Claritas is Full of It

PressControlShift's post on Do It Yourself Narrowcasting was really interesting. It was great to see an example of the lifestyle segmentation done by Claritas, but I don't exactly trust their assessments.

I looked up my neighborhood in Kansas City, where I lived most of my adult life (64111), which is an eclectic urban mix of ethnicities, ages and incomes. One of the segments listed were "Urban Elders," which is definitely a part of the neighborhood.

Claritas describes "Urban Elders" as " ... communities have high concentrations of Hispanics and African-Americans, and tend to be downscale, with singles living in older apartment rentals." It also lists the median household income as $21,908.

After all that, it says these people shop at Banana Republic.

There is indeed a Banana Republic very close to my old neighborhood, but I seriously doubt anyone who is over 55 and living on $21,000/year shops there. They aren't paying $50 for a shirt at Banana, they are paying $5 at Walmart.

I pity the Banana Republic executive who decides to target their new marketing campaign to this segment.

All Politics Is Local

Tip O'Neal was right: All politics is local. But the concept of local is different today than it was 30 years ago when Tip was around.

30 years ago local was the people on your block, in your neighborhood or your city. Today, local can be everyone on your I Love Star Trek listserv or in the Proud Geeks chat room.

In the radio program On Point, the host keeps asking "Is politics still local or can it be run in a top-down, Amway type of model?" One has to ask how many of our local institutions do we have left? We shop at Target, eat a McDonald's, drink coffee at Starbucks...all top-down institutions. We are totally programmed now to have our local institutions and businesses actually be corporate giants run from New York or Los Angeles.

The only community created local we have left is on the Internet, where you can create a group dedicated to Queen Amidala's hairstyle or speaking Klingon*. Trippi-style online campaigning is the only link we have left to Tip's immortal words.

*Thanks to Justin, this post has been updated to correct the spelling of Klingon and avoid the wrath of Star Trek fans everywhere!

Cell Phones for Justice

I just came across an interesting program organized by the People For the American Way. They are organizing a Mass Immediate Response using text messaging.

As I understand it, the minute that Rehnquist announces his retirement (or dies - you never know) they will start a rolling wave of text messages to their subscribers. The text messages will state where to call and what to say. I'm assuming it will be something like, "Call the president and tell him we want Oprah to be the next Chief Justice."

MIR will also allow them to "slowly roll out calls to our targets, keeping a steady pressure over the course of a day or a week." as well as route subscribers directly to their Senator's office.

After all of the miserable failures of the Kerry campaign, it's great to see a Progressive group with its act together!

Breaking News on CNN

The main story on CNN.com this morning, I kid you not:

The Internet transforms modern life

Either it's a slow news day or this Internet thing is really catching on...

I Wonder What It's Like to Win?

There is quite a contrast between the miserable picture of the Kerry campaign painted by It's the Incompetence, Stupid and the well-oiled machine portrayed in The Multilevel Marketing of the President. Clearly, the Dems need to learn how to use a volunteer.

The Bush team was able to create a social network around their campaign and rewarded people with symbols of belonging - hats, mugs, letters from the president. By using the pyramid, they made sure that everyone knew others in the campaign organization and would be motivated by something more than love of the president. And no, not hating gays either. They were motivated by peer pressure and if it can make kids take drugs it can elect a president - no problem.

They also had clear expectations and gave clear instructions - including training. The Kerry campaign, on the otherhand, stated it did not have time for training volunteers. Since the Bush campaign invested more in their volunteers, they could get more out of them.

If 2004 taught us anything it should be not to underestimate the importance of volunteers to a campaign.

It's the Strategy, Stupid!

As is made abundantly clear in It's the Incompetence, Stupid, you can have all the technology money can buy and still be a bad campaign. Both the Democrats and Republicans used technology in new and different ways in the last campaign, but - and it pains me to say this - the Republicans just did it better.

In Narrowcasting in Ohio the author discusses how both parties used narrowcasting to persuade and mobilize voters in the crucial swing state of Ohio. Ignoring the authors snarky comments about what ACT might have included in their PDA videos, it gives a balanced overview of the ground organization of each campaign. It doesn't, however, tell you why we lost. Here is my theory:

The Democrats organized their ground game to win in the blue areas - diverse, urban areas.
The Republicans organized their ground game to win in red areas - suburbs, exurbs, rural areas.
There are more electoral votes in red areas than blue.

Pretty simple, eh?

When you live in a city, everyone is a stranger. It's no big deal to learn about candidates from a stranger on the phone or on your doorstep. However, when you live anywhere else, you don't really trust strangers. In the Midwest, we trust other Midwesterners more than people from, say, Oregon. We especially don't trust people from California - they are all just hippie freaks to us.

When you need to persuade a group of Midwesterners to vote one way or another, you don't send Californians or New Yorkers or Alabamans. You send Midwesterners! Preferably Ohioans - from their city - who went to their high school and know their sister.

The Bush team used technology, but they used it connect neighbors with neighbors - not too show fancy videos - and that made all the difference.