Archive for June 2011
Chicago Social Media: Ebert’s Two Thumbs Down
Roger Ebert is an idiot.
I’m not trashing his opinions of cinema in this case, but questioning his motives for a tweet that caught some serious hell this week. For those of you who don’t know Ebert pissed some people off this week after tweeting following the death of Jackass star Ryan Dunn.
Dunn died following a car wreck in Pennsylvania on Monday, and Ebert tweeted shortly thereafter that “Friends should not let Jackasses drink and drive.” A large number of followers called Ebert out, and even his Facebook page was taken down for a bit following the ruckus. Ebert goofed up in this situation, and I wanted to give my take for your future reference.
The biggest question I would ask is “Why does Ebert get to give an opinion here?”
If Ebert was the spokesperson for MADD, or a charity that dealt with drunk driving, his 2 cents would be appropriate but maybe still a bit too soon. Ebert is not though. Ebert simply tweeted something that he felt from his heart without understanding the need to divide his public self from his personal self.
And that’s why he got himself into trouble. Ebert didn’t realize that there are some people who would take offense to what he was going to say. Ebert was basically what EVERYONE was going to say in the aftermath of Dunn’s death. Who was going to say the opposite? No one.
Ebert’s mistake was tweeting something that was not his business. Because it was too soon, because he was not someone not normally commenting in the drunken driving prevention space, because it was so soon after the passing, Ebert caught hell. In my mind he deserved it.
Anyone I work with would be told to not comment or tweet anything other than a quick message of sympathy. There is something to be said for commenting on, forwarding or tweeting on current material. That material can always be a double edged sword and the down side is you want really know if you’ve crossed a line until you hear about it later.
I remember working for an ad agency during 9/11. I watched the second tower fall at work, and during the entire day we had not idea what was going on, and much less how we would move forward. At about 3 pm that day, we saw a press release that went out using the attack as an excuse to be life insurance. Not only was the release in bad taste, but plenty of colleagues attacked the people that sent it out.
Which brings us back to Ebert. Whether or not he has learned something from this episode remains to be seen; the bright side is that this study does provide you an example of when holding back on a current event outside of your space is the right move.
Notes from #NN11: California Micro-targeting
Meg Whitman was the highest funded gubernatorial candidate in American history with $170 million spent. In 2010, Dems won all statewide races in CA. The biggest key to victory was the million more voters micro-targeting project. Targeting was key as the population grew very quickly in the past 10 years. Most of the growth came in the traditionally “red” areas.
The program was designed to find swing voters who identified with Labor’s values and to build a long term relationship. The program was coordinated with planning and data sharing. The tools used were mail, internet, TV, and field. The results show that targeted voters voted at a %78 rate versus a statewide turnout rate of %59. The swing in the gubernatorial totals was +29 versus +13 statewide.
Latino voters are important, but Asian Americans were more than twice as likely to be targets (given values). There are wide diversities between ethnicities, and many were found to be undecided in the GOV race. It was important to speak to them, literally, in their language. This is notable because a majority of Asian Americans did not have enough information to have an opinion of Meg Whitman (43% Chinese, 60% Vietnamese). This was because micro groups tend to get more of their news from local community and ethnic news as opposed to traditional sources.
Environmental issues scored well with Asian Americans, but that was partly because it was one of the few messages being delivered to them. AA swung +42 from 2006 to 2010. Whitman’s campaign goofed in that they did not match messages to groups as well as messengers to groups. There were Chinese messengers speaking to Japanese groups; these groups do not automatically trust one another. Much of the success came from contact with foreign born voters.
The field broke down into 2 groups. First was persuadable and likely to vote, and second was previous voters and/or drop off votes. They set up 9 field offices and had 330 staff for 2 months. This did not include what Labor groups were doing at the same time, or the additional 200 staff that came on in the last 2 weeks. Resources were spent to talk to voters in Red areas where communication would be sent to voters who were not touched previously by other groups during that cycle.