The winds seem to be changing within the Republican Party. The 2008 election loss might just have been the perfect storm for the social conservative wing of the party to take a back seat to the small government, fiscal conversative Republican wing. The Bush years signified the former. The condition of the country as President-elect Obama is about to take over, would suggest that the social conservatives’ leadership has come to an end. The American people, and the Republican establishment to a lesser extent, seem to have run out of patience for the social conservative agenda.
The 2008 Republican primary hinted at the new direction of the party. John McCain, hardly the Evangelical favorite, won the nomination. Behind him, Ron Paul’s online following and fundraising phenomenon opened the party’s eyes to the support emanating from the Libertarian wing of the party. Even Mitt Romney, who tried to play to social conversatives, still carries the brand of a fiscal conversative more than anything else, due to his days in the private sector.
The New York Times reported some time ago about the new ideas and leadership rising at the grassroots level of the Republican Party. These leaders are symbolized by David Frum, Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn. They represent the party’s new direction, that is based less on the divisive politics of today’s Republicans – gay marriage, abortion, guns – and more on fixing the fiscal mess and growing government that was propelled under the Bush Administration.
Look no further than the manifesto taking shape on Ruffini’s Rebuild the Party. There are some great ideas there and it will be interesting to see how far he and others can take this message to the Republican Party leadership. It will be telling too whether the Rebuild the Party leaders can become leaders in the RNC.
And make no mistake, as the Republican Party built the offline word-of-mouth programs and detailed databases beginning in the late 1990s through the 2000s, they will again emerge on top after the massive social media success of Obama.
As a non-partisan observer, I simply see the next generation Republican leaders and ideas being exchanged in a more organic way that will cause strong roots to take shape. I don’t see the same thing from the Democrats, even though they were first to market with many online social media tools.
We’ll be watching and I’ll be sure to revisit this blog post in 2012.
The Chicago Tribune is reporting some major chains are handing out freebies on Election Day. Starbucks originally said it would give someone a free cup of coffee if they said they voted. But, election law deems they can’t discriminate around those parameters. So anyone can go in and get a free cup!
Ben & Jerry’s is also reporting they are handing out free scoops of ice cream from 5 to 8 pm.
These companies are telling their audiences that they value civic responsibilities. In a sense, by giving away free stuff, they are positioning themselves at the same level of the customers, brining the company and customer closer together.
It’s a smart move, especially for Starbucks, who needs to do some re-building of their corporate image.
Even smarter though is to ride this election fever. This is akin to buying Google adwords around an event or occasion that is happening to draw attention to your website. It’s creative marketing and a lot of candidates did that this election.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get my free cup of coffee.
In the last 12 hours, I have been inundated with requests to “donate my cause” on Facebook, reminding people to vote for either McCain or Obama.
This represents Facebook’s most powerful tool. Why? Think about how most people use Facebook. They aren’t going through profiles and messing with applications nearly as much as they are looking at their news feed page. That news feed presents peoples’ network updates.
When all the people in a person’s given network are encouraging people to make sure to vote and vote for the candidate of their choice, it presents a great push in online WOM. It also presents a chance for things to spread virally.
The transparency achieved is also notable. People are publicly telling people who they are voting for. To the scale that this is happening in 2008, it is unprecedented.
Moving forward, we’re going to see a lot more “status marketing” on Facebook than widgets or apps.
In what is a very under-reported national story, the Sarah Silverman-led Great Schlep may have achieved moving votes over to Obama in highly contested Florida. This election is going to be very close. Florida, like in 2000, will be key. Here’s the updated poll numbers of the Jewish vote by Quinnipiac University:
Florida
Among those who say they already have voted in Florida, Obama gets 48 percent to McCain’s 44 percent, a statistical tie in this smaller subgroup. .
Looking at all Florida likely voters, men split with 46 percent for Obama and 45 percent for McCain. Women back Obama 51 – 42 percent. The Republican leads 52 – 41 percent among white voters, 71 – 23 percent among evangelical Christians and 51 – 40 percent among Catholics. Obama leads 49 – 39 percent among Hispanics and 77 – 20 percent among Jews.
If Obama wins Florida, he’ll have a lot of Jewish grandchildren to thank.
Recently, my father who lives in Illinois’ 17th State Assembly district, received a call from a campaign volunteer asking if he’d support the candidate and if he planned on voting early. The call didn’t bother him. But he did notice the caller’s area code entered on his caller ID was from South Carolina. When my father stopped by my home today, he complained that he felt this sort of campaigning was a form of carpetbagging.
Is he right? I think in local campaigns, it’s all about WOM and we know that WOM is validated by people “like us.” In a local campaign, that means a neighbor or friend telling me they support so-and-so. After all, they live in my district or even neighborhood and they face similar issues as I do. What kind of WOM validation does a campaign volunteer have for a local campaign?
I would argue little to none. In the presidential campaign, it’s a different story. The issues are national issues and the scale is much larger. It makes sense to have phone bankers volunteer from their home states and call out-of-state folks. Even though it isn’t optimal as having that call come from a neighbor, it is still acceptable for national races.
I think this national phonebanking for a local candidate signifies the political parties falling in love with campaign tactics and large, active netroots that has shaped nationally in 2008. But, without asking, “does this make sense for this election, for what we’re trying to accomplish?”, then good tactics could go sour.
From a purely branding perspective, this is a great way for MotiveQuest to “walk the walk.” Through their BrandAdvocacy08 website, MotiveQuest will prove to the world that their methodology works and can even predict such major events as the election’s winner.
In terms of the public affairs, measuring online WOM is something that electeds, candidates and organizations should be doing. There’s a lot of conversation happening out there pertaining to people and issues. Organizations first must understand the conversation and listen to what’s happening. Next, they have to find the right way to get involved.
If anything, Obama’s campaign has spurred WOM from his supporters and has built a solid community around his candidacy. For McCain, his WOM never took off and there hasn’t been a real community to coalesce around him. I think McCain will look back in a couple of years and resent the different directions his campaign people pushed him to go. His brand became foreign to himself and he was clearly uncomfortable with John McCain, the candidate. Had he been true to his own brand, I think the online communities would have formed in a major way around McCain the candidate because it would have been clear he stands for something.
John McCain’s surprising pick of Sarah Palin as his running mate is an excellent example of his campaign’s branding adjustment. Critics might be picking apart Palin’s credentials and commenting on McCain’s choice, but McCain’s choice for running mate is a huge opportunity to shore up his brand.
Before the Palin selection McCain was floundering between his once clear brand image as a maverick willing to be independent and buck his own party and the brand image that he is closely aligned with President Bush. The Palin selection though sends a clear message that the McCain brand is more about being a maverick and independent above all else. Palin herself is known to have taken on the Alaska Republican party establishment and attempted to clean out corruption. Her own political choices have been unconventional and bold.
As a branding case study, I love McCain’s pick. The act of choosing Palin hearkens back to the McCain brand foundation as independent and following his convictions to do what is best – not always what is popular. Furthermore, Palin’s own political history reinforces the McCain brand image. Clearly it has thrown the Obama camp for a big loop. They’ll have to be readjusting their attack messages based on this pick.
The big question remaining though is how well McCain’s campaign can execute its positioning and targeting. Right now McCain’s positioning has shifted to go after women, independents and social conservatives. Going into the Republican National Convention, they’ll have to refine that positioning and start to target those audiences with the right messages. It’s too early to tell whether the McCain campaign is adept at doing this yet.
Speaking of executing the right positioning and targeting the right audiences with the right messages, I came across a really insightful blog post by Dane Morgan. Dane rightly points out that when blogs address issues that are out of the scope of the blog’s focus, we distort our positioning and risk alienating our readers. Our attention is getting pulled in so many directions that we have such a small window to deliver the right message – especially when readers are reading your blog for information on a particular subject. Staying on message, reinforcing brand attributes and targeting the right audiences is vital for communications success.
I’ll be sure that this blog lives that creed. Let’s see how it shapes up in presidential politics.
