techPresident - Upcoming - Comments

Agreed

Fred Stutzman — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:44:38 -0400

Ian - I agree and I'm looking forward to your post. To carry your analogy further (and possibly too far), even if candidates don't want to hand off the ball, better running backs will emerge. If the popular content on youtube can be shot on a mobile phone, anyone can be a creator. Can we really expect that candidates will have a monopoly on the good content? The barriers to entry are gone - it is truly a wild west.

Let "Us" Carry the Message

iwilker — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 12:34:22 -0400

Hi Fred,

This is a really good post, and you raise a question that really resonates for me and is very much on my mind in my work for advocacy groups: "What candidate really wants to (and can effectively) maintain identities in every social property?"

My thoughts on that outgrew comment size, so I'll throw a post onto my blog instead. But the long and short of it is that in my view the "holy grail" of social media lies not in a single bazillion-watt megaphone but in showing rank-and-file voters how much agency they actually have to move the national conversation on a political issue, a candidate, a brand. And then -- I'm much more a hoops guy than football fan, but I'll use a gridiron analogy anyway -- hand off the football (your message) to those voters, and let them carry it. "Flip the funnel," as Seth Godin has said. I don't know that any candidate will come anywhere near perfecting this in the '08 cycle, but someone will and reasonably soon. And then shall the bastions of colorless "command-and-control"-style communications come a-tumblin' down. (Well, at least I hope so.)

-- Ian

Ian Wilker
roots.lab - helping NPOs leverage the social web.
www.ianwilker.com/rootslab

Thanks

Fred Stutzman — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:04:01 -0400

Let me echo you, because I think you've also hit the nail on the head. The consultant as oracle phenomenon doesn't hold up in the social media context. Spend all your time on the Myspace efforts? We'll thats just setting yourself up to be blindsided by Youtube. There isn't just one answer in 2008, and the consultant that most effectively leverages this meta strategy will most likely succeed.

Of course, this also changes the nature of the consultant. In the past, these consultants were organizers-who-did-tech. In 2008, its about media-savvies-that-do-organizing-that-do-tech. Its another level of abstraction, and there aren't all that many people that do this stuff well. And being media savvy is so important...if candidates are beefing up their Youtube staff, they are in deep trouble. Hot media will win again and again.

good stuff

TexasLaw — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 10:43:50 -0400

Great post...nice cluetrain manifesto reference. I hadn't thought about that since about 2000.

I think the consultant-psyche is built in a way that begs to leverage the latest and greatest in a singular way, as opposed to doing what you suggest - utilizing a full strategy that employs multiple Internet sources. It was Meetup in '02 and '04 that engaged the online and offline worlds together and Dean's team was the mastermind that figured it out first...and that's what campaign folks want to do every time around. It may even reflect that larger problem of national campaigns - the consultant as hero/demagogue/genius/mastermind/"the next karl rove". If a consultant can find something new and underutilized and then exploit it to the candidate's advantage, then the consultant gets a book deal. :) Problem is that this year there may not be a single lightning bolt, as you suggest...it will take more. And maybe the next evil-genius will be the one that does it all and does it all really really well.

I think I just echoed everything you said...apologies for being overly redundant.

Excellent post

David All — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:29:52 -0400

Great work Fred. I wrote about this post at my blog.

And on a lighter note, your analogy reminded me of another search for a holy grail - Monty Python style:

________________________________________
David All
The David All Group
http://davidallgroup.com
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