By B.L. Ochman @whatsnext
I’ve been more than a casual observer in the current presidential campaign, and I’ve been appalled to see how much of the strategy, left and right, is created by old-school political types, old-fart PR firms, and, well, just old-idea people.
The Obama team has done a great job with online fund raising, but frankly, I think Obama’s campaign has made the best headway into social media in spite of itself. Obama’s campaign’s online success has been through the grace of supporters who do understand the impact of the Internet on this campaign. The best videos for Obama were generated by MoveOn, by Will.I.am of The Black Eye Peas and not by the campaign itself.
Hillary got off to a great start with her Sopranos finale spoof, and the cheesy choose-my-campaign song campaign that made her seem human and approachable, but then switched to super-scripted videos that were painful to watch. They could have brought the same tone and openness to a series of online videos, but apparently old-school thinking won out again.
Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, is a veteran of several democratic campaigns, none of which are noteworthy for their use of smart Internet strategy. He’s getting a little too sure of himself at the moment, so look for his apology tomorrow.
And Clinton’s campaign depends on, of all people, Burson-Marsteller PR CEO Mark Penn. It would be almost impossible to get a more pre-Cluetrain PR guy on the case. Just look at Burson’s homepage if you want to see how up to the minute (not) they are with their flash intro and robotic little person.
And then there’s the draft-Bloomberg non-campaign, in which I have been a volunteer, and which is run by an old-school Republican and an old-school Democratic campaign advisor. The best they’ve come up with is this tired video.
While money is being spent by all candidates on advertising in TV and radio, there have yet to be ads on blogs, in social networks, or on video sharing sites where they could reach the most influential audience in this election – young people.
For my money, Norman Lear’s Declare Yourself which lets you register to vote online is the most effective campaign site on the internet to date.
And what is Lear? 100? So it’s clearly not about youth. It’s about understanding new media, its dynamics and its impact on youth.
Our goal,” says Lear, “is to register 300,000 new voters before the 2008 presidential primary season and two million new voters by the 2008 presidential election.”
Young people, turning out in droves, will decide this election in the end, and I am so happy that mainstream media is the last thing they will listen to, but I think Obama and Hillary have a long way to go in social media marketing.
Related: David Parmet: Clinton is from pr, Obama is from social media
BL
You hit the nail on the head with this one. I’ve been frustrated about this for years as I was trying to get clients in the political arena since 1996.
The campaign heads have never bothered to learn new media so they don’t really bother to implement it. They rely on “these young kids” to implement “this technology stuff”. But they don’t allow the young kids to contribute to strategy. Forget Web 1.0…it’s Media 1.0 types looking to apply what they know to a Web 2.0 world.
I couldn’t look at/listen to the Burson robo-lady for more than a few seconds. It was just too painful.
And, speaking as someone who has worked in web design and development for many years, I can’t tell you how hard it is to talk clients OUT of ideas like this.
This blog is right on the money. And talking about money….if the old school campaign manager -David Plouffe sends me one more email asking for $$$ I’m going ….well….I’m just going to be pissy. I think the least he could do it create a pretty banner or a youtube video to send along…..Let me put it to you like this. I love a good email marketing campaign..the same as I like sexy men. But if you don’t bring me flowers(web bannors) and you don’t buy me dinner(interactive media) then your not going to get anything that is in my pants (my click through-my sale)…
But something is better than nothing.