Author: Jim Eltringham

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

Location, location, location

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The 2012 Presidential race is still a couple years away, but the early contenders are already beefing up their online efforts.  That makes it a good time to start asking what the 2012 online campaigns will look like.  The National Wildlife Federation is doing some cool things with location-based technology, and the contenders to the Oval Office would be wise to take notice.

Between social networks based on where you’re at (Foursquare, Gowalla) and the GPS-enabled smartphones that make these applications portable, location data will be important eventually to the campaign that invests the intellectual resources in it.

E-commerce dawned in the late 1990s, and in 2000 John McCain became the first candidate to raise significant amounts of money online.  In 2004, the internet offered a way to link people with common interests; the Howard Dean campaign (and later the Bush Campaign) responded with programs that helped activists find each other and organize local events.  In 2008, MySpace and Facebook allowed people to easily share content with friends; the Obama campaign’s online efforts were based around that same concept of virality. Successful campaigns change to reflect internet trends.

A campaign might use any number of location-based tactics.  Activists could be alerted to events in their area.  A campaign could offer contests for volunteers using Foursquare to check in at  headquarters or to recruit friends to attend rallies and other activities (not the least of which is voting).  Advocates could request campaign materials (like lawn signs) or instantly share stories through smart phone applications.

There’s no guarantee that the first campaign to take advantage of this technology will win, of course – McCain, Dean, and more recently Ron Paul  all proved that success online doesn’t always translate to the ballot box.  But for those looking for emerging technologies to gain an advantage, this is one place to be.

(Get it?  Place to be?  Location?  Aw, shut up.)

Santa Clara County is your new Mom!

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I know: it doesn’t seem fair.

All the kids in the other counties get a toy with their Happy Meal.  But you live in Santa Clara County, and Santa Clara County says you aren’t allowed to have toys with your fast food.

This is important.  After all, some foods aren’t good for you if eaten in excess, and someone has to be there to tell you to stop.  Who else is going to to that?  Your parents?  With kid’s meal toys out of the picture, there’s nothing that draws kids into these fast food restaurants.  Well, other than the fact that the food tastes really good to a kid.

Those other counties may seem “way cooler” now, but wait a few years and you’ll see that Santa Clara County really did know what was best for you all along.

(Unless you run a fast food franchise close to one of Santa Clara’s county borders and are looking to get any business on a Saturday afternoon.  Then you’re screwed.)

Facebook reporting

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New York Times tech blogger Nick Bilton tweeted an “off-the-record” quote from an unnamed Facebook official today.  The groundbreaking revelation: CEO Mark Zuckerberg scoffs at privacy.

The leak was ill-timed for Facebook.  As Wired’s coverage points out, the “official” nature of an off-the-record conversation means that it probably shouldn’t have been repeated:

“‘Off the record’ restricts the reporter from using the information the source is about to deliver,” reads NYU’s Journalism Handbook, in one definition of the phrase.  “If the reporter can confirm the information with another source who doesn’t insist on speaking off the record (whether that means he agreed to talking on the record, on background, or not for attribution), he can publish it.” “On background” usually means that information can be used, but can’t be attributed to a specific person.

In other words, the person making the quote might have thought the information was private, but the conversation was set up so that information was revealed.  Boy, wouldn’t that be instant karma.
In reality, the unnamed source apparently understood that he would be quoted – which is good.  In media relations as well as Facebook, nothing is really off-the-record.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

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Arizona’s new immigration has, predictably, led to protests.   John Hawkins of Right Wing News chronicles some of the disturbing signs that the pro-illegal immigration protesters have been waving about.  Here’s my favorite:

These signs in and of themselves aren’t really relevant, but as Hawkins points out, outlets like the Huffington Post love to bring their cameras to tea party rallies to capture the “shocking” rhetoric they see there. It’s an astute parallel to draw: If you want to judge the tea partiers by their most extreme elements, don’t you have to judge the pro-illegal immigration movement the same way?

Doing either misses the bigger images that each movement brings to the table.  For instance, in many of the pictures Hawkins displays, extreme signs calling for the overthrow of America obscure protesters with American flags in the background.  The undercurrent of the immigration debate is a quest for the American dream, not the racist rhetoric on the signs – a revelation which puts the debate in a new perspective, even if you don’t agree with what they’re saying.

That might be a good lesson to kind in mind for those covering the tea parties, too.

http://rightwingnews.com/2010/04/12-of-the-worst-signs-from-pro-illegal-immigration-protests/?utm_source=co2hog

Senators make privacy demands to Google

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Oh, sorry, that’s Facebook, whose tentacles are constantly expanding throughout the web, but not in Washington.  Sen. Charles Schumer and colleagues have posted an open letter on Facebook’s wall demanding to know just how the social network’s privacy options work.

In the meantime, Google continues to track, store, and process user data from various points in order to build advertising profiles – a practice which raises concerns not only about privacy, but about reach.  In fact, Google’s signature service, search, has a much lower barrier to entry than Facebook’s; while Facebook makes you create an account and is thematically based on the idea of sharing personal information, Google’s search service is open to anyone trackable by IP address.

So why does Facebook get a nasty letter while Google gets a pass?

It may have something to do with the fact that Google spent $1.38 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2010 alone.  More significant than the actual dollars spent is the intellectual investment: Google has clearly made it a priority to be a Washington, DC player on both sides of the aisle.  This level of involvement positions Google as a resource, preventing policymakers from seeing what is an obvious parallel.

Sorry, that Twitter isn’t yours…

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David All of TechRepublican has a really good post following up on the Poltico story about the early online organizing for 2012 Republican presidential candidates.  All, who was quoted in the story, chronicles a brief back and forth between himself and some Sarah Palin backers over the former Governor’s Twitter account. All had criticized Palin’s online team for starting a new Twitter account when she left office (and thus having to rebuild her substantial follower list).  Apparently, when she left office, state officials claimed her Twitter handle was state property, forcing her to sign up for a new account.

All correctly identifies that whether or not Sarah Palin could have (she could have) or should have (she should have) laid claim to the account name, a bigger issue is at play:

The state-level IT folks, likely a problem in every state, pushed back on the account ownership question because they don’t understand how best to treat emerging situations that are not black and white technically, legally or politically… But we’ve now identified a problem which we should work to address collectively: How should the accounts of government officials be treated once they leave office?

This is no small question for governors who chose to run for President.  Could Democrats in the Minnesota state legislature start calling for an investigation on Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Facebook friend list to make sure the governor doesn’t pull the modern media equivalent of swiping office supplies?  Would Republicans in Montana have a right to do the same if Gov. Brian Schweitzer started to make waves with eyes on the 2016 ticket?

It would be wise for states to figure this out seriously while the issue is still non-controversial.  In the absence of a policy, politics are sure to fill the void.

A glimpse of the future

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Politico today details the early spending of possible 2012 Republican candidates in building up their online infrastructure.  The groundwork the contenders are laying now gives a good glimpse of how online race for the nomination might play out in two years.

The online campaigns of Obama in 2008, Howard Dean in 2004, John McCain in 2000, and even George W. Bush in 2004 were about creating channels that would most effectively target voters’ enthusiasm through various activities like fundraising, creating campaign events, and recruiting others to support the candidate.

In the context of 2012, that means Newt Gingrich, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney are leading the pack: all three have made heavy investments in online consultants, and have a strategy for building lists and maintaining targeted contact with each person on that list.  Online operations, just like offline operations, depend on recruiting and communication with individuals on as individual basis as possible with the hope that each will later participate in a collective action (i.e., voting).

There are plenty of graphic designers who can make a pretty website and lots of videographers who can make funny or entertaining web videos.  Winning online campaigns are all about the data.  A spokesperson for Gingrich’s 527 sums it up well:

“One of the things we’re really big on here at American Solutions is sending the right message to the right people,” said Tim Cameron, the group’s director of digital operations. “We put a lot of money into our back-end infrastructure.”

Gingrich is deploying online ads across the internet.  Pawlenty is turning his PAC into a portal for supporters to give to other candidates – giving Freedom First good information about what issues matter to which donors and forming a good base of information for Pawlenty’s 2012 run.

Sarah Palin continues to attract excitement, but her online efforts, like her messaging, appears to lack focus; despite large numbers of social network followers she is not investing heavily in data management.  Ditto for Mike Huckabee, whose outreach strategy consists of, according to Politico: “deputizing a volunteer in every state to run a state-specific account for it on Facebook, Twitter and Ning, a smaller social-networking site popular with grass-roots political activists.”

(Note: Ning is no longer a free service.)

This isn’t just about online presences, either; understanding the potential of online outreach is part of understanding what it takes to build a winning campaign.  If these trends continue, look for Palin and Huckabee to have online campaigns that look shiny, draw good support numbers, but fail to launch them out of second tier status and into the midst of legitimate White House contenders.

South Park at 201 (and counting)

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

South Park got everyone talking last week, but not for the right reasons.

Now thirteen years old, the show celebrated its 200th episode a few weeks ago.  This milestone should have received some more attention than it did: aside from basic longevity, South Park was and is the signature show that put Comedy Central on the cable map.

More significant than that, though, is the unique social commentary South Park offers up from a center-right perspective – and the fact that no other show does that as well.

One episode called out hybrid enthusiasts as presumptuous yuppies who enjoy the smell of their own farts.  Two episodes made the point (using thinly veiled surrogates for Starbucks and Wal-Mart) that big businesses are big because people want their products, not because of some evil corporate trick. A sixth season episode managed to mock lawsuit abuse, political correctness, and draw a line between tolerance and acceptance.  A two-part episode glimpsed into a future without religion and found devout atheists arguing over whose scientific logic was superior.

South Park has been a turn-of-the-20th-century incarnation of an Ayn Rand novel – telling a compelling story while making important and uncommon cultural points.  In fact, a 2005 book about the rise of media-savvy conservative activists was titled South Park Conservatives.

But calling South Park a political show is a misnomer.  Other efforts to become conservative or libertarian alternatives to left-leaning television shows, movies, or other media outlets have failed because those outlets put politics before content; South Park is a funny show that happens to be made by people with a libertarian-oriented worldview.  It would be hilarious either way; the leanings of creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone just make it different.

If you want to learn more about smaller government and individual freedom, Hayek and Bastiat are better philosophers than Parker and Stone.  But it you want entertainment that comes from a different perspective than most of the stuff out there – and that is, despite some shock value jokes and toilet humor, pretty smart – go on down to South Park and have yourself a time.

How do you like that? Facebook and microtargeting

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This was a big week for Facebook, which stepped up its presence in the battle with Google to control the internet on computers.  (This is slightly different from the battle to control the internet through your phone or the internet through your TV or the battle control the internet through the cord surgically affixed to your brain stem.)

By spreading tentacles throughout the web, Facebook will latch your profile more closely to your online activity.  Sure, it’s a little creepy, but it’s also voluntary; no one has to have a Facebook account after all.

Setting aside privacy concerns, this is a really big [BIDEN] deal in a year when political insurgency is all the rage (no pun intended).  In a great post at TechRepublican, Jordan Raynor outlines how establishment political support (such as Florida Governor Charlie Crist enjoyed a few months ago) can be trumped by a campaign which connects directly with supporters and leverages that energy to create its own momentum.

Facebook is going to become a better and better place to do that – providing in 2010 and 2012 what the concept of microtargeting was in 2002 and 2004.  In those years, Republicans used consumer data to identify potential supporters – if you shop at a certain place and subscribe to certain magazines, for instance, you might fit a profile of a Republican voter.

Now, you can profile your supporters (who may or may not belong to your party) and directly serve them online ads.  The possibilities are pretty exciting – unless you’re sick of political ads.

You will be.  You will be.