How much of this campaign will be about issues, and how many people will be voting based on who has better supporters making YouTube videos? Check out this CNN story about Hott4Hillary.
Category Archives: Politics
Politics 2.0
So, Hillary Clinton received much press and fanfare for allowing her supporters to nominate what should be her campaign song. The theme of that seemed to be, "Hillary really connects with her supporters."
So then what do you say about Mike Gravel, a much smaller budgeted candidate who is really using User Generated Content as a way to get his marketing materials produced. From his MySpace blast:
Please send your Gravel 2008 Flyers, Banners, and Graphics to [email protected]. We will be posting the best ones on the main website for others to use. Please feel free to be as creative as you’d like. Thanks to all of you for your support!
Maybe the Internet can equal the playing field a little.
Launch of MyElectionChoices.com
After a few weeks of tinkering, we’ve launched the 1.0 version of MyElectionChoices.com. The site will continue to evolve, but in its current form, visitors get to choose topics they care about in regards to the 2008 Presidential Election, then select positions they agree with from various candidates.
At the end of answering a few topics, visitors then find out which Presidential Candidates they share political views with. Since we have statements from 17 candidates, there’s bound to be a couple people that you’ve never heard of.
There are still plenty of improvements to be made, but give it a whirl and let me know what you think. There’s a Groups option at the end to make it easy to invite others and compare how certain groups compare aggregately to National Averages. And there’s a survey at the end as well that will help us shape the constant revisions.
Supreme Court Ends 96-Year-Old Ban on Price Floors
I haven’t seen too much of this floating around the blogosphere yet, and maybe it’s my paranoia kicking in, but this morning’s Supreme Court ruling piques my curiosity.
From the New York Times: The Supreme Court on Thursday abandoned a 96-year-old ban on manufacturers and retailers setting price floors for products. In a 5-4 decision, the court said that agreements on minimum prices are legal if they promote competition. The ruling means that accusations of minimum pricing pacts will be evaluated case by case. The Supreme Court declared in 1911 that minimum pricing agreements violate federal antitrust law. Supporters said that allowing minimum price floors would hurt upstart discounters and Internet resellers seeking to offer new, cheaper ways to distribute products.
So, why is this interesting to the Internet and Ecommerce world?
What’s unclear from the article is how far the price floor extends. Let’s use Harry Potter books as an example. Even though the franchise sells more books than anything else being published, retailers actually don’t make that much profit on the sales. Thanks to major chains like Wal-Mart and Amazon selling the book at discount as a way to get people into their stores, the retail price hovers below other books.
But now it seems that the Harry Potter Publisher could set a minimum price if it wanted, effectively stopping Amazon from pricing below the competition.
This has further reaching effects if you start taking into account all the Amazon Associates and Ebay sellers out there. These companies have done a great job creating as close to a free market economy as you can get. Now, the law looks like it’s going to allow the stifling of that free market, putting the power back into the hands of producers, who can now decide the prices before they even reach the market. And I don’t have any idea how this affects the secondary market for items.
Another example is a widget system like Mpire.com whose whole reason for being is to help consumers find the lowest prices on items being sold on the web. Well, if this "lowest" price is being set by the manufacturer, how does any small discount retailer make any noise to grab a customer?
Unless I’m reading into this wrong, this appears to be a strike at Internet Ecommerce. Manufacturers don’t like when there is little surplus in their supply and demand graph, and have now artificially manipulated the system to get that surplus back. I’m sure there will be more to come on this.
When You Start to Believe We Are Not Surrounded By Lunatics, Please Refer Back Here
I’ve been doing some political research for a little project that I hope will launch very soon.
But it’s given be the opportuity to read blogs written by supporters of particular candidates. And every once in a while, I run across someone so out of touch with reality, you have to think they could bring down an entire campaign just by being a loud, lunatic supporter. If you were a Brownback campiagn strategist, how do you approach this nut job and say, "Look, we appreciate the support, but Shut the Hell up! You’re killing us!"
Here’s the loony in question. Never have a I seen such a well thought-out and researched blog post that contains such ridiculous conclusions from the data in question.
The Danger Side of Decentralizing Your Campaign Supporters
Politics 2.0 is great! Supporters spreading the word – for free! Blogging all over the internet- for free! Emailing their friends – for free! Generating online campaign donations! Planning campaign fundraisers for both you and the opponent of someone in your own party….WHOA. Hold on….
Turns out the Obama campaign is the first one to face the inevitable issues that are going to come from letting all the genies out of the bottle at once. Originally published on Roll Call, but also found on Georigia Politics 101:
Alarm bells were sounded briefly within the Congressional Black Caucus this week when word spread of a fundraiser benefiting both the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and the Republican opponent of Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.).
What? Why would Obama be raising money with a Republican, and one who is seeking to knock off one of his fellow CBC colleagues to boot?
Turns out that the event, a 5K run/walk with a registration fee ranging from $30 to $35, was not sanctioned by the Obama campaign — which sought to put the kibosh on it as soon as the Senator’s advisers learned about it. It was organized by a grass-roots supporter in Georgia, who also is a backer of Deborah Honeycutt (R), Scott’s challenger. The plan was that 85 percent of the proceeds from the event would go to Obama and 15 percent to Honeycutt, who garnered 31 percent of the vote against Scott in 2006 and is running again in 2008. The event was linked through my.barackobama.com, the campaign’s grass-roots networking Web site that allows supporters to share planned events…
"They’ve already asked them to cease and desist," Davis said. The campaign never received funds tied to the event, which was scheduled for a TBA date and location. "It’s not anything the Obama campaign had to do with," Davis added.
A relatively small deal, but when so much power is transferred from a central campaign headquarters to the blogosphere, well, look for a whole lot of interesting anomalies and headaches for the campaign team. Just like anything, all the positives are going to come with a cost…
Incidental Marketing
Hot Tipper "G$" sends across this link about Incidental or "Accidental" Marketing.
The AP article entitled "Giuliani Apologizes to Farm Family" chronicles the media debacle caused when a Giuliani staffer mistakenly accepted a fundraising opportunity from an Iowan farming family, the VonSpreckens, and then cancelled it when they realized it was going to be a waste of time.
In the end, Giuliani turned the negative into a plus, spending 2 hours with the farm family out in eastern Iowa. The little weekly Eastern Iowan newspaper, the Anamosa Journal-Eureka, seems appeased as well. So it now seems everyone in Mrs. VonSprecken’s sewing circle will go vote for hizzoner.
So a couple of angles to take here: 1) Interesting that the Anamosa Journal-Eureka could contribute to a national headache for a Presidential hopeful. 2) From a marketing standpoint, every negative PR opportunity is a chance for a greater positive one. But I’m shooting for #3) Can we finally admit that Iowa has WAY too much influence in the presidential election?
Iowa is a non-border state that does not have any oil wells, coal mines, steel refineries, automotive factories, technology leaders, entertainment hubs, travel destinations, world reknown universities, innovative medical research facilities or major population centers. It has corn and farmers – lots of both – so there is some impact on agriculture. And it home to the evil insurance companies and a number of banks. But if you had to pick the most irrelevant states on an influential level, I would have to throw them in the Top 2 or 3 along with South Dakota and West Virginia.
So the fact that the Iowa Caucuses force a Republican hopeful to cater to the damn VonSpreckens of Olin, is a complete joke. In the several thouand hours Giuliani has left to spend with influencers, I want him meeting with tech leaders, defense specialists, cultural experts, social welfare pioneers and economic visionaries. I want him spending as little time as possible with Grandma VonSprecken and people who will vote for him because he’s a nice, honest young man.
Let’s let influencers influence, and let the followers watch what happens on TV.
Mobile Marketing Hits Presidential Campaign
MocoNews reports that Hillary Clinton will add mobile marketing to her campaign promotion arsenal. The article states,"“Clinton’s text-messaging initiative targets the 230 million American cellphone users – a sign the campaign is hunting for every possible vote in her bitter battle with rival Sen. Barack Obama. It’s only a matter of time before campaign ringtones are sold."
Tragedy at V-Tech; Facebook Emerges as Vital Communication Tool
The U.S. found a new tool in how to communicate on a one to many way in times of crisis today. On this national day of sorrow and disbelief, Facebook.com proved that the world of social networking extends past sharing pictures and music tastes.
One LA Times Article includes the following paragraph. "University of Southern California sophomore Charlotte Korchak received a call from her mother in Maryland — Virginia Tech, she learned, was a death scene. Rather than tie up the cellphones of friends who attend the school, the 19-year-old history major checked their pages on Facebook, the social-networking site. ‘I was able to immediately find out who was OK,’ she said. ‘Without Facebook I have no idea how I would have found that out.’"
The site has also become a place for people to share support. One group has over 1,300 members. This condolences group contains over 2,600. Here’s a prayer group with 2,100.
In real time yesterday, Bryce’s Journal was a source of up to the minute information, which led to an interesting moral argument. The CBC TV network posted to his blog comments section asking him to call and provide his account on the air in addition to the blog. This became a source of hostility for the blog readers, who felt that their reading the accounts was not voyeurism, but that a major TV network relaying those accounts would be exploitation. Bryce’s Journal continues to be a source of pretty startling emotional writing.
There’s little doubt that this tragedy could have been avoided if news of the first shooting, and warnings to get off campus, could have been conveyed in a more efficient manner. I think we can look at social networking, especially in the mobile space, as something to considered for emergency response.
A Future History Lesson On Market Forces
So Don Imus is fired. After meeting with Jese Jackson and Al Sharpton, CBS President Les Mooves fired his top rated radio host. Many people cheer this. The villain was vanquished, the evil doer thwarted, the racist cast back to the cave from where he belongs.
And the rest of us will get to watch a first hand example of how capitalism works, how market forces behave and how money and opportunity trump all.
First, you’ll have the legal settlement from CBS. It’ll be done quietly, but you don’t dismiss a formerly beloved radio personality with millions of dollars on his contract remaining, and not have to send any more checks his way. Plus, you have to pay him to stay OFF the air, because WCBS is not the only station in New York. And there are lots of stations with call letters you have never heard of that would be happy to take a little heat for giving Imus a "Second Chance.’
But it’s not just traditional radio. Tell me Mark Cuban isn’t already sitting in Imus living room saying, "You’ll be on HDNet, podcasting as well, and your first guests will be the Duke Lacrosse team, and your topic can be about how the media goes in for the kill. Or we’ll do a show – The News accoring to Dan (Rather) and Don (Imus). Plus I haven’t annoyed David Stern for a while so we’ll let you do some play by play for the Mavericks as well."
And sitting next to Cuban on that same couch are the CEO’s of Sirius and XM radio, one guy saying, "Compete against Howard again" and the other guy saying, "Back to back Howard and Imus – you can say anything you want on our network."
So Imus gets punished – but watch how the market reacts in the coming months. If the one thing this country believes in, it’s second chances – and grabbing the opportunities to invest in them.