which is about creating word of mouth buzz and the authors include their six tenants, and I thought they were exactly the type of things we have been talking about all semester. Despite this not being part of the reading, I think it is highly relevant to the course.

1. Customer Plus-Delta: Continuously gather customer feedback.
2. Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
3. Build the buzz: Expertly build word of mouth networks.
4. Create community: Encourage communities of costumers to meet and
share.
5. Make bite-size chunks: Deliver specialized small offerings to get
costumers to bit.
6. Create a cause: Focus on making the world, or an industry,
better.

I would add more insight, but I think it pretty much says it all.

Message Problems

After watching most of the online videos from the campaigns and national committees, they seemed to follow the theme of the campaign, the DNC ones were better, but the RNC ones were constantly on message. The ones from RNC hit on two consistent themes; Kerry is an aloof flip flopper, that's it. The DNC ones attack Bush on, the economy, the environment, his military record, Halliburton, well basically everything under the sun. It was just like Kerry's campaign, no focus, the DNC is just attacking on so many fronts that it is too weak for anything to stick. Moral of the story is you need a message, and you have to carry that message to the Internet.

Responding Inkind

One of the big rules of political advertising is to make sure no attack goes unresponded to on the same medium. Online videos and viral marketing can make that tough to do. In the factcheck on the Bush online video attacking Kerry shows the problem. The Bush campaign sent a misleading video to 6 million, then add to that the number of times the video was forwarded, and its even more. How does Kerry respond? He can't respond because he doesn't have Bush's list and he doesn't know who it was forwarded to. He could send it to his list, but there is probably very little overlap between the two. Beyond that, there is no accountability, sure there is factcheck.org, but it's a small site, if it was a TV ad, the mainstream media would be all over it, but now its just on the Internet. Using online videos and viral marketing you can attack your opponent basically without consequence and fear of retaliation in-kind.

Online Videos

I just read the article on Online Videos and was very interested. Online videos have a lot of potential, and almost anyone can do it now because of the available technology. For better or worse they could really be more dangerous than the 527 ads now. A guy in his basement can splice together a few TV appearances of a candidate and whatever else he likes, go to a large blog like dailykos and post it and lots of people are going to see it. Those people are going to pass it on to other people and then maybe it finds its way into the news. All from one guy, who may remain completely anonymous, and wouldn't have to file any sort of record. With everything being so accessible, streaming video of c-span, being able to transfer tivoed shows onto your computer, transcripts of talk shows, lexisnexis, for even an amatuer it would be pretty easy to get what you need. Politicians beware.