Beat the rush–claim your hermit cave now
There's an interesting (if misguidedly prognosticating) article in this week's Time Magazine about the future of national political campaigns in a media environment in which many potential voters will be using technology to avoid exposure to more traditional means of persuasion like television ads.
Instead, politicos are expected to turn to what some call "targeted" and others call "stealth" marketing. You know those tales of marketers recruiting and paying loud-mouthed everyday citizens with huge circles of contacts to just happen to talk up a particular brand of organic cased meat at the next neighborhood barbecue, or a particular brand of cardiac parasite pills in the veterinarian's waiting room?
Well, in politics they're called "team leaders," and the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign has already put them into practice. According to Time, it recruited 10,000 African American "team leaders" to "voluntarily talk up Republican policies to their friends" in exchange for such lavish perks as getting to shake hands with the president.
Time also quoted RNC Chair Ken Mehlman as saying, "If a fellow member of your PTA tells you that George Bush cares about education, that has credibility that a paid canvasser or ad will never have. You'll see a lot more of that in '08."
Yet according to the article's author, replacing traditional ads with such tactics (which are also projected to include targeting political ads to Web searches and trying to implant "viral" Internet attractions like 2004's "This Land" Flash parody) should make for more meaningful and more democratic campaigns.
Yeah, come to think of it, campaigns could stand to be a bit more democratic. We've wasted far too many election cycles just being suspicious politicians, interest groups and elites were lying to us when we could have been suspicious of absolutely everyone we ever encountered.
In this age of illegal wiretapping, tracking library records and subpoenaing search engines, that's the true American spirit.
Instead, politicos are expected to turn to what some call "targeted" and others call "stealth" marketing. You know those tales of marketers recruiting and paying loud-mouthed everyday citizens with huge circles of contacts to just happen to talk up a particular brand of organic cased meat at the next neighborhood barbecue, or a particular brand of cardiac parasite pills in the veterinarian's waiting room?
Well, in politics they're called "team leaders," and the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign has already put them into practice. According to Time, it recruited 10,000 African American "team leaders" to "voluntarily talk up Republican policies to their friends" in exchange for such lavish perks as getting to shake hands with the president.
Time also quoted RNC Chair Ken Mehlman as saying, "If a fellow member of your PTA tells you that George Bush cares about education, that has credibility that a paid canvasser or ad will never have. You'll see a lot more of that in '08."
Yet according to the article's author, replacing traditional ads with such tactics (which are also projected to include targeting political ads to Web searches and trying to implant "viral" Internet attractions like 2004's "This Land" Flash parody) should make for more meaningful and more democratic campaigns.
Yeah, come to think of it, campaigns could stand to be a bit more democratic. We've wasted far too many election cycles just being suspicious politicians, interest groups and elites were lying to us when we could have been suspicious of absolutely everyone we ever encountered.
In this age of illegal wiretapping, tracking library records and subpoenaing search engines, that's the true American spirit.
posted by Holly at 2:45 AM
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