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Richie Rich, are you trying to pay for a new car or vacation?
Why not a daily podcast talking about what the campaign is doing and what they need. It doesn't have to be JBT every day, could be Birkett, the campaign manager, other supporters.
And their e-mail alerts are virtually nonexistent. By now they should be sending out daily e-mails to subscribers. I signed up and I rarely get any.
Looks like they skimped on the campaign computer personnel. And that's not good given that JBT is 62. Blago isn't that young either but rampant ageism in our society would suggest that JBT needs to go out of her way to emphasize internet and even newer technology in her campaign.
I choose what to read, see, and hear. If a politician wants my attention, they need to create news. If what they did is interesting, I'll investigate using the sources I choose.
Being "in my face" doesn't work. I am not a passive information receiver. That is what 21st Century technologies have allowed me to become.
However, it pales in comparison to the more than 41,000 viewings on YouTube of the gov's appearance on the Daily show, which was not very complimentary to him. If interested, it's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wXheHJnfw
Anybody can post this kind of stuff these days, and it can have a pretty big impact. Witness Sen. George Allen and the 'macaca' video episode, which might cost him his reelection and a run for president, all because someone posted a video on YouTube.
Besides, I doubt either campaign will ever advertise here. People here have pretty much made up their minds.
Internet ads are most useful for Congressional candidates trying to achieve name recognition with donors across the country.
A Democratic Congressional candidate competes with other Dems for money early in the election cycle. A good Internet ad campaign can vault a candidate in the rankings of recipients of campaign contributions.
Blagojevich and Topinka are known by everyone following politics in Illinois. I suppose Topinka could make a case for doing a national Internet ad campaign to raise money, but I doubt she'd score a bunch of money.
The only websites it might make sense to buy on would be sports blogs or other non-political blogs with strong following in Illinois. It might make sense to advertise on a Bears or Sox blog.
Now hiring a PR flack specializing in getting a positive message onto blogs would make sense. But this is a different question.
Bush-Cheney 04 won election due in part (not the only reason, but a big one) because they microtargeted the heck out of their voters.
The point -- as Rich clearly demonstrated in the quote he pulled -- isn't to put political ads on political and opinion sites and blogs. (That said, it may be beneficial at times for certain campaigns to post ads to political-specific blogs/sites in order to attract attention among the base for volunteers and or fundraising -- like Melissa Bean's ad at ArchPundit or United Republican Fund's ad at Illinois Review.)
The main point the original author is trying to make is to put an ad about your environmental policies on gardening websites.
Or, to put an ad about your education and child-development policies on parenting websites.
Or, to put an ad about your business and economic policies on business sites.
If you get even a 1% bump in votes from those sorts of micro-targeted ads, cumulatively it may be enough to put you in office. (And with response rates among Internet ads being what they are, 1% is real low.)
Duh. With attitudes like those expressed in this thread it's no wonder politico advertising strategy is "6 years behind."
The web provides campaigns with near-perfect opportunities to microtarget voters -- that they're not doing it is testimony to political consultants' ineptitude, and says nothing about the Internet itself.
And Tim, Gov. Dean (as usual) was simply ahead of the curve. If he'd been nominated he likely would've been elected, and America could be ahead of the curve now too (rather than behind the 8-ball).
Ask Barack Obama, Jim Webb and Ned Lamont how well that Internet thing is working out for them.
Both candidates would be wise to increase their internet exposure a little. But ads and fancy websites only do so much - mostly reach the people who are going to vote for you anyway.
Most importantly, they need to make sure that they keep the bloggers out there talking. Case in point, Obama's on his way to passing a rather significant piece of legislation thanks to bloggers on the left AND right. NW burbs was also dead on with his Bush-Cheney 04 statement.
Maybe the politicians are shrewder than the advertising wonks would think. Or hope. The buzz (good or bad) generated in online media, i.e., newspapers and blogs and whatever, is just free advertising for the campaigns. And, that kind of free advertising is probably a hundred times better than dollars spent advertising on weather.com.
Internet campaigns are demonstrably good for fundraising, particularly at rapidly harvesting micro-amounts in meaningful quantity, and generally juicing up the base, and getting the really active folks up on your agenda and talking points, as well as organizing disparate grass-roots groups into larger aggregates.
But if you're trying to simply flummox the "great unwashed", to drop a negativity bomb on your opponent on people without the mental tools to discern lies from truth, traditional media is still where it's at.
It hits you for a moment and is gone, leaving a payload of whatever tailored impression was desired, and little residue to be analyzed. Like Goebbles demonstrated, repeat a lie a lot and many unquestioning folks will begin to accept it as fact.
Like MacLuhan talked about active and passive media, these guys prefer to reach a faceless mass blob of the statistical majority of ignorant imbeciles with a simple meme, rather than trying to sell complex ideas to individual people with the tools to analyze and evaluate the message in an active process.
He has targeted just the people Tell Me Another describes, the people to whom these services are deemed most necessary. Not only will we be paying for his mismanagement for decades to come, we'll be paying for his campaign also.
http://www.ipdi.org/UploadedFiles/putting_onlin...
Every campaign should use the internet (and internet ads), most just don't know how or why. Key word to know when analyzing the impact of the internet...INFLUENTIALS. Those are the people that guide public opinion, and they are the ones using the net for political purposes. Failure to connect with such individuals is a dangerous mistake...