The Best Technorati Rumor All Day

Okay, this has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with culture....  I just read on Technorati that Leonardo DiCaprio has been tapped to play the role of my friend and fellow NeoEdge board member, Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, in a new biopic.

Technorati Profile

User-Generated Politics

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a Yahoo!-sponsored panel discussion at the American Association of Political Consultants' annual meeting in Santa Monica, CA, on the subject of Politics & Online Advertising.  You can tell by the title of the session that the thinking on the subject was already pretty narrow.

I conducted a highly informal poll (of employees in our NY and LA offices, to be exact, naturally limiting my respondents to kids under 30 who both read and respond to "Public" emails), and asked them a couple of questions.  Where were they currently getting their information on candidates and issues?  What sources did they find most credible?  What did they feel was missing from the the media that would help them to be a better-educated voter?

Not unexpectedly, very few respondents got their information from traditional mainstream media channels.  If they did, it was through the .com versions of a CNN or MSN.  Where the real education process was occurring was through user-generated content.  Sometimes it was facilitated through a moderated channel (Yahoo!'s Democratic Candidate Mash-Up, or YouTube's Virtual Republican Debate) and then shared with others, but frequently the message was consumed in the form of actual content created by friends, or "friends" – those trustworthy individuals you've never actually met – and passed along through their networks.

I showed the audience a short video of what the next generation of voters was using to make decisions.

The consultants attending the AAPC panel were sort of stunned that they had effectively lost control of so much of their candidate's message.  Most were neither monitoring, responding to, or more importantly, creating any of the dialog that was happening in the world regarding their cherished and carefully-crafted brands.  They were quite proud that they'd translated fundraising activities to online channels, but few were thinking about what else was circulating along with their highly-optimized pleas for support.

I love democracy in action; in the world of UGC, there is not universal truth, only my truth.  And depending on how provocative or entertaining the "truth" is, I can influence more voters than a 30-second ad run on national television, costing millions of dollars.  I can create a national dialog around a subject that the party may not have registered as worthy of discussion.  Hell, I can create a national dialog around an outright lie.

The managers of "brands," whether consumer goods or political candidates, are navigating a new landscape, and their participation in social media is not optional.  Be the creators of the content, be worthy of engagement on a subject you want to talk about – but at the very least, know what's going on out there and be prepared to respond to it.

Oh: and the kids' answer to my question "What's missing from the mainstream media?"

"The truth."

Shepard Fairey and the Art of Politics

In political discourse, which is more powerful, the idea or the image?

While art has always reflected (or rejected) the state of politics surrounding it, graphic art – technically, "commercial" art (remember that term, my fellow aging art directors?), that particular brand of art and commerce – actually intends to shape politics. Communist governments have long understood the power of iconography, and the nature of the singular, undebated, undiscussed, non-negotiable thought.

The Shepard Fairey "Hope" poster (note the candidate at right, looking wistfully left) is a really gorgeous piece of propaganda. But, truthfully, every time I come across one, it always leaves me vaguely... disturbed. I have enormous respect for the icon. Love those little humanoid figures in the skirts that tell me which restroom to use. Dig the peace sign. But can you capture something as complex as a political platform in a single word and a searching look into the middle distance? Are we also starving for icons that simplify our positions, allowing us to demonstrate the enormity of our thinking to each other in shorthand?

Or is the icon intellectually lazy? Does it subvert questions, rather than provoke them? Should our deepest beliefs fit on a t-shirt?

Maybe what bothers me is Jack Welch famously saying, "Hope is not a strategy." But here it is, saying everything, saying nothing. But man, it's beautiful.

Politics and Social Media

Been thinking a lot about the intersection of politics and culture these days.  I had the opportunity to go to Russia last fall, and as we watch the regressive Putin political agenda come into play this Spring, it's interesting to contemplate the role of culture in disseminating – or debunking – political propaganda.

Under Stalin's Soviet era, there was a single approved art form, Socialist Realism, which was mandated as the "national style."  All other forms of art, including Russia's rich history of abstraction and constructivism, were banned as "irrelevant" to the Communist ideal.  When Stalin died in 1953, the official aesthetic continued, although by the 1970s, dissident artists used the style ironically to criticize the communist system.

While I was in Moscow, I spent time with a woman from our local office, whose uncle was one of a well-known collective of protest artists in the mid-70s.  His work now hung in Moscow's Museum of Modern Art (a wildly decrepit post-modern wonder), and the last weekend I was there, the museum featured an exhibit of one of his fellow painter's work.  It was amazing to walk with her through the exhibit as she translated the text in the paintings – they were huge canvases in the Socialist Realist style, overlaid with bold red graphics, often common phrases from Russian life.  We stared at a painting of the Kremlin together, over which enormous red text was painted.  "I don't get it," she said.  "It's a sticker that's on all the windows on trains.  It says, 'Do not lean.'"  

I explained the double meaning to her.

Culture, in the form of art, has always had a role in social and political commentary.  Marat Guelman, Russia's first post-Soviet-era gallery owner, is also a political consultant.  Most of the art he supports is anti-Putin – although interestingly, Guelman once consulted with the president, before resigning.

"Putin is trying to create absolute, vertical power," Guelman says.  "Under such a structure there is no need for creative people.  And so there are three options.  You can obey him; an entire political class has decided to obey Putin.  There is no opposition.  Or you emigrate.  Or you can construct your own parallel social media, and exist in it."

Now that's "social media."

Politics and Culture My Ass

Thoughts from the Advertising 2.0 conference: Politics and Culture panel discussion

Y'know, panel discussions are hard enough (christ, you can't get a freaking' word in edgewise), without panelists having something to sell.  I'm good with an ax to grind, or a POV (educated or otherwise) to expound, but ignoring the topic in order to convince an audience that your 100-year-old media brand is suddenly relevant because you can serve it up on a mobile device is just irritating.

The saving grace was getting to sit next to Kurt Anderson, founder of Spy magazine, and kind of a personal hero to me, journalistically speaking.  He offered an interesting counterpoint to the assertion by one of the mainstream media channels that they were experiencing "explosive" growth in news consumption among a younger demographic.  Kurt pointed out that it might be the "Obama Factor" – people, and especially younger people – are consuming Obama news, not... news.

Obama is the first legitimate digital political brand.  (My apologies to Ron Paul.)  He's simultaneously being created online by his own brilliant strategists, and thousands of anonymous and famous denizens of the web.  Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" video is the most powerful piece of propaganda since Leni Riefenstahl.  And don't read anything into that.  Barack Obama is a magnificent orator on his own.  Combine him with music, celebrity and message, and that's some powerful shit.

But the question plagues me: can a digital political brand be built without substance behind it?  I bet it could....