I'd just as soon not bring this up, as I've probably had beers with most of the people involved with this topic. But I feel that the cause of good, solid reporting on what Presidential eCampaignmeisters is worth setting the record straight.
Jonathan Martin brings up MittTV as an interesting example of Mitt going around the "media filter," a la HillaryHub. This isn't the first time I've seen MittTV signed out in writeups of Romney's website, and every time I have to ask, "Why?"
What is MittTV? It's Mitt Romney's videos on his website, draped in a custom player and a zingy name. But who isn't posting videos to the Web and YouTube? A number of candidates are even using their name and "TV" in the branding! Here's BarackTV and Hillary TV. Now, Romney's folks have been more aggressive about posting news clips of their guy to their YouTube channel, which is just smart strategy, but that's about the only differentiator to this that I can see.
Meanwhile, another worthwhile Romney effort, the Sign Up America campaign which signed up 30,000 supporters in 24 hours, didn't get as much play in the media. But over the long run, it's stuff like this -- the boring game of inches of recruiting volunteers and donors -- that has the greater impact.
Likewise, HillaryHub has gotten a lot of pixels and ink. Ben Smith did an article for the Politico on it that quoted me. We know that Hillary's campaign loves the Drudge Report, so it's not altogether surprising to see them launch a Drudge clone. The overall concept of embargoing news so you can roadblock folks at your campaign website is one with huge upside for the campaigns. But is HillaryHub the most significant thing the Clinton campaign will do online this cycle? Not even close, at least according to the traffic numbers. Traffic to the main Hillary site dwarfs that to HillaryHub, except when it's mentioned somewhere in the press, confirming my hunch that microsites are mostly good for one- or two-time earned media hits. With these press mentions, the Clinton campaign has probably gotten 90% of the mileage they're going to get out of HillaryHub.
By comparison, this week the campaign launched a suite of community tools at Connect.HillaryClinton.com to compete with My.BarackObama.com That barely got noticed at all. It doesn't have the same sizzle, but they probably spent much more time developing it than HillaryHub.
When it comes to covering the online campaigns, reporters tend to hone in on stuff that's actually pretty easy by comparison. Throwing up a YouTube video or a MySpace page. Cleverly repackaged press content. Anything goofy. It's easy for campaigns to get thrown off by this, and keep going after press hit after press hit. But some of the most important technology work that campaigns do is a lot less sexy -- voter databases, activism tools, Web-based interfaces for high-dollar fundraisers. How about some coverage of that?
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Flooding the zone
After a recent Heritage Foundation briefing on the Iraq war I asked a senior White House official why we're losing the information battle in the media. His reply was too common for this administration: "We never flood the zone. We send one or two guys out but we never saturate the media"
One thing the Romney campaign is adept at is "flooding the zone". For example, look at the fundraising programs they have:
* Students for Mitt - get 10% back on everything you raise
* Young Professionals 4 Mitt - small dollar events where you can network up with hundreds of young politicos
* Serious Fundraisers - 40K, 50K, 100K, 250K levels for the ambitious fundraiser. You get dedicated attention from the campaign and street cred for the dough you bring in.
* Moms 4 Mitt - committed to a respectable dollar figure
* Calling events - all over the country you can sign up for fundraising call days.
The same goes for the online video that the Romney campaign puts out. There's MittRomney.com, YoungProfessionalsforMitt.com, Mittlink.com, etc...
As for the video, by utilizing your own video player (in addition to YouTube) you can pump up the quality of the video and track who is embedding it. You can also control what can and cannot be shared. But most importantly you get the 30% of people who have never heard of YouTube but visit your website and you control their experience a lot more.
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