I was a panelist at last night's Boston Social Media Club meeting, Civics, Social Media and the Countdown to Election '08. It was an interesting meeting and an eclectic group. I wanted to go over a few things, clear up some misconceptions, etc., that seemed to be in vogue at that meeting.
First, my thanks to the young woman who came up to me and quote to me things she read on our website, which she also noted was not particularly attractive ("text heavy"). I agree. I then asked her something along the lines of "You seem to remember it fairly well, though. I guess our design concept, that things go rapidly into deep memory, seems to be working, yes?" She stared at me for a moment then laughed and agreed, yes, it did.
Also my thanks to the fellow who commented that he truly appreciated my scientific approach to marketing. There were quite a few along these lines.
A curiosity to me was the woman who thought I didn't like social media because we analyze social media with our proprietary tools and not by looking at it ourselves. This "firewall" is so that human biasing of the data doesn't occur.
However, I do enjoy reading through blogs, wikis going through social networking sites. I'm no good at it, of course, but there you are.
Someone asked the question about how Obama, Clinton, etc., were taking chances with their campaigns. Most people were thinking along the lines of fund-raising online, blogging, so on and so forth. All of these are correct. What I wanted to add was that NextStage was more interested in the Oprah factor -- a chance the Obama campaign took -- and the Bill factor -- something the Clinton campaign has been working to get itself out of.The Obama campaign took the chance of putting Oprah Winfrey on stage with Senator Obama and quickly realized this was a no-no. She definitely has drawing power and part of what she draws is glamour (and I put it in italics because I mean it in it's original sense) away from Senator Obama.
Senator Obama can be on stage with heavies from any number of fields and one field he can't share the stage with is political. Oprah Winfrey, for everything else she is, is a political powerhouse. When she's on the stage, he isn't.
On the other hand, a large part of Senator Clinton's early glamour came from simply being in the same physical space as Bill ("President Clinton" to his friends). Now that she's well established she needs to radiate on her own and this means glamour-grabbing from Bill has to be less and less if her star is to shine.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Conferences:
- New Communications Forum 2008 22-25 April 08 in Sonoma Valley, CA
- SUNY Marketing Professionals Conference at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, 11-13 June 08
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» Podcast of Boston Social Media Club Discussion on Presidential Campaigns from BizMediaScience
Talking Politics at Harvard with the Boston Social Media Club [Read More]
Tracked on: February 25, 2008 10:00 AM | Permalink to Trackback