Big Ideas

Now it’s McCain’s Turn: Who’s He Going to pick as VP?

In my last post, I talked about why I thought that picking Joe Biden was both a smart hire and a poor strategic decision. I made the point that I think it’s left the door open for the Republicans to counter and make some pretty aggressive attacks against Obama and Biden’s records.  So, how will John McCain react?

In short, I think he’s going to pursue the strategy and the messaging that the Obama camp could have used in selecting Hillary….

Let me explain

I think that McCain will be highly pragmatic and select Mitt Romney.

• Not because Romney and McCain work together well and have a lot of mutual respect
• Not because Romney brings an extraordinary amount of balance to the Republican ticket

But rather, because McCain knows that he needs to mobilize the “Republican base”. It is because he needs to fully utilize the “Fall into Line and do as we say” mentality that defines Republican politics. Often overlooked in the landscape of recent American politics is the stark contrast in discipline between our two major political parties:

• The Republicans make decisions from the top down and demand obedience. You’re either with them or against them. This is why the ongoing argument that McCain is a maverick is laughable; throughout the past 8 years he has consistently proven that he knows his political future rests on his ability to fall into line when necessary.
• The Democrats abhor that kind of homogenous philosophy and prefer to argue, in public, over their differing stances on major issues. Obama’s continued refrain about “change coming from the bottom up” really resonates with the party for this reason.

Both stances have their benefits and their drawbacks, but one thing is for sure: the discipline of the Republican party offers them a very substantial organizational advantage (I talked about this more in depth in my post about supporting Hillary in the primaries). When your political leaders can consistently be counted on to quote the party line, word for word, you have a lot more control over your message and the “brand message” that voters will consume. In politics, as in marketing, a consistent message is a VERY powerful thing.

So, what I expect McCain to do is the following:

1. Pick a candidate with Executive experience (a current or former Governor)
2. Pick a candidate with strong “Conservative” brand awareness. This will help round out the ticket’s image in Republican voters’ minds, given that McCain’s image is carefully crafted as a “maverick”.
3. Pick a candidate who is known to be pro-business

The most likely candidates for this job, with those criteria, are Mitt Romney and Minnesota Governor Pawlenty.

I think that the McCain campaign will pick Mitt Romney and in doing so, say something along the lines of the following:

“American people, we heard you loud and clear during the primaries. You like McCain’s independence, his experience, his strong domestic and foreign policy capabilities. But you want us to remember our Conservative roots and to make sure we’re continuing on our path of building the American economy through the strengths of small business. Mitt Romney is here to tell you that those voices are heard.”

Now, let me re-state what I mentioned above: I think that this is basically the same messaging that the Obama camp could have used in selecting Hillary. The message could have been, “American people, you shouted at the tops of your lungs that you liked both of our platforms. So, it is natural that the strongest platform will combine the voices of your two public servants.”

Obviously, this isn’t the path that has been taken and I’m not going to cry over it, but I do think it leaves the McCain camp salivating over their ability to exploit the decision.

Let’s see how this plays out. In the best scenario for Obama fans, McCain’s camp will get too cute with its strategy and pick Joe Lieberman, trying too hard to woo the centrists  and swing voters. I’m highly doubtful that’s what we’re going to hear, however.

Time for the community to take charge

From my buddy Jim comes this news item from Philadelphia:

Nation & World | Thousands of black men to help patrol violent city | Seattle Times Newspaper

This is truly amazing. I'm crossing my fingers for these folks, I really hope that it does something to stem the tide of violence in their city. When I read about something like this, it makes me think that the truth of the matter is that we have to police ourselves.

Whether it's in "real life" or online, what needs to be understood is that no one central authority could ever hope to truly stop all bad behavior. In the communities that you're a participant, you need to band together with others to curtail unacceptable behavior. Stand up, call people out on their inability to participate in productive ways and lend your voice to others who are willing to do the same. We should be able to navigate our differences in a manner that doesn't rip to shreds the communities that we exist in. Whether it's the comments section of your blog or your neighborhood, it's high time that we recognized that the minority who choose to act anonymously, in secret, with hate and ill will are just that - the minority. We all can take a stand against them. Make sure you're one of the people standing up.

 

Technorati Tags: community policing, Philadelphia violence, crime

Social Media tracks the California Wildfires

From the NY Times blog, Tracking the California Wildfires, I came across this YouTube timelapse video of the fires in Southern California.

Wow.

My thoughts go out to all of those who have had to evacuate or have lost their homes in the fires. Hopefully, the winds will ease and this will get contained soon.

 

 

Technorati Tags: Social Media, California wildfires

Things that I'm thinking about (part 3)

Wow, the past few days have seen a noticeable increase in traffic here, which says to me that some of you subscribers are more actively engaged and are maybe even passing on my posts to friends of yours. Thanks!

A quick shout out to a few folks who've been commenting:

Valeria - for always taking the time to comment when I link to you. Very impressive.  Mark -  I always appreciate that you take the time to leave a quick note when you like something. Thanks bud.  Jim - Wow. Awesome comment on my "Go Fail Yourself" post. Between the comments from you and Ben on that post, that has to be one of my personal favorite posts so far.  Ian - For sharing your little javascript code on my "Proactive Discovery" post. Amazingly, you were the only one to contribute something there :)

 

So, on to the networks version of my "Things I'm thinking about right now" series (here are Part 1 and Part 2):

 

Web Worker Daily brings us back to the point of networking: remembering that it's not just a series of transactions is important.

Fred Wilson hits on something near and dear to my heart - he's unsure of where this is going and about the difference between what users want and what developers will seek out. I believe that I have a very good idea of where it should go. Let's talk Fred. 

He also links to Dave Winer, who gets provocative in Fred's comments (Scott Rafer also adds in his useful pragmatic view). I think that he's right on here - real platforms look different from Facebook F8, folks.

Scoble points me to:

Jason Calacanis's post which spins the discussion around and essentially asks, "Does this stuff have any substance?" He also continues on in a second post, lightly touching on something that I think is being left under-discussed: the younger generations are being raised, at least in the U.S., with the expectation that they have to market themselves.

Proving that he really is a portal, Scoble also points me over to new stuff coming out of Plaxo. I'm  hoping to make it to Lunchaxo tomorrow, to see what's going on.

The NY Times does a piece on how the businesses who create networks impact real-life relationships in significant and negative ways.

 

Ok, I'm realizing this could be a bit of overload for people, so I'm going to stop now. As promised, I'm working on a more coherent piece that will hopefully pull these things together better.

 

Technorati Tags: social networks, plaxo, facebook, Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, Jason Calacanis, open social networks, communication, indipity

Sharing experiences: another amazing YouTube video

By way of my friend Damon's blog comes this amazing video of a home crowd at a basketball game. It's incredible to watch how into the game they are and the lack of social fear.

That's right, social fear. Maybe you should think about that for a moment. Do you have social fear? Are you afraid of being yourself in public?

The digitization of our lives is happening. Whether it's Flickr, YouTube, your blog or whatever's coming next, we're becoming more digitally entwined. That scares people. A ton. But it's also good, because you can share these experiences. Watch this video and then think about it like this:

- Imagine that you go to school here and you're trying to tell a friend who doesn't go there about your freshman year. You're telling them how cohesive the student body is, how tied together everyone feels and how much they love basketball. Your friend listens intently, but they don't "get" it. Not just with your words.

- You send them this video.

Then what happens? Maybe your friend picks up the phone and calls you with 5 questions about your school. Maybe they want to transfer there. Or think you should leave.

But, all of a sudden, they've gotten to experience your life more intimately than ever before.

Isn't that what we're really seeking with this stuff? The ability to more fully share who we are, what we think, what we do? Aren't we really try to share the experiences of our lives?

I think so.

You tell me. Tell me what you want out of blogs, flickr, youtube, twitter etc. I'm dying to know.

Technorati tags: YouTube, Sharing experiences, digitization of life, economy of influence, transparency

Some quick hits so that I can get my computer to shut up..

I don't know about you all, but I have yet to come up with a good way to queue up stuff to read for later / blog about later. To date, the best approach for me has been to create a draft blog post in Live Writer, but I'm finding that even that isn't efficient enough for me. Saving to MyWeb kind of works, but it's not integrated enough into my daily habits that I go and check a specific tag on a regular basis... Anyhow, tips are definitely appreciated, if you have any. In the meanwhile, here are some tabs I've been keeping open in Firefox that I can now close and get my computer to stop whining (why the hell is FF such a resource hog!?!?!):

 

Brody Jenner is either the biggest tool ever or a genius.. : I stopped watching "The Hills". I just couldn't take the idiocy of the two "stars", Lauren and Heidi. But reading this back story on the two toolbag boyfriends, Spencer and Brody, almost makes me want to put it back on my Tivo, just so I can follow them a bit more. I haven't even processed what this says for us as a society..

P&G understands "conversation marketing": A very short piece in Ad Age, but an important one. Jim Stengel of P&G understands that there is no ability to control someone else and that a company can actually build relationships with its consumers. "This business is personal" - great line from the video. This stuff gets me so excited about the future that I scare myself sometimes.

Google's advertising product development reaches out: Maybe this is about trying to determine the priority of its ad product development, but my gut says this is something a bit more savvy. I think this "survey" is actually intelligently positioned marketing. I think Google's trying to get big, slow, old advertisers to understand that they don't have much in the way of metrics from the majority of their buys.

A reminder that not all great companies are public: This quick blurb on REI from the Motley Fool reminded me that I really need to get my series on Seattle companies going. I heart REI.

The Starbucks memo from Howard Schultz: Speaking of Seattle companies that I love, here's a link to a memo from Howard Schultz that illustrates just how different of a company it is. "Let's get back to the core" he says. By the way, the fact that there's a "Starbucks Gossip" blog that is obviously frequented by baristas is not only unsurprising, I actually thought to myself "holy crap, I'm an idiot for not finding this before" when I came across it.

Social shopping is alive!: I might get more into this later, in its own post, but it looks like some folks are making real progress on social shopping (something I first brought up here) in a variety of ways. Sounds like the National Retail Federation is getting after this with some big tech partners. Awesome.

Why is it that every year there's one of these??

In my former life as an i-banker, there would always be a viral sensation or two during the recruiting process. It seemed that as technology became more widely adopted, people would experiment with clip art and other capabilities in order to try and stand out from the crowd. I must say that a few were pretty interesting, but the ones that bombed really stood out and were passed on in the industry very quickly. This one, however, takes the cake:

How Not to Apply for a Job in I-Banking - IvyGate, the Ivy League blog

Shame on him/his friends for not realizing how viral this could become and how perfectly assinine it is. 


Technorati Tags: jobs, i-banking, hubris, stupid recruiting tricks, how not to apply for a job

How does one spend billions of dollars?

Check out this great piece from last year on Bill Gates and his foundation's work around the world, particularly with the problem of malaria: http://www.michaelspecter.com/ny/2005/2005_10_24_gates.html

Seems particularly relevant given his recent announcement of priority shifts. As many of you know, I'm mostly a fan of his - I think his business acumen is terrific and he's built a terrific company. It shocks me how many people can take his announcement and bash him for being self-serving when he's devoting all of his time and much of his money to incredibly important and underserved causes. Not only that, he's bringing an extremely effective mindset to it in order to be as effective as possible. How is this bad? *sigh* I suppose that the truth is that many people can't help but bash the leaders, no matter what they do. That's pretty sad.

A few quick hits..

Trying to post a little bit more regularly here, and not necessarily in such painstaking essay-like detail. Let me know if you like it/hate it/don't care..

Marketing to kids, for when they're adults:

-Check out this story in the NYT about Toyota's marketing efforts around the Scion.

My take is that this makes a bunch of sense, when done well. There's certainly opportunity and historical evidence that it works (hellooooo cigarette manufacturers, anyone want a Camel??) but if they go too far into this foray, it might just represent another triumph of "strategery in creativity" over logical decision-making. People often forget how scientific advertising can be, but the best marketers/advertisers find a way to balance both. So, how do I know if these campaigns get the results I'm expecting?

Also, this is exactly the kind of consumer socialization that I referred to in my previous post, "Where'd all the mallrats go?"

You go New York Times:

The Times is making a recent habit of highlighting Google's questionable behavior and the future it might hold for us. Consider for a moment the wording of this headline: "Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power" Interesting piece as well, always a bonus :)

For the overambitious types:

Assuming you've read this far, perhaps you have the attention span to read this piece on the old "Content is King" debate from Digital TX. And no, I haven't finished it yet either..

Advertising dorks everywhere, rejoice!

Seriously, could these guys embarrass themselves more?? Ok, fine, so they're big ballers in the world of advertising but do they really need to argue about nothing at all? Well, I guess so, I mean, I did read it. Doesn't mean I thought it was good. If anything it just made the point that both of them neglected to make: Great advertising and great product experiences are intertwined. Now, can't we all just get along?

That's it for now..

Tags: advertising, google, media content, innovative advertising, consumer socialization

You don't own your brand - part I

This is probably going to become a multi-post series, but this story from the WSJ (apologies if it's behind the pay wall) reminded me of this belief I have: WSJ.com - Mixing Diet Coke and Mentos Makes a Gusher of Publicity. A brand isn't just yours. It's your consumers'. It's the people with knowledge of you, those who want to talk about you, to bash you, to praise you, to improve you. It's your partners', your suppliers' and your employees'. Companies are going to understand this in varying degrees and with varying speed, but those who get it sooner, rather than later, will benefit from that knowledge. Share your brand and learn from all of the other owners instead of trying to ignore their influence.

If you didn't get to read the article, it basically is discussing the viral growth in videos depicting the chemical reaction of Mentos and Diet Coke. Apparently, this combo results in a rather explosive spray of the soda and people have been experimenting with recording that and posting it online. Perhaps the most elaborate one is below, from a site called Eepybird.com: