Marketing has radically changed over the last 5 years. And we, like everyone else, are trying to figure out what we should do to market Windward. But this change is equally gigantic for another system – and that's political campaigns. A lot of these changes hold equally well for both. A candidate is a product. And a political campaign is a marketing effort. This is not meant to denigrate candidates (my mom is a representative in the Hawaii state house), it's just pointing out that there are great similarities.
Here's the thing, how a candidate uses the web will make a substantial difference in how they do in the election. It presently has greater impact than anything except paid TV ads. And by 2012 it will probably surpass TV. Candidates in close races will win or lose based on their Internet strategy.
But "use the web" can take many meanings. A candidate needs to have a good website, but that has little impact. A video like the "Macaca" one can kill a candidate, but that is a rare event – and the real lesson from that is you need to respond to what comes out on the web. Posting tweets are a part of this, but again a small part.
Let's start off with an example of the impact of the web in the '08 election. No not Obama, let's look at the Senate race in Colorado which was supposed to be very close - Bob Schaffer [R] vs. Mark Udall [D]. But as we started the election (after Labor Day) an interesting thing occurred – Bob Schaffer was already seriously down in the polls. And he remained down even with millions poured in both from his own campaign and independent expenditures. It was over before it even started.
What happened? Bob Schaffer was taken out in the blogosphere over the summer. And it was done in such a way that by September it was too late to counteract. And the hits kept occurring from then up to election day, with Schaffer's campaign and the 527s backing him not knowing how to respond.
The end result was a blow-out and I think the Colorado GOP still doesn't understand what happened. To be honest, I don't think the Colorado Democratic party really understands it either. The people who understand it are a number of independent individuals who were among those who contributed to the effort.
So what happened?
There are a lot of items that go into that answer, and it will be multiple posts to cover all of it. But let's start with item # 1. Things no longer go away. They may recede into the background but they no longer go away. They are out there on the web forever, never more than a single link in an article or Google search away.
George Allen was not beat because he was recorded calling an Indian-American Macaca (twice). He was beat because unlike the old days when it would have hit the news for a day or two and then gone away, it remained out there every day up to the election. And every time someone opposed to Allen posted anything against him, they would find a way to mention the video and put a link to it. Virtually every voter in Virginia saw that video – multiple times. Every Jim Webb supporter saw it and that encouraged them to work harder. Many Allen supporters were disheartened by it. And virtually all undecided voters took it into account.
Bad press keeps coming round. It used to be a story hit, ran for 1 – 2 days max, then it was over. And it wasn't revisited – because the press was always looking for something new and found "old news" uninteresting. Again, on the web any given story is always just a Google search away. And many posts on new issues will bring up old ones.
I think this is actually a good thing – we now are seeing our elected officials as the sum of their actions and from that get a much more accurate picture. But it means the candidate is judged by items they wish would fade over time. Or to put it another way, a candidate will be judged primarily by who he or she is, not by how the marketing tries to sell her or him.
What destroyed the Bob Schaffer campaign is that the stories that defined Bob Schaffer were those put out by Democratic activists. And the stories that defined his opponent were those put out by, again, Democratic activists. The GOP activists were mostly (not entirely) missing in action on the web. And so both candidates were defined by Democratic activists. And with that, it was a blowout for Mark Udall [D].
Come September '10 if both candidates in a race have been well defined by one side then that side has a tremendous advantage. Depending on how much better one side did, it adds 5 – 10 points to that candidate.
And when does a candidate need to start their effort on the web?
Yesterday.
