An Eye On The White House And An Eye On You

By Josh Tyrangiel

In 2004, John Kerry spent so much of his advertising budget on broadcast-television warhorses like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune that he at least deserved a wardrobe courtesy of Botany 500. George W. Bush threw millions at TV too (he favored Cops and JAG), but his ads also appeared on cable, talk radio, blogs, the Internet and, in several cases, closed-circuit televisions above health-club treadmills. "We took one message and designed lots of different avenues to communicate it," says Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief strategist in '04. "They took a lot of different messages and drove them all into one big funnel."

So there you have it. The 2004 election was won because Democrats bought lots of vowels and Republicans used the kinds of marketing techniques employed by smart companies trying to sell consumers a product--in 1998. "Even when they innovate, the parties are always a good five or 10 years behind commercial marketing," says Bill Hillsman, an advertising consultant who created famously roguish campaigns for Jesse Ventura and Ralph Nader. "They're cautious organizations. They can't change their natures." But before we go too far down the politicians-are-so-lame road, it's worth noting that every once in a while, there's a signal moment, like Bill Clinton on Arsenio, when candidates catch up to the communication culture. With the viral success of the Dean campaign and the echo chamber of blogs, the 2004 cycle was full of such moments. In 2008, be prepared for the next stage, a combination of encounters with the future and the past. And what they will have in common is a personal touch. "From now on," says Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Ken Mehlman, "a smart candidate will reach you through your cell phone, your friends, the organizations you belong to and the websites you visit.''

That means no more avalanches of TV ads. "By 2008, 35% of all television viewers and 50% of registered voters will have digital video recorders," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democrat Network (NDN), an advocacy group that introduces Democrats to new-media strategies--or tries to anyway. "And 100% of them will skip political ads. So we'll have to talk to people in smarter ways." The easiest people to talk to are those who want to listen, so a few years ago both parties started coaxing as much personal information as they could out of donors and party members. The Democrats gave their database of roughly 6 million people an awesome name: Demzilla. The Republicans' has less flash but more e-mail addresses (Mehlman puts the tally at 15 million) and Laura Crawford.

From her home in Spring, Texas, Crawford, 33, produced all the RNC's Web videos and Internet ads in 2004. In '08, she imagines, she'll be cranking out entertaining, semipolitical content for the party faithful almost hourly. "I try not to make [the videos] political at all," says Crawford, "because anything political gets an automatic negative reaction, even from people with a strong party affiliation. They want humor." During the election, the RNC bought the domain name kerryoniraq.com and Crawford stocked it with a video string of John Kerry sound bites about the war, adding to it every time Kerry said something flip-floppy. It was the kind of link a Republican could send to friends who were Democrats, and they might not change their minds, but they wouldn't be offended. "And that's exactly where we try to be," says Crawford. "We want these things to be viral, and if they're argumentative instead of clever, they just won't be."

Democrats too have ideas about how to galvanize their base. "Intel and Yahoo! are introducing technology that will allow every DVR to record video from a website the way it records ESPN," says Rosenberg. He imagines a world in which Hillary Clinton would post a daily video message with an accompanying e-mail alert to the folks on Demzilla reminding them to set their TiVos. "So Hillary's now speaking to millions of people with no intermediary and no overhead." While managing Howard Dean's campaign, Joe Trippi used the 650,000 people who registered on Dean's website as the largest text-messaging network in the country. "And we were making it up as we went along," says Trippi. "The only thing I know for sure is that with a network of supporters exponentially larger than Dean's, and a little creativity, you can really wreak havoc."

Keeping supporters passionate is important, but to win elections you have to sway the undecideds. If they won't watch ads, at least one possible candidate thinks they might watch the campaign. "We've discussed the possibility of doing a reality show," says a Senate aide whose boss is contemplating a long-shot White House bid in '08. "The obvious danger is that it would have to be warts and all to be credible, and you'd have to give up some control. The upside is people get emotionally invested in the candidate." The aide emphasizes that no offers exist yet. "But," he adds, "it's inevitable that somebody's going to do it, so why not us?"

For more risk-averse candidates, the two parties are creating elaborate lists of voting-age adults and cross-referencing them with consumer and demographic information, all with an eye toward sending out the most tailored communications possible. "No one under 35 wants to hear the same message about Social Security as someone over 65," says Crawford, "and there's no reason why they have to. On one issue, you can make four or five ads targeting entirely different groups. It's cheap because you don't have to pay for airtime, and because I don't need to book a studio"--Crawford edits everything on her Mac and does her own voice-overs--"it's rapid response. I can turn it around in 24 hours." The Democratic National Committee plans to use its list to make a series of inductive leaps. "If you know what magazines a 40-year-old female voter subscribes to or what websites she reads," says a former DNC consultant, "you can apply that to things like Google AdSense"--which generates increasingly specific ads as it monitors how a user clicks through a website. "When someone types in the words schools or Oprah, your education plan--targeted for moms--will be right there. You're still fishing, but at least you're fishing with the right bait." Candidates will also infiltrate every trusted message board and blog that they possibly can. "That's just a given," says Trippi.

For all the efficiencies of the Internet, Bush strategist Dowd thinks the Web has its limits. "Our research shows it's great for driving partisan activity and fund raising," says Dowd, "but less effective at persuasion in a political sense. That's why we're really pushing this idea of what I call navigators." In 2004 the G.O.P. mined its database to identify 10,000 African-American "team leaders" who, in exchange for VIP treatment, like getting to shake hands with the President in front of Air Force One, would voluntarily talk up Republican policies to their friends. "It's one of the reasons I think we doubled our support in Ohio among African Americans," says Mehlman. "Rather than running a television ad, we had thousands of feet on the street. If a fellow member of your PTA tells you that George Bush cares about education, that has credibility that a paid canvasser or an ad will never have. You'll see a lot more of that in '08."

Overall, the death of the October ad blitz should make for a more meaningful campaign. "All of this allows politicians to come to voters in ways that are more germane to their lives," says the NDN's Rosenberg. "They'll need to raise less money to reach them, and they'll pay more attention when they do. It's great for democracy." Even if it's bad for Wheel of Fortune.