Valentine Bonnaire

Well, I’m sorry to have to link to this.  It’s going to disapoint a lot of people who had high hopes for a candidate who was sensitive to their issues.  When the truth comes out it hurts.  This was in NO QUARTER this morning.

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/29/as-god-is-my-witness-obama-snubs-newsom-gays/

It’s an ad from the San Francisco Chronicle you’ll be seeing first.  Apparently Barack Obama didn’t want to have his picture taken with SF’s mayor Gavin Newsom.  You need to read the ad.  Is it fair to target market this community but not even graciously pose for a photo during a fundraiser?  The hypocrisy is too much.  No, it’s sickening to a Californian.

A few posts ago I had a link to piece from  The LA Weekly on “the gay goldmine” (read funding) Obama was going to get in LA.  It’s WRONG to use a community for your own ends if you don’t mean it, isn’t it?

http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/obamas-gay-gold-mine/18247/

See, America is tired right now.  When you offer a thing called HOPE to people, but you don’t mean it?

It begs the question, what else do you plan to be hypocritical about down the road.

There has been a strange ad running on TV of late regarding the issue of gay marriage.  It shows, ironically, a heterosexual couple going through all the motions of the wedding ceremony, except in the end the bride can’t make it to the altar. The end of the ad asks, “What if you couldn’t marry the person you loved?”

That ad campaign is costing somebody a whole lot of money, and it is to get the issue out on the table.  Who is behind that ad?  And why is it running in tandem with the ads for this election.  That bears looking into, by the press.

We’ve been talking about the way that Obama has been target marketing and here is his flyer with his logo morphed once again, this time into a rainbow symbol, from The Advocate.

http://election2008.advocate.com/2008/02/obama-ad-buys-i.html

The piece talks about the ad buys that are being made in Texas and Ohio right now.  Don’t be fooled by a logo that morphs itself into anything right before your very eyes.  It’s a cheap, cheap, marketing trick. And target marketing to a group that has had even more of a struggle to gain acceptance than black America is pretty unethical especially when Obama didn’t even want the photo op above.

The Democratic Party doesn’t need the target marketing in this slick campaign.  We know who we are already.  We are already “one” and it’s been like that since the activism of the 60’s huh?  The Democratic Party doesn’t need target marketing on this scale.  It’s segregationism.  And in the end, just a marketer’s bag of tricks.  That’s advertising for you.  We’ll be talking about this more and more in the weeks to come.

You might want to read this piece by Shaun Jacob Halper from HuffPost… 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shaun-jacob-halper/brokeback-barack-our-fir_b_88914.html

And then back to NO QUARTER again for this wonderful piece I read there by Dr. Carolyn called “Being Free.” 

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/28/being-free/#more-1656

“One does not have to search very hard to realize the 2008 American Presidential Elections are far from free. Information regarding each of the candidates has been meticulously filtered and “purified” by the news media and celebrity pundits. We are seeing and hearing only what the media wants us to. Given the mainstream media is controlled by Republican interests, making an informed decision is difficult at best. Asking people to “vote with their heart” is as misleading as the emotionally manipulative information bombarding the undecided American who just wants to make a sound decision.”  

Look past the gloss and hype.  Look past the target marketing.  Look past the branding and the logo that keeps morphing before your very eyes.  It’s not like you’re picking the right coffee place is it?  But it’s being sold to you that way.  It’s no different than any other target marketing done by fast food chains or coffee places or clothing chains.

You don’t “buy” a president do you?

And you don’t vote for a logo, either.

Stay tuned…

“Dude, the logo rocks.”

“Rad.”

“It’s like I feel something for the first time in my life.”

“Yeah?”

“Hope.”

“Hope?”

“Maybe.”

“Is that like a emo?”

“Who knows, buddy.  I look at it and it’s so…”

“Round?”

“Mellow.”

“I can haz  melo?”

“You can haz emo!”

“Dude, don’t fool me now.”

“Me?”

“You.”

The biggest lesson of growing up 70’s was the slogan: “Question Authority.”

The notion of selling out a generation to a brand is evil.  No, hideous.  The notion of totalitarianism is worse.

You should question, rather than fall in line.  You should not identify yourself with a logo like the one above.

Because you feel safety under the umbrella of the latest fad brand on the market, and because you drool over it like it’s just such a cool ringtone, or wallpaper, or a T-shirt that can somehow make you feel part of something like a tribe if you wear it, question why?

Why does it make you feel so much better?

If you want to be like the activists of the 70’s you’ll have to question authority.

Start by taking one deep breath.  Start by taking one independent thought.  A non-branded thought.

Then get yourself a copy of these two books:

“1984″  by George Orwell

“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley

Read them.  Especially read the part in Orwell about Newspeak, and the dictionary.  Start recognizing the language you are using inside the box in front of you.  Does it seem like Newspeak?

Go pay a visit to my green friend Blog52.  You can learn how to sing, today.

Well, once I was a graphic designer so I know a bit about it…

Like I said, he really has had a landslide in the web, hasn’t he?  It kind of puts the other campaigns to shame because they did not use his logo morphing techniques to target market a hungry populace.  Those who want to know what kind of techniques his campaign has been using can start here at Advertising Age:

http://adage.com/campaigntrail/post?article_id=125377

It’s an excellent article by Joe Erwin called “How They Grew Brand Obama” — look at how he got all that money, with that matching funds scheme.  Hmmm…I guess that’s grassroots, but it also plays to all those lonely people out there looking for a messiah too doesn’t it?  It’s that ol’ just reach out and touch someone — or is it?

It’s interesting to me that donors to the campaign got instant emails telling them other donors had matching funds for them, and could they then match those too. You can read all about that in the link above.  I asked my husband is that what you call a Ponzi thing?  And he said no, but then I decided to look that up and I came up with this article from our own fab government so I could learn what that was, and you can read about that here on Pyramids from the FTC by Debra Valentine:

http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/other/dvimf16.shtm

So, how might a marketer use the internet to raise funds in such huge ways? Hmmm… I found this, from “Silicon Alley Insider” today with links to the people behind the brand.

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/clinton__obama_spend_little_on_web_ads

It turns out that a guy named Joe Rospars is behind Barack Obama’s marketing strategy.  And Rospars is on leave from here,  “Blue State Digital” — isn’t that interesting, SenatorTed Kennedy

http://www.bluestatedigital.com/

http://www.tedkennedy.com/page/-/splash/splash.html

is one of their clients! Wow.  Take a look down that left sidebar and you can get an insider’s view of Blue State Digital and some of the cutting edge methods they are using to promote their clients.  Obama’s fonts are close to Kennedy’s aren’t they?  Not quite the same, but close.  What is also interesting is something they have called “Party Builder.”

Well whatever Party Builder is, it seems to have been working in Obama’s favor, huh?  But what about the other members of the Democratic Party, like Hillary Clinton?  Is it helping build the Party as a whole, or just Obama?  I think the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times should do some articles on internet marketing and the Democratic Party.  Soon.

Now, remember how we talked about morphing logos in the Obama campaign?  Talk about fool the eye!  I have proof!

Right here from “Bad Ass Ideas” — you’ll love to see the way that logo morphs around depending who the target market is.  Why, it seems to adapt itself to all his core target markets, including little kids, huh?  It’s what you call a “launch” — like when you are launching something.  Look at that logo change!

http://www.badassideas.com/blog/2008/02/03/evolving-design-in-politics-the-brand-of-obama/

Look at that logo morphing!  And watch that logo get all animated too in the web!  The other candidates didn’t make use of animations on their sites in the same way.  I can’t stand the fact he has split up the Democratic party into branded segments.  It’s like a cheap shot, in a way.  Non-Democratic!

Here’s a little piece by Mark Walsh from “Online Media Daily” on who spent what…so far…in the web…

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=77360

And then, this read is interesting about Obama’s relationship to the blogoshere big bloggers!

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/07/opinion/main3801686.shtml

The last read of the day comes my way via Riverdaughter, and it’s from “The New Republic“

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aa0cd21b-0ff2-4329-88a1-69c6c268b304

So how does all of this add up?

I think we need to have the press take a much deeper look at the marketing, the money,  the FEC shutdown, and so forth so that the American People aren’t being hoodwinked by a splashy brand.

It’s not really about he who has the best target marketing wins THE PRESIDENCY, or is it?

Brand Obama-rama.  It just doesn’t work for me.