Author: Jim Eltringham

Political consultant specializing in grassroots mobilization, online media, and public relations.

It’s the most popular website in the world, and everyone hates it.

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Last week, as Facebook celebrated the half-billion user milestone, a consumer satisfaction study placed Facebook’s “Like” rating down in the bottom 5% of surveyed companies.  ReadWriteWeb points out that this puts them on par with cable companies, airline companies, and the IRS.

Those are interesting company for the social network.  There’s a parallel between Facebook lessening their privacy policies to better monetize their users and airlines adding additional fees for checked bags, carry-on bags, and eventually suitcases that you keep at your house and don’t bring to the airport.  Facebook’s reaction has been similar to a cable company that asks a customer to be available from eight to four for a service call and doesn’t show.

The dissatisfaction is likely chronic for as long as Facebook tries to make money, and there’s two ways that type of customer dissatisfaction might play out.  The first is that users leave the service.  Facebook runs its course and becomes the next Yahoo! or AOL, a shell of its former self as internetters flock to the next big thing.  It doesn’t go away, but former Facebook employees talk about the glory days the way Frankie Five Angels Pentangeli wistfully compares the Corleone family to the Roman Empire at the end of The Godfather Part II.

The alternative is that Facebook becomes an acceptable evil – that users can always find something to complain about, but nothing that drives them away.  In the same way that spam doesn’t lead to an exodus from email, people stay on Facebook because it’s the easiest way to connect with friends.

In that way, the best comparison to Facebook from among the entities with similarly low satisfaction rates may be the IRS.  No one likes it, but everyone still uses it – and it’s probably not going anywhere.

I dreamed a dream of Foursquare

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This may be a sign I’m working too hard, but that isn’t a funny title – I actually had a dream about a client using Foursquare last week.

The client, a national non-profit, had partnered with several Foursquare-friendly businesses throughout the holiday shopping season.  If you checked in at a location nearby, the business would alert you that a certain purchase would result in a donation to the non-profit.  For instance, if you checked into a restaurant, and there was a Starbucks nearby, you might receive a message that buying a grande gingerbread latte would net a $1 donation.

When I told them, they liked the idea – but were a little disturbed that I was dreaming about work.  But as other non-profits are finding out, Foursquare can be a useful tool for connecting with supporters.

Messaging Social Security

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The Washington Examiner’s Chris Stirewalt correctly writes today that Republican lawmakers have to craft a better, pro-active message to take advantage of voter disillusionment this year.  Townhall’s Maggie Gallagher throws a wet blanket on an issue that gets many on the right-of-center side excited: Social Security reform.

Gallagher claims that any effort to include an overhaul of social security into the talking points would meet with utter doom, citing President Bush’s failed 2005 effort as evidence that the American people are not on board with the concept:

[P]olls showed the more he talked, the less Americans liked it… “Three months after President Bush launched his drive to restructure Social Security by creating private investment accounts, public support for his program remains weak, with only 35 percent of Americans now saying they approve of his handling of the issue, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll,” The Washington Post reported on March 15, 2005. “Moreover, 58 percent of those polled this time said the more they hear about Bush’s plan, the less they like it.”

And this was before the stock market crashed, and ordinary people at or nearing the age of retirement lost huge chunks of their investment portfolios. Yet in 2010, one of the GOP’s bright young stars, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, pulled together a deficit reduction plan that called once again for the partial privatization of Social Security, and leading conservatives piled on the praise.

Gallagher may be right that Social Security is a difficult election year, but it isn’t impossible.  Entitlement reform is tricky, with demagoguery from parties who feel they will be injured.  But remember that the American people were for Social Security reform before they were against it.  And entitlement reform will have much better traction in the current political environment if properly framed

Bush’s mistake in 2005 was that he was left vulnerable to a coalition of labor and senior voices.  The effort to make the necessary reforms will need a few new messages and strategies, such as:

  • Accurately positioning reform as the creation of the retirement system of the future, versus the retirement system of 1930.
  • Appeals to seniors that promising to protect their benefits while allow their children and grandchildren more freedom for their own retirement.
  • Engagement of young (age 22-35) members of the work force, who have the most to lose from a government-run retirement plan.
  • Tracking and satirizing Democrat, union, and AARP efforts to smear the plan.
  • Putting a real face on the people who stand to benefit from reform.

Gallagher is dead-on, however, in identifying Social Security as a probable Democratic talking point in 2010 (why stop now, after all?).  It has already started in the Nevada Senate race.  The need to counter this messaging is critical for Republicans.

Baiting and switching the NAACP

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Last week, the NAACP looked to deflate the influence of the tea party movement by calling it racist, a charge echoed and kept alive by lawmakers on Capitol Hill even if it was through denials. The easy counter was to condemn the NAACP’s own sordid record of race-baiting.  But Andrew Breitbart went one step further.

When Breitbart releasing a video of an Obama Administration official making what appeared to be racist comments at an NAACP event, the NAACP denounced Shirley Sherrod and she lost her job in the progressive administration in which she served.

Now comes the rest of the story, which shows Sherrod is actually making a larger point about racial harmony.  The USDA is trying to give Sherrod her job back and the NAACP repudiating their repudiation.  (If I were Sherrod, I’d forego the job in favor of the eventual lawsuit settlement.)

The NAACP blamed Fox News, but really this is a bait and switch executed by Breitbart.  By releasing the bad part of the video before the context, he coaxed the NAACP to do exactly what it did to the tea party movement – make a wild accusation without examining the whole context of the comments.  (Breitbart may lose some cache for doing the same thing, but his reputation will be restored with the next sensational video he releases.)

Lest one think this gives Breitbart too much credit, remember that he, James O’Keefe, and Hannah Giles  used a similar strategy with their series of videos exposing ACORN, releasing the videos one at a time to build momentum.

The desired result of Breitbart’s masterstroke are two-fold: first, the NAACP is exposed for jumping on any charge of racism without evaluation.  Second (and, with campaign season around the corner, possibly more importantly) media outlets may be more guarded when looking at videos that show comments which appear, out of context, to be racist.

The viral campaign your viral campaign could smell like

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So much has been written about the success of  Old Spice’s social media campaign this week, that to say too much about it would be redundant.  But there are a few facets of this campaign which translate well to other attempts to create viral interest online, whether it be for a brand like Old Spice, a cause, or a candidate.

1.  Engagement. The central theme of the campaign was keeping random folks involved, and making an effort to actually answer questions from random internet surfers.  The behind-the-scenes strategy was a little bit more sophisticated than that; the team behind the campaign made sure certain bloggers and social media savvy celebrities – key influencers of the online conversation – were targeted to ensure their exposure spread.

2.  Speed. Creating the videos required rapid-fire recordings and uploads, which was no doubt made for a few intense days for “Old Spice Man” actor Isaiah Mustafa.  This short burst of productivity allowed Old Spice to strike while the iron was hot.  That level of immediate responsiveness is the difference between a campaign getting some attention for launching a website before quickly getting stale and enjoying an extended media cycle where they drive the conversation by constantly giving people something to talk about.  Much like in baseball, speed can slow the game down.

3.  Context. None of this would have been possible without a resonant base concept.  Old Spice had spent months cultivating the image of the unthreateningly arrogant and unfailingly confident Old Spice Man, and even more time building its brand as a tongue-in-cheek advertiser.  This week’s campaign did not happen in a vacuum; the online success was supported by months of support from traditional television advertising.

4.  Content. The fact that Mustafa’s Old Spice Man and the commercials were ridiculous and off beat – in other words, entertaining – helped immensely.  The traditional model of advertising for big brands is sponsoring entertainment such as television shows.  Old Spice essentially created entertainment.  It’s nothing new – Budweiser has been making ads that told stories for decades.  It’s just more important in a media environment where it’s tough to catch eyeballs.

One thing to note is that Old Spice is not a nicle and dime start up.  Before the last year or so of quirky ads, it had a long-standing reputation as a stalwart in the field of optimal men’s odors.  In such a position, many brands would have forged a “Coca Cola campaign” – highlighting their history and strength.  It would have been safe but probably not as successful as their current strategy, which allows them to compete with the more sophomoric positioning of competitors like Axe without sacrificing the their old school street cred.

Coming to a theater near you: Facebook

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The first full-length trailer for The Social Network is up, appropriately enough, on YouTube:

There’s no doubt that the inception of Facebook has been a significant development in internet consumption; and it’s one of the most interesting business stories out there.  But after a decade of startups promising to redefine how we use the internet, the “this is going to change everything” rhetoric is a little tired.

So from this trailer, this movie could be any – or all – of the following:

  • Deeply fascinating
  • A trite waste of time
  • Mildly entertaining
  • Creepy (as underscored by the cover of Radiohead’s Creep that the trailer is set to)
  • A way to spend two hours ostensibly with people while paradoxically not interacting with anyone or anything except a glowing screen

Sounds like the perfect movie about Facebook.

November expectations

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The bar has been set for the GOP in November: outside of a takeover of the House and Senate, all electoral gains will be failures.  At least, that’s the expectation according to the Democrats.

The White House is openly discussing the prospect of a Republican Congress.  The Democrats’ ploy to tie BP to the GOP this week – the clever microsite BP Republicans – says that the politicians it highlights “will be guiding U.S. Policy if the Republicans can regain control of Congress this November.”

This rhetoric sets the stage for effective policy messaging assuming the Republicans don’t retake the majority.  A post-November Congress with fewer Democratic seats but maintaining a blue majority would give President Obama the opportunity to use the “I won the election and you lost” argument he was so fond of early in his Presidency. And if Republicans do re-take the House, the shock is lessened somewhat because, after all, they would only have accomplished what was expected.

Despite the complaints from some of the people actually running, the White House is smart to set the bar high for Republicans and low for Democrats.