Following up on Laska’s post this morning about HRC and the woman card. Specifically, the Woman Card.
As Laska notes, this is a pretty decent campaign idea. It’s a clever enough way to thank a woman who just made a donation. Although it would have been even better if the card gave you a free coffee at Starbucks or something.
Obama pioneered social media marketing. Trump is the ultimate triumph of cable t.v. where content and advertising are all the same. And he’s mastered tweeting insults from his bath tub. Hillary continues to employ traditional advertising tactics.
The Woman Card is a good campaign element of the type that traditional–and increasingly digital– agencies produce. But even consumer marketers realize that this stuff doesn’t work. If this cycle has proved anything it’s that the :30 second spot and similar traditional campaign tactics continue to decline in effectiveness. Go back to 2008, and cable news channels routinely reported on new spots that were produced by the campaigns. Back then, the original media buy for a spot was almost irrelevant. They were produced so that cable news could pick them up and provide free media exposure.
Not anymore. The cable news shows rarely cover this stuff anymore. No more red phones at 3:00 a.m. or Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry. I would assume that by 2024, no one even bothers to make these things anymore.
Hillary should sweep all the Mark Penn’s and other traditional agency types out of her inner circle. Move them to the “B” team, because the campaign does still need to produce video assets and print collateral. And it has to be well produced and effective. But, the people who produce this material shouldn’t have any role in driving strategy and messaging.
During the White House Correspondence dinner, Obama joked about Hillary’s attempts to use digital media. It starts at around 2:00 mins into the clip. It’s funny because it’s true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHmBQhW3C00
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The other things she needs to stop doing is repeating pre-scripted zingers. During an interview yesterday with Andrea Mitchell, she was candid and ruthless in her critique of Trump as a possible Commander-in-Chief, but, during an otherwise well-articulated response, she remembered to mention that Trump was “an equal opportunity insulter.” Clearly a pre-scripted line. Kerry, Romney, Hillary, all had a penchant for this stuff in previous elections. Obama rarely uses this kind of pre-scripted zinger. And when he does, he goes all Johnny Carson on it, pausing, shrugging his shoulders, laughing at the banality of it even as he delivers the line. Which, of course, makes it actually funny.
In at The End of The World 
Dukakis: “He’s becoming the Joe Isuzu of American politics”
Poppy Bush: “Is it time for the one-liners? Cuz that answer was about as clear as the water in Boston Harbor.”
I’m going to look it up later to see if I remembered it right.
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I think you remember it almost verbatim. One of the all time embarrassing moments. You would have thought that would have been the end of pre-scripted zingers. I guess that everyone’s chasing the next Where’s the Beef or There You Go Again or Senator, You’re No Jack Kennedy.
Like anything, I guess it’s about having the right instincts and judgement for what will work. Having Bentsen ready with a Jack Kennedy zinger if Quayle was actually stupid enough to go there was a good idea. But, any candidate who doesn’t have the instincts to reject the Joe Isuzu line doesn’t deserve to be elected. It’s like wearing a stupid hat. Oh, wait, he did that, too.
And, wow, is it still fun to watch Bentsen slow play his devastation of Quayle. You know that inside he’s shark-blood frenzied, but his delivery is patrician and deliberate and assassin like. It’s also great fun to go back and watch Quayle misspell potato in front of a bunch of school kids.
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On a more useful note, well-edited series of Sanders rallies, supporters, and speeches seem to be serving him well. They get circulated, they’re emotional, they make all sorts of points without being ham-fisted (some black people do support Sanders!), and if you can attach a name to them, such as Spike Lee, they borrow some equity.
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If this election goes down in history as the end of the pre-scripted zinger, maybe it’ll all be worth it.
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