Congeries of cross connected concepts
There are those claiming a bounce for President Bush after the Republican Nation Convention. I’m not so sure, but I think I would agree he got at least a small bounce. Looking at the numbers in the various polls, the widening gap looks more like Kerry getting a splat than Bush getting a bounce. Bush seems to have gone from around 48%-49% to about 52%-53%. That’s significant but not major. What’s really made a difference in the gap is Kerry dropping from that same ~48% down to 41%-42%.
I’ll certainly admit that the RNC went far better than I anticipated. Bush’s speech, while not magnificent, did do the two things he really needed to — be adequate while hitting some specific policy proposals (as opposed to “improve” or “reform” kind of proposals, i.e. things one could actually debate like privatizing Social Security).
I’ve been thinking that the political conventions are becoming more Internet-centric. Like primary news sources, it’s more about catering to a rather narrow demographic who in turn pass it on to their associates. It’s an extension of the “buzz” commercials which play in limited media markets but are spread around by Old Media and word of mouth. To make that happen, though, the commercials need to have some bite to them. I think that the RNC was run the same way. The targets were the loyalists and the political junkies. These people in turn spread the word to everyone else. To make this work well, you need much stronger content so that people will linger over it and rehash it, which I expect will go on for weeks, if not until the election. The Democratic Nation Convention? Who remembers anything that happened there?
If the poll number hold up, I would think that this will marked as the tipping point. The Kerry campaign is floundering and you know that the Bush campaign has a lot of material all set up to go. Between that and the long ringing of the Convention buzz, it’s hard to see how Kerry gets back in the game. His only real hope at this point would be mistakes by overconfidence on the Republican side. Unfortunately for Kerry, the Convention was his best hope for that.
| Dave Sheridan Sunday, 05 September 2004 at 03:13 |  |
And one drawback to buzz marketing (for those in a hurry) is that the diffusion process takes time. The Swift Boat charges took some time to approach critical mass. Kerry’s message has been mired in Vietnam for five weeks now, including his own convention. Bush has had a chance to deliver a broader message. I don’t think Kerry has enough time to tell us how he would govern, since the domestic issues on the table are a bit complex for sound bites. He really only has time for a strong not-Bush message, even an October Surprise of some kind, like the Bush DUI revelation in 2000. Im afraid it’s going to be ugly.
| Annoying Old Guy Sunday, 05 September 2004 at 20:48 | |
Of course, no well planned media event is for only one purpose, so the viral marketing is only part of the point. I think that diffusion was just one aspect of what the RNC tried to do — certainly management of Old Media reporting of it was another.
What I think that what the Bush campaign has realized is that diffusion is must faster now. In particular, it’s fast enough that it can be self-sustaining. That’s probably one of the big differences that tends to destroy the gate keeping function of Old Media. For instance, in the AP “booing” story, the fact that so many attendees could meet at Free Republic probably contributed greatly to the blow back on the story. Previously, far fewer would have been aware of the story and probably never hit critical mass. But the more rapid diffusion meant that critical mass was reached rapidly enough to sustain and be relevant.
