We’ll see if Sanford finishes his last 500.

That’s Chancellor Angela Merkel in a somewhat revealing, low-cut dress. Across her cleavage, the slogan “We have more to offer.”
 
The picture is at the center of a new campaign strategy for Vera Lengsfeld. She is a fellow member of Merkel’s conservative CDU party running in a left-leaning district of Berlin. Being a conservative in a liberal district, and running against a popular Green Party incumbent, Lengsfeld needed a way to grab voters’ attention. And she has certainly found it. Lengsfeld hung 750 posters with the picture in her district, creating quite the media buzz. Local news stations are covering the story, posters are going missing as people take them for souvenirs, and 17,000 people have visited her campaign blog since they were posted.
 
This certainly plays into the old adage that “sex sells.” But is using sex in political ads appropriate? Advertising guru David Olgilvy’s one rule on using sex in an ad campaign is relevance. Does Merkel’s cleavage have anything to do with the candidate the poster is trying to promote? No. Will it really persuade voters that Lengsfeld is better qualified to represent them in Parliament? Probably not. Lengsfeld is a long-shot candidate needing exposure and desperate candidates turn to desperate measures to get the attention they want.
 
But with the way people view politicians in America today, candidates here need to tread lightly when crafting campaign strategies. Shock-value ads may get attention but do they pay off with votes in the end? Not if you want to be taken seriously and have your platform resonate with voters.
 
While showing Hillary Clinton in a revealing top is the last thing any American wants to see, the thing to take from this ad campaign is how to (appropriately) use new and provocative images to grab people’s attention. The same stock photos and outdated slogans need to be retired. Its time for a more creative approach if you want people to look, listen, and ultimately vote for you on election day.

August is here. Members of Congress use this much awaited recess to go home, listen to their constituents, and reconnect before the fall session. The recent controversy surrounding the cap and trade bill and the looming health care reform legislation has made this time interesting for Members of Congress as they go home and check the temperature of their constituents.

Recent media accounts have shown that the response back home is downright angry. Traditionally, during this time, Members of Congress set up town hall style events where they speak about current legislation and field questions from the audience. Americans have been showing up in droves to these ‘town hall’ events holding signs, yelling, and causing discomfort for their respective members.

Much of the raw footage of these events has made it to the internet. The most notable clip was from a town hall hosted by Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the weekend. Senator Specter was hastled and booed over a response he made about the speed at which legislation is passed. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was noticeably irritated by the audience’s reaction. Close to 825,000 people have viewed the two and a half minute video since it was posted last Sunday.

Over 500,000 watched Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) as he was hounded outside a grocery store by irate constituents yelling “just say no” (referencing healthcare) over the weekend.

366,000 viewed a town hall with Representative Tim Bishop (D-NY) as he was taken to task over a variety of issues including his support for cap and trade and the current healthcare reform.

These are just a few examples of what has happened as Members go home and meet with the people they represent. The declining support in the polls for a public option for healthcare rightly suggests that these episodes are an illustration of the feelings of many across the country.

While those taking the brunt of this anger consider these individuals plants and not representative of what Americans are truly feeling, it is clear Members of Congress are walking on thin ice when it comes to healthcare. Whether the protests are orchestrated or organic, they still represent growing concern with the legislative agenda put forth by the Obama Administration.

From a political communication perspective, there are deeper implications that continue to arise from this trend.  Video technology’s effectiveness was first highlighted in the 2006 cycle during the VA Senate race, when George Allen was caught on film calling a videographer a racially incentive slur.  Now, with Flip Camera and video technology on mobile phones, citizens have the power and ability to capture politicians and events en masse. With the widespread popularity of YouTube, people are able to watch these raw videos online, almost immediately. With more social media platforms being utilized for distribution, these videos have a much greater chance of going viral, reaching thousands, even millions of people.

This drastically increases the number of participants in the political dialogue. In the past, one was required to physically attend these events to get the true feeling because news accounts were heavily edited. Now, citizen journalists are everywhere capturing real-time events and posting them, largely unedited, on the internet for millions to view.

The political brush fire over healthcare is well under way.  New videos of public outrage at Congressional town hall meetings have fueled this fire tremendously.

Stay tuned for more from your fellow citizen journalist.

Current Assemblyman, Chuck Devore, representing California’s 70^th district has an uphill battle in front of him. He is running for the U.S. Senate in California against political heavy-weight Barbara Boxer. His litany of life-long accomplishments pitted against Barbara Boxer’s political machine will make this a must follow race in 2010.

However, his New Media Director for the campaign, JUSTIN HART, is shaking things up a bit. He has introduced an innovative fundraising strategy for the campaign that looks promising.

It’s called ChuckBucks.

The site combines ease, transparency, and flair to let campaign donors know exactly where their money is going. The genius is in allowing potential donors ‘pick’ where the money is going by selecting a campaign expense to pay for. The engagement factor is key. When people are invested directly in something, they feel more a part of it. The more excited supporters the better. Finally, the air of transparency builds trust with the donor knowing that their hard earned money is going directly to a specific purpose and not lost in the war chest.

Next, the campaign’s new media savy includes a Twitter feed that lets people know who and how much has been donated. It then links to the individual’s Twitter home page. The focus is on small donations to build grassroots support-much like Barack Obama’s plan in 2008.

In an interview with Wired Magazine’s Epicenter blog, Hart explains,

You’ve got to rise above the noise. You can’t just do it and not have an angle, or a specific thing that makes people want to donate. If you’re a charity, for example, is there a unique angle you can pursue as far as new contributors — new contributors from a specific city, or something around a special event that you’re doing? If you just lay it out there, no one’s really going to pay attention… For us, of course, being conservatives and
Republicans, and having lost the November election, with technology being one of the tools used by the victorious side — not only to vanquish us, but to vanquish Hilary Clinton earlier… conservatives are taking that message to heart. For them, I was kind of this symbolic, poster child of our way back out of the wilderness.

With ChuckBucks’ launch today, we will soon find out whether Hart’s savy will translate into dollars. Yet, the innovative approach and creativity is second to none and will likely be mimicked by campaigns in the future whether or not Chuck Devore is able to take down the Barbara Boxer behemoth.

The Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) convened last week in New York. Industry leaders, pundits, bloggers, writers, and others descended on the Lincoln Center to discuss and share ideas about technology’s effect on politics.

Technology has had a tremendous effect on how politics is conducted in this country. Dramatic changes have already occurred in how money is raised and ideas are disseminated. The bottom line: better understanding and use of technology is the wave of the future. Successful campaigns will adapt, while campaigns that don’t will be left behind.
  
One interesting presentation from the PDF was given by Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. Ning was created in 2005 as a social networking service that allows users to create their own network for a specific purpose. Since then, it has become the primary social network aggregator with 1.3 million created.
  
Gina Bianchini discussed Ning’s potential for interest groups and political campaigns. Under the concept of a ‘hub-and-spoke’ model, she championed the idea of having one location (Ning) as the epicenter and using other social networking sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc to focus traffic to this central location.

She used the Picken’s Plan as a successful model of the ‘hub-and-spoke.’ Ms. Bianchini explained how they were able to have a centralized network (the hub) and incorporate Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, and Linkedin (the spokes) to effectively promote their cause. This service brought their public relations, media, and social media together in one place. The result was 200,000 active members that were able to amass 1.1 million people to take a specific action on behalf of the campaign like sending an email or making a phone call to a public official. Picken’s Plan was able to organize their members based on Congressional districts leading to 60% of active members having a direct relationship with their representative. She also noted that other methods like email lists and text messaging can be integrated to make this service more inclusive.

The site has expanded in the last few years with new features that have streamlined users’ connectivity with their followers. Other politicians like Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) and Chad Johannesen (candidate for Florida state representative) are also using this site. Ning brings multiple platforms together in one easy-to-use place. The fog of the campaign can be daunting so having one hub to generate material allows for the message to stay coherent and cohesive. Yet, questions arise regarding the uniqueness of this service compared to a campaign website. Can service provided by political new media firms utilizing the ‘hub-and-spoke’ model perform equally or better than a Ning network? Time will tell whether this service transforms how political campaigns and interest groups operate.

Today, YouTube added a new feature to the advertising portion of their website. The addition of “Call-To-Action-Overlay” allows subscribers the ability to have a translucent pop-up ad appear at the bottom of the video linking to a third-party website.

The only catch: subscribers have to enter their video into YouTube’s Promoted Videos program. The new feature is free, per se, but subscribers are required to pay the advertising fee.

Before, sponsors had to include the website in the description of the video inconveniently off screen. As a result, many ignored these links and, thus, they were ineffective in driving significant traffic to the sponsors website.

Now, the options are endless for politicians, singers, musicians, video bloggers, interest groups, etc to dramatically increase flow to their website. The group “charity: water” was one of YouTube’s first beta tests for the project. They were able to raise $10,000 in one day for their cause of bringing clean water to developing countries. 

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid puts it best,

Brands can link their commercials back to the products they’re selling. Publishers (like us) can link back to relevant articles. And politicians can link back to their campaign homepages or petitions. But there’s almost certainly some other kind of creative use for the new ads waiting to be tapped, just as YouTube’s annotations were used to create choose-your-own-adventure video journeys.

With YouTube making a significant mark on the 2008 election cycle, the options are endless for politicians, interest groups, and parties wanting to create avenues to their websites. Ad overlays capture the emotion felt from a video, streamline the connection between parties, and translate into dollars, advocacy, or support. A few politicians are already doing this. Senator Patrick Leahy is using an ad overlay in a video calling for investigations into the Bush administration linked to a website with a petition. Taking down this barrier has cracked the political advertising floodgates. Put your rain coat on.  

The goal of the ads is to promote interest in restricting litigation hurting individuals and small businesses across the country. The series of two minute ads originally played in Colorado, Louisiana, and Washington, DC before making a national debut in theaters across the country in May.

Political advertising at the movies is a clever strategy. You can always change the channel with TV and radios ads; you can leave the website with internet ads; but you pay to be at the movies and are committed to staying for the feature presentation. The ad and its message can’t be missed. With the summer movie season’s blockbusters drawing large crowds, ILR’s ads will reach millions of people.

It comes down to finding new and unique ways to reach captive audiences. In today’s economy, businesses are much more open to political ad buys. Campaigns are always going on and candidates are willing to spend the money. Advertise at a local restaurant; Cheesecake factory sells ad space in their menus. Use the carousel monitors at the local airport’s baggage claim; people have to be there anyway, might as well grab their attention as they wait.

There are tons of other outlets for campaigning that have yet to be tapped. Movie theater ads are just tip of the iceberg in innovative tactics of political advertising.

The first piece was produced by CatholicVote.org, a faith based educational program dedicated to informing all Americans about the critical issues in the public policy arena.  

According to their website, “Life: Imagine the Potential™ is our newest campaign designed for sharing on the Internet, and for use on broadcast TV. ” The campaign is focused on reaching beyond staunch pro-lifers, Americans who are either indifferent, or who have not yet thought about the great potential of every human life.”

The second piece is a spot released by Terry McAuliffe’s campaign for VA Governor.  It’s the first television ad in the race, five months before the state’s June primary.   He is truly defining ’slow burn’ strategy, this far out with TV.

While neither media piece appears to be edited using high end graphics or cinematic techniques, the catholic spot has much more value in terms of appeal.  The music grabs your attention, while the chyron graphics keep you guessing with questions.  It creates drama and makes the viewer think about the spot after it’s played.  

As much as the Catholic piece provokes interest, The McAuliffe spot provokes boredom.  It’s chyron graphics are tired and the look and feel of the spot equally passe.  The spot could have been shot for a candidate in 2002 – really.  It’s surprising, for a guy who has and can raise millions of dollars.  With the amount of money McAuliffe is spending on the buy, months in advance, I would imagine much more would have gone into producing a much better spot.  

Yes its bio, and yes it’s for  raising name ID, but that still doesn’t mean all creativity is lost.

Two spots. Same day. Different effects.

If you read my post: Top 50 books for Political Operatives,

The book, titled, Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work (Click here), is a must read for anyone interested in political media communications and advertising.

Author, TED BRADER, provides an in-depth analysis of varying political advertising strategies, with specific attention to non verbal cues, an aspect of political media rarely touched by others in academia.  He references and discusses well-known and obscure political advertising campaign tactics, which played an important role in recent and historical elections.

In his thorough examination, Brader makes a strong argument; that carefully crafted audio and visual elements used in political advertising effectively create an emotional appeal which has an intrinsic dramatic effect on viewer/voting audiences.

In 2006, I wrote a piece for Politics Magazine (aka Campaigns & Elections), which I similarly argued that emotional appeals are the strongest form of political communications and advertising.

While my piece dealt more specifically with the use of images and symbolism related to September 11th in political advertising, I held that content and techniques used to create emotion is critical for maximizing moving voter opinion and creating action.

Here’s some relevant highlights from my piece:

Provoking emotion is one of the most important aspects to any political activity. 

Successful campaigns usually create a situation or series of situations that draw emotion from audiences – constituents or voters.  Emotional connections made in speeches, press releases, direct mail pieces or television spots are fundamental to controlling the message and the issues in an election.

Emotional appeals almost always trump rational appeals when attempting to gain political support or create negative views about an opponent.  Voters are more apt to create positive or negative feelings about an issue or candidate through emotions and sentiments rather than rational or logical arguments.

Campaigning for Hearts and Minds goes into much greater depth in making this argument.

Below, I’ve included a few well crafted reviews, by other readers as posted on Amazon:

Ted Brader’s “Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work” drives yet another nail into the coffin of academic wisdom that voters are either rational decision-makers or complacent habit-following creatures by providing compelling evidence for the role of emotions in political campaigns… In sum, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in learning how emotions influence politics by substantially advancing our understanding of how emotions drive our political thoughts, decisions, and actions. (Patrick A. Stewart)

The general audience may find the statistical discussion somewhat slow going, but this is not a turgidly written academic tome. At the same time, it is a solid academic work. His takeoff point (page 2): “. . .the motivational and persuasive power of campaign advertising depends considerably on whether an ad appeals to fear or enthusiasm.” He contends that emotional appeals built into campaign ads makes them more effective–the mixture of a political message plus emotion can be powerful if crafted well….The book is also worth looking at because of its notice of the relevance of psychology and the neurosciences for understanding why emotional elements in political ads can have such an effect. This demonstrates powerfully the importance of cross-disciplinary research.