MIXX and Presidential Campaign
Presidential Campaigning: Digital Media’s Impact
It will come as no surprise that all the major 2008 presidential candidates have an interactive presence. With the use of news, video clips, and of course the all important donations section, this highly charged political election and digital innovations is something that marketers can also take advantage of. Hear from key representative from presidential campaigns on the use of interactive in driving awareness and creating buzz for candidates.
Moderator:
Jacob Weisberg, Editor, Slate
Panelist:
Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post
Richard Kosinski, Vice President of Political Advertising, Yahoo!
Rob Shepardson, Founding Partner, SS+K
JW: so what is different?
RK: a lot of innovations were being used by Dean the last time. The web has taken on a critical role and has grown in statue since 2004. Campaigns are looking at creating buzz, awareness, drive participation in online channels..to raise funds. When it gets to the paid media..candidates are about 7 years behind in the online channel…about 1% in that channel. No there yet. ahead with social tools, not with paid.
JW: we’;ve being making case for ads on our site…we have Clinton, but not Obama and they may relate to your scepticism
RS: it has a very particular role. good for some things, good for fund raising, good for Obama fundraising, no question of that. you can drive awareness offline and drive people online, at that point, people can play around online..but getting people through the funnel, to flip to a voter and get them to a vote is the biggest channel in this cycle. easy to make a donation, but you have to get people to vote, in primaries in Iowa get them to a caucus. For activists it’s great, you have to switch undecided, persuade people…get them there.
JW: organising things, get volunteers..success?
RS: yes…facebook has great applets, they ca mobilise, do some things. are they going to vote?
JW: I often say this is the internet election (since 96!) am I going to be right?
AH: you have been proven right in many ways..Clinton announced online. We did online mashups. Obama broke fundraising records online. Organising is very significant. a new kind of organising, more intense, more intimate, using online tools. Why we seeing the lag…online advertising..due to the dominance of the game by the political consultants..you lose and you get hired again. Consultants have the wrong advertising connections, they get money from the cuts they make form tv ads..they are very boring, you think you are back in the 60s..Mad Men is a spoof of the 60s but political advertising is not a spoof just bad. they want to play to their known universe…after a small universe of undecided voters and do NOT want to engage with the 50% who DO NOT VOTE. if you can reach out and get 5-7% of the unlikely voters then you change the dynamics…and it is mainly online. They pick want they want to watch..just the ones and things they are interested in. they are used to creating their own experience…they have ADD…short things…my daughter watched the mashup as she was in control.
JW: web lets you raise money quickly..there are breakthroughs in funding. but the web has not yet being determinative in deciding an election and we have had not had online advertising. Rob says it is good for certain things, but not display ads
RS: because there is a lot of truth in what AH said, the perspective of the campaign runners is not the of the web…maybe it could be the internet election but there has been nothing innovative so far. Now, they are just putting offline stuff online, as scripted as it has always been, not authentic…the biggest dynamic is change and alienation of status quo…if you go online to most of the candidates it screams politics as usual. It is not all of them…but they do have learn what is effective…there is enormous pressure on money/ Feb 5 states are in play..they need to figure out the ROI of a lot of stuff.. they can do theFacebook, meetups etc, 98% is getting bodies on a cold winter night in Iowa. It lags the corporate market and a lot of you guys could help them measure it.
JW: Richard..the problem of targeting…if we could deliver the targeting in quantity that is meaningful, that is a problem.
RK: in the area of targeting, we build the tools that people can use..when it comes to things..the evolution in targeting, we have the basic targeting, the demographic targeting and behavioural targeting. those are the tools we have to bring to candidates to evangelise them, 7 years ago many of you when through test and learn and that is what we are seeing now. Search is definitely there. The challenge is activating the supporters and turning it into a vote. As an advertising guy I want the paid media but what we are seeing is a HUGE lift in the use of free tools by candidates. 38000 responses to Clinton’s question on Answers,. Look at YT/video candidates are using it. From paid, a lot of work, free they are already using. Every candidate has a Flickr account, half of them have Flickr on their home page.
JW: being the candidate of the web is not where you want to be in the Democratic Primary..the web user on the D side is skewed to the left and being there may not be the best if trying to win the nominations
AH: the place that is not there at the moment is that Right/Left does not exist. Issues are not R/L…the majority of US people are not Left..but 60% are against the war. A lot of candidates are buying into the way the media present them, Healthcare is not a marginal position on the left. Obama is supposed to be the movement candidate..quickly became too cautious and there is nothing that kills online than being too cautious..it kills everything. We continue to do this then not going to win. Running a front-runner campaign is not the way of the internet. Fear drives the front runner, would rather avoid saying something wrong than to say something right.
JW: I would like to see someone being transparent in campaigning, don’t think we will. McCain was available. No candidate has put a web cam on his bus, giving you the behind the scenes.
AH: we have reporters on this…Edwards at the beginning tried to do this…hired a person to do this…we wanted to do a story about innovation. They blogs cannot be found anywhere at the moment. We can;t find them to write about them. Why are these efforts to make it authentic or real so dangerous that they have to be scrapped. What is that about.
RK: there are people following them all the time. The Republicans put out a booklet…6 years ago there was no web in the same way…so the guys running now did not have to be aware of it last year. There are plenty of ways to post for free form a phone cam.
JW: Rob, you are the sceptic here…is there anything moving from politics to the commercial side.
RS: not so much. the innovation is going the other way…recently we have seen some basic marketing tricks being applied. Hilary is running a competition, Edwards is running a competition. Not seen it yet…
AH: Last week on a panel, with Joe Trippi, he said that 2/3 of the candidates will go in 90 days so what do they have to lose, why are they not trying things,.
JW: is it generational? Are they too old to now this, do not really get it
RS: right, they will bring people in. Interactive thinking is not central to development, it is a silo. It is an element of this, it is easy to critique the guys on the political side. there is a category difference here, it is hard to be funky and innovative from a message POV. It’s tricky and that is a factor…not that they are not thinking, but how can you take the tools…be interactive, reach out to voters…hope it will at some point
RK: we are still early in this race..at one point I thought it was this Nov…some uses, to drive participation..will come..it will shift. we’ve seen more revenue than any previously and we are still 14months out. We have constraints on TV, we have the olympics, we have the holiday season and candidates may be pushed to the web out of necessity. that may drive use of the web in a different way, we look at educating and evangelising…that you may not get the 15% but you will get a fee..
AH: and you may get someone elected. it’s not the funkiness, it’s about can you build trust. The most important is building trust. the problem is believing that candidates will implement their health care plans..can you communicate in a way that they can be trusted..that is a big thing that online can do
Q: can you justify spending 1% of my 410m$ online now…
RK: I would advocate spending 20%. everyweek we spend 20% of time online.
RS: the rules of marketing do not go away because of the web..you have to know who you are talking to..it is all about the undecided..they may be heavy users…getting people off line and out to vote is the focus
AH: what are the messages? know this to justify what to spend online. so if he (guiliani) is leaning to do different messages then that may be worth it. get a different demographic
JW: the promise is to create some form of viral content..give people the sense that there is something going on..that there is something exciting around the candidate or an issue
Q: ROI online short term/long term?
RS: you want to set out interim markers…if you get them to do one other thing offline then that is a good indicator that they will be a voter. Fundraising is a good marker as well, they feel there is an investment and they will watch them, even if not always vote..there needs to be more innovation around understanding the ROI on the purchase funnel because of your message and position
AH: we are looking at who is running the online stuff…a lot of people in the teams are not getting how to communicate…writing the candidates blog..who do not get it..if you do not sense the candidate is speaking it does not feel authentic and does not connect
RK: the challenge we have as a publisher is defining it..look at conversion, that is one. is 10sec attention worth it for you? can you identify those who were there and remessage later..is that worth it?
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