Rep Weiner defends his family jewels from media scrutiny – Weiner Gate, Day 7
Rep Weiner is not giving an inch to the rising media attraction to the identity of the infamous masked wiener, as seen on his twitter account “@RepWeiner”,less than a week ago. What are the hard facts in this case? Who cares! The net result of “Weiner Gate” is that the little known, outspoken congressman from New York’s 9th district has been thrust into the National spotlight, and believe it or not, is gaining positive social stature online.
As a media and political consultant, never have I seen so few inches arousing so much negative media attention while simultaneously gaining a positive social perception. So could this political fiasco for one NY congressman be his golden ticket to reelection in 2012?
According to Twitter Counter and Adreka’s social polling metrics, Weiner’s “Alleged” weiner has gained over 60,000 twitter followers over the past week. Moreover, there is a 58% growing positive sentiment that is socially pro-Weiner, regardless if it’s his weiner or not.
So my Crisis Marketing advice to Anthony Wiener, NY Congressman for the 9th district:
1.Stand erect, take credit where credit is due, even if it’s not you, you need to own this wiener.
2.You and your wife use the media to your advantage to make light of the situation. Can you imagine the sound bite, “the secrets out, my husband has a big wiener”, says Mrs. Weiner on the David Letterman show last night.
3.Run with a plausible conspiracy theory…. “It’s my wiener; it was on my desk top, for the wife only, but someone found it and ran with the joke” or even better a plausible truth… “I posted a response to the one of my twitter followers and accidently attached the wrong file, I am truly embarrassed, but not ashamed of my big weiner”.
4.Follow up with another sound bite: If your think my Weiner’s big, you should see my balls; they have served me well both in an out of politics.
5.Conclude the internal investigation with, let the record show it is my big wiener. I sent the offending falus, by accident when I attached and posted the wrong picture online.
6.End of story.
I am feeling an entire campaign brewing…
You know he’s a swinging dick in congress and he has the balls to match, vote YES for Weiner 2012.Ok, maybe I need to work on this political campaign a little bit more.
Adreka will be socially selecting the biggest winners and losers in the political landscape prior to the votes being tallied. Results will be streamed live from the top of Atlanta at the City Club – Atlanta's Premiere Business Club at 7am.
I am amazed that there are groups of people in a variety of industries that have been sold a bag of false hope in spending a substantial percentage of group hard earned dollars, in the form of feed tariffs, to establish change that ultimately could mean the life of death of their livelihoods.
Just last week, I was asked to investigate marketing a farming co-op to look at ways they could use our technology to act as a catalyst to measure and grow the effectiveness of the tens of millions spent to date. I was excited, given one of the perks of my job is to learn about new industries and business models almost every day. So in preparation, I downloaded an armament of industry reports, digitally listened to social conversations within the industry, investigated their competition, market, etc. I eagerly joined the conference call with the anticipation of walking away as a trivial expert on this type of farming, possessing just enough information and industry lingo to impress my colleagues and hold a technical conversation with my soon, would be clients. I gave my world to the head of the co-op I was just an observer and assured him that I was just hear to observe. I assume my reputation of speaking my mind and screaming at injustices across a board room has preceded my arrival. I believe this to be true as my assistant gave me a 3 minute on the proper usage of our phone mute button.
This was really a bad time for me to make a promise! What I soon discovered that the co-op potentially took millions, without creating any measurable change other than repetitive monthly news papers to the group, showing their work in process at luxury hotels and conventions, and a rebate that was given to the farmers because their profits were eaten away by offshore competition. My personal opinion on the second deliverable is that while it’s always nice to receive a rebate, the shininess of the accomplishment wears off when the rebate is given when the co-op, DID NOT DO THEIR JOB! Moreover, I stayed up all night doing my diligence in preparation for this conference, so that the co-op moderators spent the first 10 minutes talking about weather, followed by a sales pitch, of why the farmers needed to spend more money on planning on how to combat the unification of flavor and lowering the cost of processing their food that may help them shave pennies off of the COGS but will cost them millions to implement, at the cost of an increased market erosion from offshore organizations. DID NOT ANYONE READ THE REASEARCH ON THE COMPETITIVE FORCES RUINNING THEM OUT OF THEIR OWN MARKET, AFTER STEALING THEIR BREED STOCK!
I felt my blood pressure ever increasing and my finger moving ever more towards the mute button. When the call ended, I recapped with some of the co-op members which brought me to my most startling discovery of all! The marketing vendor / lobbyist group were controlling the entire program, which the head of the co-op had a duel ownership stake within. This was further compounded by a second discovery that I could find no record of either organization ever being registered as a lobbyist or donating to any political campaigns of organizations. So flustered, I contacted a few of my lobbyist friends in Washington the other day just to be sure I am not completely off base.
So as a RULE, if you are CREATING A CO-OP, TRADE ASSOCIATION, or even a POLITICAL ACTION COMITTEE committee (PAC), I would REALLY recommend the following.
Create a mission statement which includes why you were created!
Co-op management should come from within the co-op, not outsiders
If you really want an outsider, call him a board advisor. I have several board advisors that are scary brilliant, but I would not let them run my company, plus it’s not their job, it’s yours.
ALWAYS keep control and accountability of the co-op’s money. NEVER allow your media, marketing, lobbyist have complete oversight on all spending. Isn’t it your money?
In any industry co-op, ALWAYS… ALWAYS… ALWAYS define purpose that is in aligning with short term deliverables. Trying to row to the new world in a row boat, just isn’t going to cut it. But building a ship yard, prior to slapping a boat together is always a better idea. So start small. Small also means small budget, with an ever growing budget built on measured success.
THIS IS BIG….. FEAR NOTHING! If thinking outside of the box will save your ass, then call UPS immediately to ship the box to Base Zulu, Antarctica.
Keep it Simple (KISS). Don’t over think strategy or overreact to environmental pressures. If you are in a market that commoditized your industry by 80% from offshore suppliers, then your mission is pretty simple…. RIP THE BALLS OFF OF THE COMPETITION! It literally took me 3 days to lay out a go to market strategy, at no cost to the co-op, which is measureable, scalable, and has freaking teeth.
FIRE THE AGENCY, including us if we cannot meet deliverable timelines is not aligned with the co-ops interest. If your industry is at the brink of destruction, I promise not to schedule any vacation time until the co-op’s master strategy is put into motion.
ACT AS A COHESIVE UNIT – Co-ops for some reason place the agency, board members, vendors, politicians, etc. on a pedestal, if an organization hinders your process that hinders profitability the course of action is simple… (Please see Point #7 – KISS and Rip Balls).
Just food for thought… and a final question… does competitive balls go well with some flava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti? Just a question… all this talk about farming has made me hungry.
There seems to be about 3 Billion Reasons to Leave Coal in the Stocking of Several Political Media Buyers for Wasteful Media Spending
Political advertising may potentially outperform holiday advertisers in hyper spending by November. Mediaweek reports that over, three-quarters of the $3 billion expected windfall will be spent in the final seven weeks leading up to November’s elections. Kantar Media released an expenditure showing that political ad spending is up over $160 million over the 2006 elections.
Kantar Media’s interpretation is that core advertisingis pacing better than expected for television and radio. They believe that this is a result of special interests in the retail, telco and financial sectors driving media spending. With the foreknowledge that Kantar is a division of WPP, and sister to marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather, who handles the media campaigns for several elected officials, including candidates in New York, I would submit a different theory, which is based loosely on my last blog post.
For those that do not know, media is purchased on a political rate which is higher than most other media rates, averaging about 20%+ in my experience, but could go potentially higher. Plus, all political campaigns have to pay the media networks upfront. This is compounded by several media networks dedicate only a certain percentage of airplay to political media plays, though there have been times that a politician’s message can be bumped by a higher paying candidate depending upon the network. Currently many of the political campaigns that I have had exposure to and in some cases the pleasure to work with have hit a tipping point in their persistence to spend heavily on only one or two media channels, with the biggest offenders being TV and Radio. I use the term "tipping point" as the point of inflection that the ability to gain any more voter support from this particular media channel is diminished exponentially, given you have already overly saturated the media channel to capacity.
My advice to politicians….
Use social analytics to create more effective messaging, but only to registered voters!
Track your political media, by using traditional media analytics to see what media is creating voter action.
Use multichannel marketing strategies to spread dollars where it is cheaper and more effective, across all media types that are relevant to your voters.
Get rid of, or spend less on political media that is not working.
Use convergence media tactics to get the most out of every dollar spent (IE if a potential voter calls in to make a donation, their phone number can be exported to an SMS alert list, they can be socialized into Facebook and Twitter, etc)
And if all else fails and your back is against the wall, with six weeks left in the campaign there is always Pay Per Voter Marketing!
Will Paying for Voter Action Rather than Gross Media Spending Be the New Measuring Stick for Political Campaigns?
With less than 20 days left until the gubernatorial election, tens of millions of political campaign dollars will be spent in last minute media purchases. The hope is to sway voter favor to the political candidate of choice by flooding the market with the most media. Ironically, over 65-80% of political spending is ineffective and will not reach most voters or drive polling results, as a consensus among top brand managers. Political campaigns are now embracing pay per voter action also referred to as pay per performance marketing as an effective means to reach and engage registered voters, prior to their campaign dollars running out. According to McKinsey Research, “Multi-channel marketing can increase effective consumer reach by 200-400%”.
Given the growing trend in tracking voter actions in relation to a campaign’s media spend, Adreka announced today the launch of their Pay for Voter Action Platform. “This is the first pay for performance media platform designed for the political space,” says project manager Alicia Armstrong. Adreka measures voter engagement by tracking voter actions directly related to a campaign’s traditional and social media interactions which include phone calls of donors and volunteers. Moreover, Adreka’s platform also engages online influencers (those having a large online following), from Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and localized political blogs. The goal is to create voter action that is predictable and measurable in our clients favor, says John Cataldi, Media ROI Evangelist for Adreka Advertising.
Adreka’s, Pay Per Action Political Platform works by 1) understanding what is really important to the majority of the voting populous through social analytics; 2) creating and syndicating relevant media across TV, Radio, Internet, Social Media, and Mobile Media; and 3) measuring what media channels are effectively affecting voter options. The end result is a political media campaign that only allocates media spending on the media that sways polls into the candidate’s favor. As an added benefit, many voters responding to Adreka’s political adverts can be legally tracked and marketed to via their mobile device and social media network.Depending on the campaign, costs can run from $10-$250 per voter action. “I have seen Adreka in action; this type of political and media convergence is a game changer for any election”, says leading political consultant, Gabe Winslow.
Not understanding how the media conversions can be directly correlated to voter response is prevalent even in campaign watchdog groups. Ross Johnson, Chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission of California stated, “More campaign spending means greater influence. To believe otherwise, is to presume that candidates for public office live in a cave”. According to Cataldi, “If political campaigns were compared to corporations with similar media spends; the end result would be the destruction of most top brands. Ross Johnson is correct in that more spend equates to more media, but an effective spend can outperform an opposing campaign by a factor of 10x. I believe that the future of not only political, but all media spending will be measured on performance and end result, anything less is a waste of dollars and time.”
About Adreka, Inc. Adreka provides the leading media monitoring and engagement platform for marketing, communications and customer support professionals. The company's new digital listing technologies allows the monitoring of all forms of social media, mobile, and traditional media, with a heavy emphasis on analytics, predictability, and media effectiveness. Visit www.Adreka.com, call 678-804-7144, or email sales@adreka.com for more information.
About John Cataldi
An avid technophile, serial entrepreneur, and media spokesperson, John Cataldi is the CEO of Adreka, an open media exchange to allow agencies and advertisers to target, create, syndicate, and track their traditional and interactive advertising. Visit www.JohnCataldi.com for more information.
Political Ad Parody May Influence Potential Generation Y Voters From “The Wrinkly Old Guy, Presidential Candidate, John McCain
The John McCain camp just received the sting of a Viral Video Release that has potentially influenced over 5 Million Americans, suggesting John McCain may not be the best choice for presents from the most unlikely source on political influence on the planet, Paris Hilton.
Paris Hilton, hotel heiress, celebrity socialite, and natural-born narcissist, was made famous from her first viral video release of her 2003 sex video, dubbed “One Night in Paris”. Since then she has been a favorite of the paparazzi. In the eyes of the general public, Paris Hilton is like a bad accident, you can’t bare to look, but your can’t look away. For any Man Men (Ad Professionals), like myself who thrive on sensationalism to drive consumer opinion followed by consumer consumption, she is a rare and beautiful commodity.
The video released on Funny or Die, last week Paris Hilton starred in a spoof on McCain’s “celebrity” advertisement released last week that compared Barack Obama’s popularity with that of Paris Hilton and claimed the Democrat was no more than a celebrity candidate who was not ready to lead the nation. Paris Hilton laying poolside delivers a flawless bikinilog announcing her nomination for President, her National Energy Plan, and decorating ideas for the White House while dressed in a tiny leopard print bathing suit and gold stilettos.
More interesting, a recent online poll suggests that the general public’s consensus has swayed in favor of the socialite. In less than one week, Paris Hilton’s video has transformed from her image from that of a spoiled little rich girl which gave such memorable quotes as,”Wal-mart, is that where they make walls?”, to political activist, intellect, and a likely presidential candidate for the Generation Y. Moreover, Paris’s presidential parody has created a ground swell of support for the Obama campaign. In a recent query on Googles Blog Search there have been over 11,900 blog posts on “Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad” which is fueling the videos popularity which has received over 5,654,351 views
The damaging mistake made by the John McCain camp is underestimating the power of social mobilization through viral videos. The lesson learned, try to avoid to mocking those that can most effectively wield such viral power into a cause, or forever be known as the Wrinkly Old Guy.
Recent Comments