Updated 5/21 at 8:28 a.m.
Lest people get the wrong idea, we wanted to highlight just a small portion of the DC public relations community’s work. Here’s a look at the new media efforts from the big three within each party’s presidential race. After all, political battles are where the best communicators in the world duke it out, right?
Democrats
Pretty cool stuff at YouTube! Check out Hillary Clinton’s YouTube page. This is social media at its best. Of course there’s counterpoint: Hilary Clinton’s blog is here. Recent entries include a rather lame attempt at justifying being a Wal-Mart board member… This blog proves DC is a great PR town, but a lousy graphic design city. Obligatory MySpace available, too.
Barack Obama’s blog is much hotter, with a lot more going on visually. Even more impressive is the My.Barack.Obama dashboard. These guys get social media. I’m not sold yet, so no sign up, but the access to community blogs, messenging and more was really quite savvy. This was the best use of social networking technology we’ve seen yet. Barack’s MySpace page… Obligatory, but Barack’s got more friends than Hillary.
John Edwards MySpace page was formatted a little weird. The Edwards blog was a lot like Hillary’s, and lacked the dynamism of Barack’s. Howver, the use of video and photo blogs is very good. The “multimedia tab” smacked of the 90s, and probably should be renamed Social Media.
Republicans
We like the name of Rudy Giuliani’s blog, The Buzz. There’s not much else to like on the official site, which in the search engines still say Rudy’s still exploring official candidacy. Are you kidding me? Fire the Madison Avenue ad guys and get a real DC-based PR wonk, Rudy. Of course you can put a Rudy widget (Hillary has widgets ,too) or the like on your blog. No official Rudy MySpace page. Whoops. Still trust those Madison Avenue guys, Rudy?
John McCain’s McCain Space made me laugh! That’s great. Who needs Rupert Murdoch anyway? Blogging’s not for kids, but this one could stand to use some more imagery. But hey, the man has a blog roll! And of course, a MySpace page. McCain’s pretty hip for an old guy.
Mitt Romney’s Five Brothers blog concept is a great idea. It really lets you into the family and get a feel for who these folks are while they pitch Mitt. However, the design is mediocre. Mitt TV on the same site is good, too, but not as savvy as Hillary’s YouTube page. Overall this site is not inspiring, and I hate the main font used on the menus. A bad courier-like font that makes the design look cheap. Hey Rudy, even Mitt Romney’s got a MySpace page.
Conclusion
The winner so far is Barack. I’ll give props to Hillary (YouTube is great) and McCain Space, too. However, I wonder when one of these campaigns will get really smart and start letting campaign supporters throughout the United States in on the content generation. Can you imagine the power of such a peering network, especially if it was open to the public? That would be truly leveraging the power of social networking technologies.
[...] Our late night post yesterday (below) seems fitting as the Post reported on the current lacking nature of most GOP sites this morning. But who cares about that? Let’s talk about the big candidates. And of the big ones, Barack, Hillary and McCain have the nest new media initiatives. Read on for more. [...]