With the election coming to a close I will be sad to see the comedy end. It has been a huge boon to comedy writers. The Daily Show is better than ever. Saturday Night Live is relevant once again, mostly thanks to the brilliant and beautiful Tina Fey.
Here’s a couple of things I saw in the last day worth watching:
I read a note on Daily Kos this morning about how popular the Obama campaign logo is among advertising people.
The campaign designed the logo that shows hope and optimism but what interested me was how versatile it is. I was thinking about this a lot because we believe in using sub-sites (microsites) and additional URLs for specific campaigns and we always face the issue of branding — how close does our campaign branding have to connect to our main brand? I don’t think there is one right answer to that question, but the nice thing about the Obama logo is how versatile it is for sub-brands. Here’s the example:
Mik Moore, the editor of Jspot, a Jewish social action blog, the Director of Communications and Public Policy at Jewish Funds for Justice and the co-executive director of Jewish Council for Education and Research (JCER), a political action committee supporting Obama, created The Great Schlep, a project to get Jews to travel to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote for Obama.
The idea is that Jews in Florida can determine the outcome of the election and that the best way to get Jews to vote for Obama is for their grandchildren to come down and convince them. (Most observers say the Democrats win Florida and they win the election, and we know from 2000 that even a few hundred votes the other way make the difference.)
They got the best spokesperson ever for this, Sarah Silverman, who I not-so-secretly love to death.
Here’s Sarah explaining The Great Schlep (if you are offended by bad words, don’t watch it.)
One of the small stories in the election is the role of Jewish voters, particularly in swing state areas, South Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Most of us are familiar with the general slanders against Obama, there has been particular focus on his supposedly being a Muslim (he’s not), the strangeness of his name, etc. This misinformation is being used particularly with religious and older Jewish voters for whom Israel’s safety and the support of the US for Israel are paramount. Even a small move of Jews away from the Democratic party in Florida, for example, can change the outcome of the election.
The Jews in the Obama camp just launched a counterattack – Israelis for Obama. [And of course the counterattack takes the form of video produced primarily for the web.] Have a look:
The Republican strategy is to make the Barack Obama out to be un-American. Foreign. Strange. Exotic. And they have tried to paint Michelle Obama as angry, and use that to feed into fears about African-Americans.
The Internet can be a game changer in this election. While the Net can be used to smear and spread lies, it can also be used to undermine smear strategies. The reason is that if you missed Michelle Obama speak last night you can watch it on YouTube. Or on the Obama campaign website or RIGHT HERE! Portability of online video means people can get unfiltered messages directly in the places they frequent. So while you might have heard Michelle Obama is a hate-filled angry Black woman, you will actually see her speak and then, poof, those ideas will be out the window.
You can deploy this same tactic for your organization. Make those unfiltered views of your work on the ground available and see people begin to connect in ways that weren’t possible before. There is a gap between what you do on the ground every day and what donors can see. Use online video to close the gap.
After watching this speech, I think the Republicans will need to come up with a different strategy to get Michelle. Angry? Not at all. A smart, beautiful, loving mom? Totally.
