Gene Carr's Patron Technology Blog

Obama: The First Arts President?

At the tail end of the presidential campaign, I wrote a blog post pointing out that candidate Obama had put out an arts policy. I hadn't known it existed, but when I read it, it seemed really smart, and like Obama might even do some things to help the field beyond lip service.

What's happened so far?

Well, let's read the tea leaves. We're barely past the first 100 or so days of the presidency. Certainly the extra $50 million for the NEA is good news, and the appointment of Rocco Landesman is innovative and refreshing. These are good signs.

Michelle Obama has already been in New York twice. The first time was a few weeks ago, when she was making speeches about the value of the arts, attending the ABT opening, and mentioning that her first date with her future husband was at a museum.

Then, this weekend, the first couple came to NY to have a date night on Broadway. I got a ticket to the performance they were attending, and the whole thing was quite an experience.

First, the security was as you would expect, and the NY police do this really well by now. That is to say, the entire area around the theater was so tightly locked down that the play ended up starting almost an hour late due to the fact that half the audience was trapped a few blocks away, unable to even get to the theater. And of course, there was airport-type security and pat-downs of everyone entering the theater.

But once inside, the energy was electric. People were milling around until nearly 9 PM when the ushers started asking people to take their seats. When the President and the First Lady walked in from a side entrance about two minutes before the show started, the place erupted in a prolonged, whooping, standing-ovation-type applause more typically found at a baseball stadium. The outpouring of sheer enthusiasm was something I've never seen before for any politician. It seemed everyone had a camera or a cell phone camera and for a few minutes, it was quite a light show. The Obamas were seated in row K on the aisle, and aside from being escorted in by secret service, it was just them, no entourage. And, as was reported in the paper, Meryl Streep was sitting a few rows ahead. The people sitting next to them were astounded as he walked down the aisle and shook hands and flashed his million-dollar smile.

Once the play ("Joe Turner's Come and Gone") started, it took the audience a good five minutes to focus on it and settle down. The play was good, probably great. Certainly the performances were exceptional. It was a play about the American Black post-emancipation experience -- a personal story that I suspect is lost on most white Americans. I thought back to Obama's speech last summer on race in which he spoke of two Americas -- the Black American experience and everyone else's. This play was laser beam into that world.

I'm glad I went. I caught only a glimpse of them, but nonetheless it was thrilling.  

And it did get me thinking about the potential for what the Obamas could mean for the arts, going forward.  Quite apart from the right-wing attacks Obama has taken for using taxpayer money to fund a trip to the theater, I see things differently. What we have here is a couple that chooses to participate in arts & culture as an integrated and comfortable part of their lives. Even Bill Clinton's sax playing at his inauguration pales by comparison. The last time I remember a sitting president coming to Broadway was when Bill brought Chelsea to see "Rent." This is a very different thing, and hopefully symbolic of more honest and straightforward support of the arts to come.

 

Obama Knows His Site Traffic, Do You Know Yours?

Just moments ago I watched the first press conference with President-Elect Obama. After a slew of policy and financial questions a reporter asked him about what kind of dog he's going to get for his kids.

His immediate response was that he had noticed that the issue of the dog was getting the most attention of any issue on his Web site. If anyone had any doubt about how Web savvy this guy really is, there's some proof. 

Do you keep tabs on what is driving the most attention on your Web site? I hope the answer is yes. If not, I suggest you install Google Analytics, a free Web service from Google that will enable to you to do so. You can find it at http://analytics.google.com.

Vote! & NAMP

First, thanks for all the positive feedback on the last post, which was my "open letter."  I think it's gotten me the most feedback of anything I've written in years.That alone speaks volumes on the state of our industry.

The election is upon us, and no doubt the effect of e-marketing will be dissected over the next several years. It's been fun watching how the various campaigns have used the Web, and I've enjoyed writing about it here. You can see all my posts on this subject by clicking on the "Presidential Web Watch" link on the left side.

If Obama wins the election I would hope that his administration would continue to innovate in the use of technology. It will be very refreshing. I have to say that the notion that I could get a video clip from the President filmed in the Oval Office in my inbox is pretty exciting.

Finally, I'm off to the NAMP conference in two weeks. We will have a booth and I'll be on a few panels. If you'll be there, I hope you'll also join me for this very fast session which we are presenting as an on-site additional event.

Newest and Coolest in
E-marketing: An E-marketing Lightning Round
Tuesday, Nov 11th, 6:30—7:00 pm
Hilton Americas Houston, Room 337AB
                                                   
And, if you're a PatronMail client, check your inbox for an invitation to our client appreciation party to follow.

Obama's Arts Policy - did you know he even had one?

A colleague of mine forwarded me this link yesterday, saying that this was the Obama/Biden Arts Policy.

I opened it with some hesitation, worried that I would see some warmed-over political pabulum posing as as something meaningful.

Much to my surprise and delight this is filled with intelligent, and I daresay even creative ideas.

I hope you'll take a look and see what you think. I'm going to try to dig around for McCain's as well, and I'll get back to you on that one. (as it were.)

Click here to see the document.

Missing the Point & Missing the Convention

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I'm a pretty avid follower of what's been going on on the Web relating to the presidential election.

Last night, just for kicks I wanted to see what was happening each night at the convention. As I want to catch some of it live, I figured that going to the Web site for the convention would give me that information. It was easy enough to find the site, www.demconvention.com, but that's where the fun stopped.

I defy you to find a day-by-day schedule on this site anywhere. Now maybe it's me, but isn't that pretty much the whole point of the convention -- bringing the public into the Democratic process???

If I were designing this site, it seems to me that I would make the first priority a big huge honking schedule somewhere pretty noticeable. And I'd make it pretty obvious how to sign up for daily e-mail or text updates from the convention.

Am I the only one thinking this way?

Updated 8/20

Many of you commented on this so I guess I wasn't the only one!  However, Robb Kushner of JCA wins the prize. Here's the email he just sent me:

Maybe the DNC left it in the hands of Wikipedia!

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_for_2008_Democratic_National_Convention

 

 

Learning from the Democrats: Raising Money Online

I think the online fundraising bonanza that is going on during this primary season is something we in the non-profit world should be watching closely.

I'm not primarily going to focus on how much has been raised, although the raw numbers are staggering. Today's edition of The New York Times reports that of the $36.1 million that Obama raised during January, $28 million (78%) came over the Internet. The evidence is clear: motivated donors choose the Internet. The corollary to that is that if you have online donations enabled on your site, but you're not raising a lot of money, it's not because there's anything wrong with your audience. People need to be motivated to give.

So let's focus on strategy and e-mail design. First, the content of the e-mails that these candidates are sending out is primarily intended to raise money. Clinton's e-mails are exclusively pitches for donations. Obama (or his staff) writes more often with editorial messages, commenting on victories or challenges ahead. They insert links to video clips more often. Obama's e-mail list is apparently over a million names. That's got to be paying off, since they send several appeals a week.

I would prefer more editorial. I find pitches for money tiring. It seems to me that there's an opportunity for a better segmentation strategy where content for existing donors would be different than non-donors, etc. That's not happening now, and I guess we'll have to wait another four years for that.

What's also interesting to me is that a standard template design for e-mails is developing. Take a look at this: 

Note that the "ask" happens in several different places in the same e-mail. There's always a graphic on the right side. Then there's a call to action placed several times within the text. Apparently putting it in several times, separated by white space works. Both Democratic candidates follow pretty much the same layout.

I have never seen a solicitation that looks like this from a non-profit. Perhaps someone should test it?

Generational Shift Indeed

When the Kennedy family endorsed Barack Obama yesterday, the rhetoric was all about generational change. And that change is no better demonstrated than in Obama's deft use of the Web.

Consider this:

I watched some of the "State of the Union" address last night, and fell asleep. Apparently the Democrats did the normal thing and broadcast a rebuttal on television right afterwards.

When I checked my e-mail at about 1:00 AM (don't ask) Obama had already sent me an e-mail with *his own* rebuttal.

They guy apparently rushed upstairs to his Senate office and recorded this:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/sotu 

For the first time, a presidential candidate is in "my" living room speaking to me about something that happened only a few hours ago. It's direct, and though scripted, seems personal. And please note out how well the Web page is laid out. The simple and direct calls to action are a model for us all.

We are indeed witnessing a generational change -- and this one is in how campaigns are won and waged. We're seeing how the immediacy of e-mail and online video can cut the press right out of the equation. I'm just imagining how a president Obama would use the Web in this way. Can you imagine a weekly video-blog from the White House?  It could happen - and it should happen.

Presidential Politics and the Fall of "Old Media."

As both an Internet entrepreneur and an avid political junkie, I'm just loving the presidential campaign this time around. I've been carefully watching what each of the candidates is doing online, and naturally paying a lot of attention to their e-mail strategies.

However, the subtext of last week's NBC debate in Nevada wasn't as much about the candidates as it was about the chasm that lies between the traditional media (i.e., television) world and the new media (i.e., Internet) world in which we are all now living. 

If you didn't see the debate, imagine the following scenario. You have the three candidates (in a last minute power-play, NBC managed to prevent Kucinich from participating) sitting at a large table across from two anchors, Brian Williams and Tim Russert. Then, about 15 feet away in some kind of theatrical Siberia sat NBC's "Today Show" co-anchor Natalie Morales. What was she doing over there? Well, she was “taking e-mail questions from the public.” However, the e-mails had already been sent in -- there was nothing live about it. The computer was a prop.   

Let's examine this a bit further. NBC chooses Morales to represent the voting public, but then sticks her back in a corner where the candidates can't even see her without craning their necks. Isn't NBC by its actions implicitly saying that its smart white guys belong "at the table" with the candidates, but questions from the voting public belong off to the side? Apparently our questions aren't legitimate enough to be front and center.

And the chasm between the public and the candidates didn't end there. The first 20 minutes of this two-hour “debate” were all about the journalists. Going into it, everyone knew that Clinton and Obama had kissed and made up to try to get away from the gender and race scuffle they had been engaged in for the last few days. So naturally, Brian Williams had to begin with questions about that. Okay, that's fair, we expected it. But then it just didn't stop. Russert chimed in. Question after question pounded away about what the candidates said three weeks ago, six months ago, and in books published a year ago. For the entire first section of the debate the candidates fought to get air time to address the issues that any American would possibly find relevant. But the journalists were intent on making it all about them. They had created the story, they had fomented the story, and now they needed to keep the story alive so that they could look good for having reported it in the first place.

Yet every day there is more and more evidence that as we the American public embrace the openness of the Internet, we demonstrate that we don't want anyone in the middle anymore.   

This was brilliantly exemplified by The YouTube debates in November, in which average Americans videotaped and sent in their own questions which were broadcast at the debate, and the candidates had to respond to them directly. These questions were honest, refreshingly direct, and always relevant. The YouTube debates signaled the beginning of a new era in which the domination by the national media (and its penchant for celebrating itself rather than focusing on the things that people care about) will come to an end. Why? Because by the next presidential election we all will be watching TV on flat-screens connected to the Internet, and we'll control what we watch that much more completely.

This debate showed how our television networks still don't get it. They believe that they are still living in a world in which they rule. Yet, as the Internet develops, the public’s demonstrated eagerness for authentic information will force an environment in which we are much more directly in contact with the candidates who have a story to tell. One can easily imagine a web-based nightly live "Obama-cast" from the campaign bus. Right now, we're in the very beginning of the digital age, but our media structures are still stepchildren of the 1950s. As John Edwards says, “we can do better than this." And we will. 

Benchmarking Online Presidential Donations

There's a lot of news today about how much each presidential candidate has raised so far. Not all the candidates have reported, and the amount of information they each disclose on their sites isn't consistent.

Far from the total amount raised, what's interesting to me is how much was given online.  Hillary raised $26 million - the most of any candidate, and of that $4.2 million was online. In contrast, John Edwards raised less, only $14 million, but $3.3 million was given online. (I can't find any simliar information for Obama or even Biden, at least not yet.)

So, it's Edwards 22% online, vs. Clinton 16% online. It could be that these numbers are skewed by all sorts of manipulation behind the scenes. Or maybe the Edwards web staff is doing a better job in this arena, or Edwards' donors are more web savvy than Clinton's?

What can we glean from this information? Since these donations are highly motivated --  let's just say that somewhere between 15% to 20% is now a good benchmark to aim for.  For arts organizations, where donors are likely to be less motivated, shall we discount this by, say, half? 

Is your organization bringing in 7% - 10% of your donations online? 

Edwards Gets My vote

This is not a political statement. It is a marketing statement.

Just look at this main page. I cannot imagine what our arts world would look like if every arts organization had a main screen that was as clearly focused on collecting e-mail addresses as this is. Check the call to action, and the use of design to guide your eye to the sign-up box.

Also, notice the little red area on the bottom right that enables you to bypass this screen and go to the web site directly.

Since the election is so far away, who can tell which candidate is better or worse? At least for today, my vote is for Edwards.