Here's the top half of my and Andrew Rasiej's latest "Politics 2.0" column in The Politico:
We could be wrong, but here’s a prediction about the power of viral campaigns: By the time the dust settles on the storm kicked up by MoveOn.org’s highly provocative “Petraeus/Betray Us” ad in The New York Times on Sept. 10, the online group will have seen its 3.2-million-strong e-mail membership list grow substantially.
That’s because MoveOn understands the way messages move in our new Internet-driven media environment. It’s not enough to make a speech or issue a press release or buy a newspaper ad. Nor does it matter if you have a great press list, or ins with all the top political bloggers on the planet or a blog of your own.
You have to do something “remark”-able that individuals will want to talk about and share with others. (Even if that means a lot of those individuals will be criticizing you, as the Republicans have been attacking MoveOn’s rhetoric.)
A recent study by Jupiter Research concluded that only about 15 percent of viral campaigns succeed in convincing consumers to promote the marketer’s message.
The Jupiter study noted that most marketers aim their campaigns at so-called influentials — the people in a target group to whom their peers turn for guidance — as if those people can somehow, by force of will, get their peers to pay attention to something.
Commenting on this study, messaging maven Seth Godin wrote on his blog, “True viral marketing happens not when the marketer plans for it or targets bloggers or skateboarders or pirates with goatees, but when the item/service/event is worth talking about.”
With rare exceptions, the 2008 presidential campaigns have ignored this basic rule, which was true even before the Internet, and which matters even more now.
Go here to read the rest.
The negative comments weren't just coming from Republicans. Down here in Georgia where we're still just fighting to keep the concept of a Democratic Party alive and kicking, even the lefty blogosphere in which I'm one of the more conservative voices was almost uniformly un-thrilled with MoveOn's transformation into Swift Boat Vets.
But, hey, if no publicity is bad publicity, then whatever it takes I guess. :-\
Boy! You guys said a mouthful--especially in the last half of the article. IMHO, the Dean campaign scared the consultants out of their wits. For years, they've preached message discipline--which is good--and that the only way to achieve that is by letting them control the campaign--which is not.
When I went to Iowa, the Dean campaign told all the volunteers at our orientation meeting, "Talk to anybody. Say whatever you want--as long as it's about you. What you think, why you're here, why you support Dean. Do not speak for the candidate or the campaign." That's what we did, and we got a lot of coverage out of it. Frankly, it was more interesting to hear why a nurse drove for a day and a half to spend her days off sitting on a concrete floor to stuff walk packets than to listen to Kerry's press secretary say the same thing over and over again. The print reporters knew their readers would rather hear from people like themselves. The TV reporters, interestingly enough, were interviewing each other rather than anybody actually involved with the campaign. It was the strangest thing I ever saw.
I saw it again when I got home. A local cable access show asked representatives from all the local campaign groups to appear for a panel discussion. The Clark folks sent a great guy, I went for the Dean group, the Kucinich people said they would but couldn't get it together enough to actually do so, the Edwards group never responded, and the Kerry group said they'd send somebody but didn't. It turned out the Kerry folks checked in with the powers that be in the state and were told they'd have to attend a day-long media training session before they could appear. No simple "speak for yourself, not the campaign" for these guys. They had to be in control. So they missed the chance to get free media for their candidate. Small, local media--but free still.
I don't believe it has anything to do with ideological purity. It has to do with money. Trippi, McMahon, Squires made millions on the Dean campaign. I've heard between $4.5 and $7 million. Trippi admits in his book that he gave up an unprecedented amount of control to the grassroots because he had to. He simply didn't have the resources to control it (nor, if you read between the lines, did he have the authority within the campaign to do so). Initially, he also didn't have the resources to mount a larger campaign without grassroots support. He needed us. So we got the chance. Despite showing what we could do in this election and subsequent ones, the consultants are not willingly going to give up millions and hand campaigns over to us. Nor are they creative enough to think of effective ways to use us and still save their fat consulting fees.
Besides lobbyists, I can think of few groups who have so hurt politics as these greedy consultants.
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Going through the moves is not enough..........
Your overstate the situation.
Yes, putting out an ad helps, but putting it in a publication few read or will read is worthless. To add to the problem, the ad should not undercut your own authority or cause you to lose the moral high ground.
The only reason Move On got so much mileage out of it, is because it attracted tons of negative reactions.