Presidential Private Media: A Text Message from the One!

Last week I was out of action with a nasty case of pneumonia which seems like an odd thing to get in August, but there I was on my couch gasping for breath and watching TV.  I thought I would catch up the Olympics, but in the afternoons you get lots of team handball, bad baseball, women soccer and other stuff that does not make the prime time cut. So, I ended up flipping back and forth between MSNBC and Fox News to watch the run up to Obama’s VP pick.  The big story was how the Obama campaign was going to text message his supporters the pick before releasing it to the media.  As ideas go, it is an excellent one taking advantage of all the benefits of private media channels.  It helps them build their donor list, has a viral nature and allows them to tell the message directly to their “customers”.  It fits in with the younger demo of his supporters for whom texting is part of their everyday life.  And, it makes supporters feel that they are special and in the know.  However, great ideas need great execution and this is where they fell down.  My biggest gripe with the way they handled it was that it dragged out for days.  On Thursday, Obama announced he made a decision and teased it to reporters, and the campaign announced a joint campaign appearance on Sat afternoon in Illinois.

A story hungry press was in a frenzy trying to figure out who it was and why they were waiting so long to announce it.  You can argue that by dragging it out they received a ton of press coverage and owned the news cycle.  That was the take on MSNBC and it a legitimate benefit.  I would argue that by taking so long they made the choice of Joe Biden seem very anti-climatic and played into the fact it was a very conventional choice for a candidate that was all about newness and change – a bit of brand disconnect.  If the choice was Hillary Clinton or someone out of left field the build up would have worked.  The payoff to the suspense was a bit of a dud when Mr. Change picks a 65 year old white man who has been in the Senate since 1973.  Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC was one of many reporters who accurately reported on Thursday that Biden was the choice.  I don’t know what value was gained by waiting until 3am on Sat. morning after the press had already confirm it.  It turns out they had to send it at 3am because no one had checked to see if it was technically possible to send a few million text messages at the same time from the same source.  It was a great idea and fair execution, but huge kudos to the campaign for embracing private media channels and building an affinity relationship with their supporters.

The amusing part of the story was watching the reactions of the two cable news networks.  I think MSNBC has decided to become the liberal version of Fox News, but without the humor.  At this point, the Obama campaign should be paying part of Keith Olberman’s salary.  The Fox anchors led by the very funny Shepard Smith and Neal Cavuto reported on the text message strategy and VP choice in a somewhat mocking satirical manner while still reporting what facts there were to report.  Shepard Smith called it the most important text message in history and Cavuto said texting was for geeks and hoped the whole thing bombs.

Over at MSNBC they did treat the text strategy roll out with the excitement and gravity that the Fox guys were mocking.  The highlight for me was Hardball.  Chris Mathews kept going on and on how the Obama campaign was making a huge mistake if they didn’t announce the VP pick on Thursday night since everyone knows that is the key night.  He went on to explain that Thursday is when the editors of the big papers do their Sunday layouts (on paste up boards, no doubt) and it is the deadline for the Sunday op-ed columns.  Not to mention the fact the Sunday shows are booked on Thursday.  He was mystified that they would miss this golden opportunity to be in the Sunday papers.  His guest was a young reporter from the Washington Post who tried to politely tell Mathews that with the news web site, blogs and smart phones the day of the week doesn’t really matter that much anymore.  Chris just stared right through him and went back to a telling story about Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.