Category: Politics and Grassroots

What’s spreading faster, oil or failure?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

A local television station in Louisiana ran into some problems trying to interview some spill cleanup workers – and in doing so, highlighted one more way BP is not helping itself in its response to the spill:

Cleanup workers might not be media savvy, but they remain the best face that BP could put on their cleanup efforts (certainly better than a clearly foreign CEO).  Whether the glorified rent-a-cop in this video (and his backpack-clad sidekick) are following orders that contradict BP’s official statements on press availability or they are carrying out a legit safety function isn’t clear.  What is clear is that they are not communications experts.

At least BP can rest easy knowing that, no matter how sophisticated their PR strategy, they weren’t coming out of this oil spill clean.  The administration’s inability to escape criticism is particularly fascinating (and means I have to eat a plate of oil-soaked crow).

Most recently, the President compared the oil spill to 9/11.  Perhaps that’s his way of getting tougher on BP – as the polls are apparently asking for him to do.  The problem of course, is that the President is doing everything he can do – and that just isn’t that much.  After coming into office with promises that he could make government work for people again, the spill underscores that government simply isn’t qualified for the job.

Ultimately, that puts the US government and BP on two sides of the same coin.  Both wind up despised by the people – BP for wielding too much power; the government for impotence.

Being the media

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Last night I spoke at the Leadership Institute‘s Public Relations School on writing effective press releases.  It’s a talk I’ve been giving since 2002, but since then it has obviously changed pretty considerably.

The most significant change has been in the forms a press release has taken.  Eight years ago a basic press release was a one-page document written like a news story that was emailed and faxed to a media list, or distributed through a press release service.  Today, through formats like social media releases, plus tools like easy blogging and media hosting platforms (like Flickr and YouTube), organizations and campaigns can augment their news releases with all kinds of extras.

And frankly, if they aren’t doing that, they’re missing out.

The media landscape has changed, too.  Bloggers and power social network users can reach thousands of people.  There’s no reason to wait for traditional media outlets to create content that can be picked up virally.  The Washington Times mentioned how this helped insurgent candidates circumvent the media in upsetting candidates hand-picked by political parties:

Just as important, platforms such as YouTube have given long-shot candidates ways to circumvent political reporters reluctant to cover campaigns they don’t believe have much chance of success…Most prominent is Florida, where former House Speaker Marco Rubio, a darling of the “tea party” movement, had nearly 20 times the video views in late May as Gov. Charlie Crist, whom Republican leaders had recruited into the race. Mr. Crist has since fled the Republican Party to run as an independent.

One key element of public relations hasn’t changed, of course: the importance of having a strong, well-framed message.  If a tree falls in the forest, and no one’s around to tweet about it, it won’t make the front page – but the tree has to fall first.

They did not make this commercial right

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This new BP commercial takes responsibility for the oil spill in the Gulf, but it leaves lots to be desired:

For starters, the best way to win over the American public is not with an English accent.  Going back to the 18th century, America, Great Britain, and stuff dumped in the ocean that interrupts commerce have a less-than-stellar relationship.  But more than that, it’s clear that the top leaders of BP are not personally invested in the region.  They may care a great deal, but they’re from England – it isn’t their home.

In a previous post, I mentioned that the residents of the Gulf who are helping with the cleanup would have made for much better – and more sympathetic – spokespersons.  Hayward still could have made an appearance in the commercial, but he shouldn’t have been the focus.

Stylistically, the use of still frames is artistically poignant, but doesn’t make the cleanup effort come to life the way video could.

The bottom line is that BP can say very little right now (outside of, “Hey, the oil stopped gushing!”) to mollify a justifiably upset American public.  But their strategy of replying from the highest levels of the company with detached sympathy does them no favors.

The only thing worse would be working for BP

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Chris Kelly’s former job probably seemed like an asset when he jumped into the race for California Attorney General – in a state so closely identified with technological innovation, he was one of the executive leaders of Facebook.

The problem for Kelly now is that his title was Chief Privacy Officer.  Having that position for Facebook is kind of like being a nutritionist for KFC – it doesn’t come with much credibility.

How bad is it?  Not only is Kelly’s opponent using his association with Facebook against him in a television ad, but in that same ad she’s actually bragging about being endorsed by Nancy Pelosi.

The irony, of course, comes in the picture of Pelosi used in the endorsement, which looks to be a few years old and looks nothing like she does now.

In other words, it’s a typical Facebook picture.

Majority status, with minority problems

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Politico notes today that the 2008 victory of President Obama is not opening up the floodgates for other black candidates, as evidenced by Artur Davis’s loss in the Alabama gubernatorial primary this week.  Pennsylvania State Senator Anthony Hardy Williams, who finished third in seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor, says that in addition to concerns from Democrat activists over whether black candidates can win general elections, ideology plays a big part:

“I think the Obama era has actually transcended race. Not to say people don’t have biases — of course they exist, they exist in every state,” [Williams] said. “The question I got was, ‘Are you an Obama Democrat’ in regard to spending, not in regard to race.”

This may be why, despite these troubles on the Democratic side, Republicans are enjoying historic highs (for them) in  minority and women candidates.  It also suggests the opening of another interesting door.

The rise of the conservative movement was based in part on the growth of thought leadership organizations, chiefly in the 1960s and 1970s.  Institutions like National Review and the Heritage Foundation built the pillars of conservative thought upon which electoral and policy successes were built.  They were crystallizing – and making palatable – the ideas that candidates and lawmakers would later use.

Today’s challenge for the conservative movement goes beyond establishing a foothold for these ideas in the general electorate.  Today’s challenge is to expand the audiences that are receptive to those messages. It’s not enough for the Republican Party to recruit leaders from minority communities, think tanks and thought leaders must do so as well.

(Word has it that Marvel Comics has already started.)

Is that one of the “jobs created or saved”?

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

The White House may or may not have offered Joe Sestak a job to stay out of the primary he won last week.  Either way, it certainly isn’t doing him any favors now.

Sestak is the clean one in this controversy – no matter what the White House offered, he didn’t take it.  That could turn out to be a positive for the Congressman.  But with neither side talking about it, it continues to be an issue – and even though it isn’t damaging to Sestak, it certainly is distracting.  He probably has a lot of things he’d like to give stump speeches about that don’t involve the fact that his story and the company line don’t exactly match:

Two lessons from last week about online campaigning

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

With Memorial Day weekend coming up, Campaign Season 2010 is about to hit high gear.  With that, candidates who hadn’t built out their web presence are going to put the foot on the gas.  At this point, that probably applies more to local and state candidates than candidates for most state or federal offices – campaigns where it can be intimidating to put together a robust online campaign.  I recently spoke with a consultant for a state candidate who had just launched a Facebook page.  The campaign was somewhat nervous about the launch for two reasons: 1) the page was still a bit light on content and 2) by its nature, the page would allow the campaign’s organized opponents to post negative comments.

These are both legitimate concerns, but they have legitimate answers.  Some high profile stories from the last week illustrate how to deal with them:

1. When it comes to content, don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.

As the Mark Critz campaign made clear, websites and other online presences aren’t static media.  Just as a simple website can expand to include more sections and content, a Facebook page can expand with more wall posts, pictures, videos, or other pieces.

In fact, a phased strategy has an important benefit: with each addition, the campaign can reach out to supporters again with a fresh, relevant message.  On Facebook, this is even more pronounced.  If you join a Facebook page that already has all the content it’s going to have, it becomes easier to forget.  If you join a Facebook page that constantly adds content, you are more likely to see it in your news feed, and possibly visit the site and take some sort of action.  (Which would, in turn, show up in your friends’ feed, and give the campaign further exposure.)

Too many online campaigns fail to understand that a website or social network profile isn’t like a television or radio advertisement – while some seed content is important, adding more content later can actually work to their advantage.

2.  Censoring negative comments gives them more legitimacy than answering them.

Back in good old Pennsylvania, gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett got into a bit of a row with some anonymous Twitterers and issued a subpoena to Twitter calling for their identities.  In doing so, he appeared to be legitimizing his critics through a ham-fisted attempt at censorship.

On any campaign’s Facebook page, there will be detractors who put their mark on every single post.  By smartly building an active and engaged base, a campaign can create a community which will answer this criticism with supportive speech.  There are also opportunities to directly engage the folks who make these comments in a public square – they don’t get to post to your campaign’s wall in a vacuum, after all.

If your campaign is not effective at answering critics directly, Facebook may be the wrong place to be.  But then again, if your campaign can’t answer legitimate questions, electoral politics may also be a bad choice.

The reality of anti-incumbentism

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

Many of the analysts have been trying paint this week’s elections with a very broad brush as general examples of popular unrest with Washington, D.C.  While true in part, this overlooks an important fact: each race that happened this week happened in a unique set of circumstances.

Pennsylvania Democrats did not repudiate the concept of incumbency when they cast their vote for a sitting Member of Congress; they did repudiate Arlen Specter.  Specter was not a Democrat, as Joe Sestak so successfully pointed out:

Similarly, the idea that Sen. Blanche Lincoln is “too conservative” for Arkansas Democrats doesn’t hold water, either.  The state has a long-standing strong history of dumping incumbent Senators in primaries.  And Lt. Governor Bill Halter’s national appeal to liberal special interests helped his campaign infrastructure, but it didn’t necessarily win him votes:

The darling of national liberals and labor unions got powered into a Democratic U.S. Senate runoff in Arkansas on Tuesday by the support of good ol’ boys in South Arkansas who either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t care, both entirely plausible… Halter waltzed into a runoff using liberal money and a conservative backlash.

There is a strong undercurrent of unrest with national elected officials, but that alone doesn’t win an election.  That spirit may have manifested itself in similar way in Pennsylvania and Arkansas, with incumbent Senators underperforming, but it came about for different reasons.

How NOT to handle criticism

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

This week, Pennsylvania Attorney General (and candidate for Governor) Tom Corbett issued a subpoena to force Twitter to reveal the identities of two members who have been highly critical of him. The official line from the AG office is that the identity could be relevant to an ongoing criminal case:

A spokesman for Mr. Corbett, Kevin Harley, said the subpoena had nothing to do with the criticism of the attorney general… He said the subpoena was related to a criminal case concerning Brett Cott, a former political aide convicted in a political scandal known as Bonusgate. That long-running investigation concerns bonuses paid to legislative staff members and whether they were illegally related to political campaign work.

For Corbett’s sake, I hope this isn’t simply an attempt to shut up anonymous critics, because it’s hard to think of a  less effective way to do it.  Consider that, between them both, the accounts probably have no more than 1,000 unique followers, and that comes after a round of national press coverage that has surely inflated those totals.  Everything Corbett has done has only driven more eyeballs their way.  And any type of censorship – or perceived censorship – of political speech tends to be a bad issue for a candidate.

Puttin’ on the Critz

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 3 Comments

New Media Campaigns wasted no time in posting an instant case study on their role in Mark Critz’s win in PA-12 this week. Amazingly, the driving theme of the online campaign was a driving theme of most offline campaigns: speed kills.

The online team employed a phased rollout approach, recognizing that the need to have something up online early trumped the need to launch a website with all the bells and whistles.  And the back end content management system of the site was built so that anyone could update it – in other words, instead of the “website guy” having the keys and being the only one able to drive the campaign’s online presence, everyone got their own car.  It provided for a streamlined, slick, and – ultimately – victorious campaign.

The online campaign didn’t win PA-12 for Mark Critz by itself, but no online campaign is capable of that.  It was successful by the measure that matters: it didn’t get in the way of a the other parts of a well-run campaign.