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Kathleen Parker & America Offline

by Patrick Ruffini :: June 25th, 2007 2:20 pm

Think web video is going to sweep the land in 2008? Kathleen Parker offers a contrarian view (via Josh Levy’s indispensable daily roundup):

Yes, it’s hard to believe if you’re a tuned-in, turned-on popular culture vulture umbilically connected to the blogosphere/videosphere. But cross the country and ask normal people about the latest Gravel ad and they’d think you don’t know how to pronounce the word for tiny pebbles.

Ask working folks about “You and I,” the campaign song selected by Clinton in her recent Sopranos-spoof video, and most will shrug indifferently.

Everyday people, in other words, are too busy getting to work, raising children and going to their respective houses of worship to monitor the virtual world where Gravel (who is running for President, by the way), Clinton and other Presidential candidates have posted about 900 political videos.

And:

Candidates can’t afford to ignore either, but ultimately they’re forced to present two different faces to two different audiences — the plugged and the unplugged, the hip and the un-hip.

There’s a meme going around that being online makes you young and hip. That isn’t so. The average resident of Blogistan is 45. The readership of Daily Kos skews old.

While the Clinton video was designed to show the couple as culturally aware (BTW, the biggest subtext was actually showing them off happily married), success online comes in many flavors. If Parker read blogs like TechPresident and TechRepublican closely, she’d see that the message that gets constantly repeated isn’t coolness. It’s authenticity. That means if your iPod is stocked to the gills with classical music, tell us. Of if you don’t have an iPod, that’s fine too.

Mostly, the other insinuation of Parker’s piece — that campaigns are two-faced — is a yawner. Campaigns message to different audiences all the time. If you’re a Republican, what you send to your Faith & Values list is different than what you send to your Veterans list. If you’re a Democrat, what John Edwards says is different than what Elizabeth Edwards says.

Moreover — and I’m exploring this for a more in-depth piece coming up — campaigns have thoroughly bought into Keller & Barry’s Influentials thesis. Meaning that more and more of campaign communications are about developing an intense connection with the 1-in-10 who really care rather than a passing connection with those who couldn’t care less. I would argue that there is now almost complete overlap between online citizens and the 1-in-10. In a primary, this matters even more because the “don’t care” voters probably won’t be voting at all. Right now, it’s more important for Rudy Giuliani or Barack Obama to tap into an energized base of evangelists than it is to be broadly acceptable to a wide audience who may get yanked away by the media tide tomorrow. The debates were watched by 2 million people apiece, and there’s a legitimate argument to be made that they moved the 30-40 million universe being polled. Somehow the message got out, through the Dayton-to-Ambinder-to-Balz-to-local newspaper syndication-to-evening news media conveyor belt.

When it comes to media, the campaigns shouldn’t make value judgments, only marketing decisions. Does sending a direct mail fundraising appeal make you old and stodgy in an era where no one (my age least) sends letters anymore? Should a candidate who doesn’t personally like to watch television not do TV ads? These questions are about as ridiculous as suggesting that a candidate shouldn’t play online because he or she doesn’t go online, or a certain segment of the population isn’t online. Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are just channels, and in a campaign you message through all the available channels. The only time it doesn’t make sense to do this is when there is literally no market penetration for these tools in the audience you’re targeting (the AARP on MySpace for instance, and even there, I might be proven wrong).

As much as I disagree with Parker’s analysis, I’m really glad to see when critics of the online world engage. Incredible Seth Godin lectures don’t do very much when you’re just preaching to the choir at PDF. The influentials on both sides of the online-offline debate need to come together to hash this out.

Tagged: kathleen parker online politics video youtube

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