It's A Political Digital World Part 1

Two interesting articles that came out the last few days and I finally got around to writing about them.  The first comes courtesy of Adrants called YouTube May Become Biggest Medium for Presidential Candidates and the second one which was sent to me by my friend Art. M from the Washington Post called Technology Sharpens the Incumbent's Edge.  Both of these highlight (which is why I grouped them together) the importance of community/social marketing and the need to watch and participate in user generated content in the coming political campaigns.

First the Adrants article.  It mentions how the last election was all about blogs in their opinion, however, it actually was about ballot initiatives that galvanized the conservative base.  What is clear was that the election was about opening up lines of communications, blogs or otherwise.  I do wholeheartedly agree that the next election will be about expanding communities and conversational marketing, plus the impact of user generated content.

Speaking of user generated content, the post points out how an organization called YouPrez wants people to upload favorite presidential speeches and tag them youprez.  It does say it is a joke, but hold the laughter for a second. 

Imagine looking at the youprez tag come election time and what kind of user generated content would appear?  What will be the impact on communications to a group of people that ignore TV and spend hours on YouTube?  How much damage or success could occur by a fast spreading, well tagged video developed by a voter and shown for free on the internet be worth? 

Potentially a lot.  As of today, this video found on YouTube has been viewed almost 21,700,00 times (let that sink in for a moment).  Sure it is a comedian dancing, but so what.  Look at that number.  Former AT&T VP Jack McMaster used to say that a number is meaningless unless you can put an M after it.  That looks like a BIG M to me.  Another video has over 2.1 million views month to date (I think it is June 8th, right).  Remember these are ACTUAL views and not a derived rating of potential views from the big screen TV.

Tomorrow I'll look at the Washington Post article and summarize what I would do with this information for some of the political campaigns that I work on.  Until then, enjoy the video.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric