After I read Adrienne Royer's latest post, "Reaching Women on the Right," I figured I'd just leave a comment. But when I started writing it out, I realized that it's worth fleshing out a bit more. So, at the risk of being a single guy without any children trying to act like I know what the heck a woman really wants (my grandpa says I never will), I want to add my two cents.

First off, all women do care about issues like illegal immigration, the War on Terror, wasteful spending, etc. I'd consider these the big ticket, stump speech issues which "move" poll numbers if the message effectively strikes the right cord.

But women, especially mommy's, also care about the very real, tangible, long tail issues that affect the lives of their family. The fact of the matter is that children are spending an increasingly large amount of their time on the Internet and parents are rightfully afraid of things in their lives which they can't control. In other words, it's the Internet, stupid.

In fact, take a look at this recent Pew Internet & American Life Project presentation presented to school psychologists at the American Psychological Association on Internet usage among families:

* 70% of American adults go online
* 93% of American teens ages 12 to 17 use the internet
* 87% of all parents online
* 73% of all families have broadband @ home
* 68% of online Americans have home broadband
* 7% of teens do not use the internet

So while a candidate stumping broadly about "education" or his wife posting recipes on her blog is great and all, what mommy's really need to hear about are the niche issues that actually matter in their modern lives.

Those issues include things like cyberbullying, privacy concerns to avert online sexual predators, and violence in video games and on TV. Let's take a look at the issue of cyberbullying a bit more closely.

The presentation I cited above includes these statistics on cyberbullying:

* 32% of online teens have been contacted online by a complete stranger.

* Teens with social networking profiles are more likely to have been contacted.
- Of teens who have been contacted, 23% say they were made scared or uncomfortable by the stranger contact.
- Girls are more likely to report feeling scared or uncomfortable.

* 32% of online teens have experience some form of online harassment, also called cyberbullying:
-Threatening messages
-Private material forwarded without permission
-Someone posting an embarrassing picture of you online
-Spreading a rumor about you online

Scary stuff. Our kids are online and their being targeted by unwanted solicitations and threats.

Unfortunately, most mommy's won't see the messages they need to see on TV at the end of the campaign because they're not big ticket, blanket issues that "move numbers." I get that. We live in a world with limited resources.

So that's where the modern media folks come in. Let us craft some language and create some web videos and then take Adrienne's advice to find smarter, more effective streams to disseminate that message through.

So how do we do this on the modern campaign trail?

When I worked as the communications director for Mike Bouchard for Michigan in 2006, one of Bouchard's top accomplishments was creating Michigan's sex offender registry as a state legislator. Our media team, Scott Howell & Company, created this solid TV spot which aired early in the campaign (before I was a part of the team), when they were in the process of introducing Mike Bouchard to Michigan voters:

Clearly this was a powerful message but it had had a very short shelf-life because it was a spot which only aired on TV.

Not on my watch. When I joined the campaign in late August, I asked for electronic copies of all of the TV spots we had run so that I could put them up on YouTube.

In one of our kitchen cabinet meetings to discuss polling, we saw that our opponent's strongest strengths were with women voters. So when I saw this video, I recognized an opportunity to try and shore up that support.

The communications team helped put together a full-fledged plan to help curb online sexual predators and we created a micro-site, MISafeSpace.com (currently offline), to help amplify Mike's plan and provide tips to parents to help keep their children safe online.

We, of course, posted Mike's video on the site alongside it.

Ultimately, we lost the race in Michigan, but it wasn't from a lack of trying really, really hard. And even then, we recognized the importance of driving targeted messages using modern techniques and avenues.

To conclude, women are just like you and me. They care about the issues that matter most to them and their families. If we're going to beat Hillary in 2008 our respective nominee needs to be out-in-front on these issues before it's too late.