Category: Tech

Trump’s answer on data is actually the right answer

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump says his Presidential campaign will be about personality, not data:

In his AP interview, Trump discounted the value of data: The “candidate is by far the most important thing,” he said. He said he plans a “limited” use of data in his general election campaign and suggested Obama’s victories — universally viewed by political professionals as groundbreaking in the way data steered the campaign to voters — are misunderstood.

“Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine, and I think the same is true with me,” Trump said, explaining that he will continue to focus on his signature rallies, free television exposure and his personal social media accounts to win voters over.

That’s exactly the wrong answer on an 8:00 a.m. conference call, but it’s exactly the right answer for an interview – which is something many political professionals miss. In the quest to sound smart to industry press, operatives can fall into the trap of talking too much about process. But voters don’t care.

Yes, the data-driven campaigns President Barack Obama ran in 2008 and 2012 were groundbreaking. But people voted for Obama’s message. The data elements helped them vote, but they made the choice, ultimately, based on the message.

In this cycle, polarizing figures with limited crossover appeal lead both major parties. Both presumptive nominees face divisions within their parties. Voter turnout could suffer, which could make the ground game vital. If the race is close, it will likely be the campaign with the better turnout operation that comes out ahead.

But a candidate has three jobs: 1) Ask for votes; 2) Ask for money; 3) Don’t mess up. Chatting about campaign tactics is not on the list.

Maybe Trump has a basement full of nerds chained to computers analyzing data sets to develop the winning turnout plan. Even if he does, it wouldn’t help him to brag about it. Even if the Trump campaign proved to be the most sophisticated data operation in the history of ones and zeros, it would only serve to amplify his message.

Campaign tactics may drive votes, but personality wins voters.

Birthday Ramen!

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Did you know that today is Momofuku Ando’s birthday? He’s the guy who invented instant ramen, and he would be 105 if he was alive today. You might have learned all this if you’d clicked on the Google doodle that most people saw today:

AndoDoodle

I didn’t see that.  Since I share Momofuku’s birthday, I saw this:

MyDoodle

The alt text – “Happy Birthday, Jim!” – confirmed that this was for me. It’s no mystery how Google found out – I’ve probably volunteered the information dozens of times given all the Google products I use. It was still the creepiest happy birthday I got today.

Hillary Clinton will not be your next President

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Way back in the day, then-candidate Barack Obama got a really flattering picture in the paper. Actually, it was the New York Times, and actually it looked like a leaked still from an Airwolf reboot.

When I first saw that picture, I believed that Barack Obama would be the next President of the United States. While that picture always stood out in my mind, just about everyone I knew who paid attention to the campaign that year had a similar moment of clarity where they believed Obama would beat John McCain.

It comes to mind now because, a couple weeks back, this horrible video started making the rounds on YouTube:

Someone thought this was a good idea. It’s not simple to put this together – someone wrote the song, hired a band, scripted the video, and apparently wanted to make something that promoted Hillary Clinton while looking like the result of a drunken one-night stand between crappy pop-country and a third quarter earnings presentation. (“Hi, Rascal Flats? It’s PowerPoint. …Yes, I had a fun night, too, but… Well, we need to talk. I’m pregnant.”) It took work and effort, which means someone actually thought about this a lot. And it still got made, incredibly.

The imagery, from the shattered glass ceiling to the man getting on a motorcycle behind a lady is heavy-handed and condescending. And it shamelessly panders to middle Americans, who may love country music but probably recognize when a former Senator from New York is trying too hard.

Oversimplified, poorly conceived messages delivered with insincerity are nothing new to Clinton’s public appearances this year, from the time she started promoting her book to now. This video subtly underscores every negative she currently has. Clinton’s country music video projects someone going through the motions of a campaign as a formality before a Presidency she feels she is owed.

Is it any wonder why the jibber-jabber around Elizabeth Warren as a potential primary challenger has warmed so significantly in the weeks since this video came out?

The political “digital divide” is closing – but not because of this

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Politico pointed out that Republicans lead Democrats in viral videos this election cycle:

By generating hundreds of thousands of clicks, the Republicans’ digital success represents a remarkable tech turnaround compared with 2012, when President Barack Obama’s campaign easily outpaced Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field in the production of the most popular Web content.

That’s right and wrong at the same time, which is really tough to do.

A higher click total is not a sign of better use of technology, but a sign of better use of message. The article goes on to talk about why the Republican message has been so video-friendly, which underscores the point.

The technology to make an online video is pretty simple, any yahoo with a Mac can make something that looks pretty decent. Clicks come from content – what the video says is more important than Politico lets on.

If you want to know why Republicans have closed in on the Democrats’ tech advantage, look at the actual technology and how it’s being used. For example, i360, a data firm that caters to conservative movement organizations, and DataTrust, the data wing of the GOP, are sharing their voter data. If one of those companies found out that you’re an independent and the other one knows you’re left handed, campaigns would have access to both tags and could use both to shape how they talk to you. That’s a legit tech upgrade over the sloppy, fractured Republican data infrastructure of the past.

Project Ivy and digital coat tails

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Over at Communities Digital News, I have a new piece up about Project Ivy – the Democrats’ plan to deploy the digital tools that helped President Obama in 2012 and Terry McAuliffe in 2013 into down ballot races in 2014:

The data tools used this year may not help Democrats keep their hold on the Senate, or win more Governorships, or even gain ground in state legislative chambers. But all the data collected with those tools in 2014 will be mighty useful when a few hundred votes in Cuyahoga County could decide the White House in two short years.

Republicans may not need to match Democrats data point for data point to have a pretty good election cycle in 2014. But deploying their own tools with the future in mind will help build their abilities for coming cycles. 

You want more?  Here it is.

Democrats know they are facing an against-the-spread election this November. They’ll lose seats, but the question is how many. Dropping as many as five Senate seats to the GOP will look like a win if they maintain a voting majority for the next term.  And like a baseball team playing out the string with a 40-man roster in September, minor league talent in down-ballot races can help set the table for future victories.  Project Ivy isn’t really for 2014, it’s for 2016.

But if I bled Democrat blue there would be one major factor that rubs me the wrong way about Project Ivy: the name.

First off, ivy grows up, while the project takes high-level tactics and tries to push them down.  Maybe that strategy makes sense for Democrats, who put so much faith in federal government programs to cure the ills of small communities, but the metaphor is a bit off.

Second, remember Project ORCA? It was the widely panned GOTV app that Team Romney deployed in 2012, and was so named because the Obama team’s data processing system was nicknamed “Narwhal,” and orcas kill narwhals.  As it turned out, the narwhal was an octopus with tentacles everywhere, and orcas don’t do crap against octopi.  This metaphor is getting even more tortured, so let’s move to the point: A clever name often foreshadows failure.  The only political tactical operations with cool names that work are the ones you hear about after the election.

The best news for the GOP about Project Ivy might be the fact that the first news stories about it are in March 2014, and not the week after Election Day.

Apple’s ad won the Holidays

~ Jim Eltringham ~ 1 Comment

It’s too bad that Apple’s “Misunderstood” commercial probably won’t end up being replayed every single year, the way the spots touting Hershey Kisses and M&M’s do. It was the best commercial of this holiday season, and it looks like Apple spent lots of time looking at Google’s advertising handiwork.

The ad features a seemingly self-absorbed kid spending the holidays messing with his phone, only to reveal that he’s been carefully crafting a video memory for everyone.  The message is self-serving: that technology which isolates us actually brings us together.  But it’s well done, and who doesn’t have some nostalgia for big family get-togethers?

Best of all, without a word of dialogue, it tells a story.  You know this family loves and cherishes each other. From the joy of the first greeting to the ice skating and sledding to the grandmother’s wistful tears on Christmas morning, they enjoy each other’s company.  They’ll treasure the memories when they look back on this video.  And, of course, Apple hopes you’ll look at it and remember the idealized Christmases of your youth, tugging at your heartstrings the way “A Christmas Story” reminds you of that toy you wanted.   Niagara Falls, Frankie Angel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhwhnEe7CjE

Facebook Ad exploits the shutdown

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

shutdown_fbad

 

The Wydler Brothers – the Hans und Franz  of Beltway-area real estate – are promoting this picture in Facebook sponsored posts.  It’s not entirely original – plenty of shops in and around DC are trying to drum up business based on the shutdown – but it is pretty clever,

It might be the most useful though – depending on how the messaging wars go in the next 13 months, there could be some new lobbyists/former Senators looking to buy.

The Ruben Sierra of Viral Video

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Making the rounds of sharing this week is the video of Marina Shifrin resigning her post at Next Media Animation.  Shifrin, who used to make news videos, dances through her resignation while the subtitles tick off her reasons for quitting – most notably, the fact that her “boss only cares about quantity and how many views each video gets.”  Her video, she contends, “focus[es] on the content”:

It would be easy for some curmudgeon to yell that Shifrin is looking for creativity in the wrong place – that work is about making money, rather than fun and games.  But that wouldn’t be entirely appropriate.  You’ve probably heard of her former company, Next Media Animation – or at least seen their work.  They make those funny, Taiwanese animated videos about the news.  In 2010, they made this one about the Thanksgiving-weekend revelation that Tiger Woods was playing a few rounds outside of his marriage:

Shifrin wasn’t working at a gulag making plastic widgets for export, she was making funny, creative news videos.  NMA’s website brags about their speed, and that’s pretty important when your company’s key product is so heavily dependent on news cycles.  Ditto for quantity – NMA has released two videos already this week, one for the government shutdown and one for Lane Kiffin being fired by USC.  The company is based on producing timely content that attracts viewers and stays ahead of the news.  It probably means working off-hours (since Taiwan and America are on opposite sides of the globe).

That’s a tough job, so you couldn’t blame anyone for saying it isn’t for them.  But Shifrin’s self-indulgent resignation video says a little bit more. Specifically, it says “Be careful about hiring me, because if we have a difference of opinion, I’ll try to embarrass you.”  Working at an online video company while complaining about needing to come up with content frequently that attracts views is like former New York Yankee Ruben Sierra, after being traded in 1996, complaining that the Yankees only cared about winning.

The team at NMA seem to be taking it in stride, though:

Email: The Once and Future King

~ Jim Eltringham ~ Leave a comment

Harvard’s Nieman Foundation had a post today about The Slurve, a daily digest of baseball.  (While I don’t subscribe, I see plenty about it on Twitter and Facebook from intelligent, baseball-oriented friends to know that I probably will at some point.)  Blogger Adrienne LaFrance opines that journalism-by-newsletter may be underrated:

After political reporting and editing stints at The American Conservative and Business Insider, [Michael Brendan Daugherty] decided to quit his job and launch The Slurve, a daily baseball newsletter that began last March on the eve of the 2013 baseball season.

Dougherty saw the opportunity to create a bespoke editorial product for an audience that was inundated with great baseball coverage but had to traverse a huge swath of the web to find it.

Daugherty’s model is subscription, not advertising-based.  He has built an audience and feeds it with great content, and the subscriptions continue.  It’s similar to the model magazines may have used in their heyday, but without the high costs of printing and distribution.

The Slurve is not the first to use such a model.  A few years ago, the National Journal’s Hotiline was required reading when it popped up subscribers’ inboxes right around noon; Ben Domenech’s The Transom treats center-right subscribers to news and analysis each morning.  At some point, LaFrance speculates, specialty email list curators might find seats in traditional media.  She may be right; former Hotline editor Chuck Todd has certainly done so.

In making her point, LaFrance may have hit on something traditional media need more of as they claw their way into the digital age: a direct conduit into the inbox.  Sure, news organizations love to invite viewers to “join the conversation” on Twitter or Facebook.  But doing so is a thin attempt to appear multi-directional: CNN really doesn’t care what you tweeted about Syria, even if it posted your tweet on the air.

News organizations are a one-way conduits of information.  People who know stuff about the world are paid to tell you about it, if you’re interested.  If they are interested in finding your eyeballs online, they would be wise to reach out through your email inbox.