This morning I attended the Adfero Group's Winning in a Web World forum at the US Chamber of Commerce. The topic of this forum was "How Associations Engage Online in a Presidential Election." The half-day forum started out with a panel on User Generated Campaigns, featuring among others one of our newest TechPresident colleagues, Patrick Ruffini. Patrick was joined by David Almacy, who used to serve as the Internet and eCommunications Director for the White House and is now a digital media strategy consultant.

The conversation began with Adfero's Managing Partner Jeff Mascott's introduction of social media and the panel's view of the role of blogs in campaigns. Ruffini emphasized the value of the 24/7 blog news cycle to campaigns, as well as its value to opponent campaigns. Part of this value is due to who reads these blogs: reporters and political junkies, all of whom tend to have their own vast personal networks. Almacy added that a key characteristic of this audience is that it tends toward younger audiences, but "do not count out the late-Boomers."

Almacy reported results of a survey that differentiated why and how late-Boomers use the web compared to their younger counterparts. One conclusion was the Boomers are looking to the web to develop their professional careers, while the Gen Xers and Millennials are looking to get famous.

A question from the audience honed right in on the crucial issue of message control and the difficulty of maintaining it online. Almacy noted an example of how the courts allowed bloggers to attend the Scooter Libby trial as a way to bypass the mainstream media filter. Ruffini followed up commenting on how campaigns may engage in social media "seeming" authentic in order to further cut through the filter.

Authenticity keeps coming up as a key characteristic of effective online communication. Ruffini suggested that bloggers' ability to be influential hinges on their authenticity and that which bloggers a campaign reaches out to should be driven by this consideration.

Almacy told us he would occasionally call negative email writers to the White House, offering to connect them with officials who could clarify their misconceptions. By doing so, he was able to convert online communication into a powerful direct touch with a citizen.

At this point, the third panelist, Mark Tapscot, of The Examiner, joined the panel, having finally triumphed over the traffic. In addition to being a traditional journalist, Tapscott also writes his own blog. Tapscott commented on the power of blogs to shake the political world, referring to the take down of Dan Rather over the allegedly fraudulent Texas National Guard documents indicating President Bush's lack of attendance.

As an aside, I heard Mary Mapes explain in an interview on Democracy Now that she had been able to find several other documents in the Texas National Guard archives that used the same "discredited" font. Hmmm. Maybe the lesson is that blogs can launch attacks that may be later discredited, but have immediate impact that is so strong no one ever pays attention to the exonerating evidence presented after the scandal passes. Seems the rapid resonse to the response must also be powerful to counteract the effect.

When I asked a question referring to Mapes subsequent research into the archives, the responses ranged from a repeat of the assertion that spacing and kerning alterations were not possible with typewriters, despite Mapes addressing this issue specifically in her research, to a total dismissal of anything she says because she should have done the research before the story aired and since she was fired from CBS she must have been wrong (kind of a "CBS can do no wrong when they fired her" position juxtaposed with a "CBS did wrong running the story in the first place" position).

Back to the main topic at hand...

The conversation shifts to how associations can get their message heard above the din of the media carnival. Ruffini brought it right back to the use of social media to bypass the media filter. He referred to a YouTube video within the past week that soared from no views to over a million in just a week, a feat that is staggering by any measure (can you say "crush?"). But while launching a video that goes viral is an awesome way to be heard, I am still listening for someone to tell me how to make something go viral on purpose (if you have not heard fellow TechPresident contributor Zack Exley's presentation on why "Nothing is Viral," I strongly recommend it.

Thus ends the first panel.

The second panel brought together the e-advocacy strategists for three associations/advocacy groups: Barry Jackson of AARP, Colin Moffett from Strong American Schools, and Hiedi Hess and Neel Lattimore from the Children's Defense Fund. The topic was leveraging the election to direct attention to issue campaigns.

Jackson opened talking about how AARP has started using humor in its online campaigns. Humor, like calling their issues and elections website "DontVote.com." Additionally, he talked about a new AARP-led coalition campaign called Divided We Fail (you may have seen the TV commercials featuring the campaign's mascot, the donkaphant, elekey, whatever....)

The campaign is doing what they can to connect with the candidates in order to drive their issues higher on the candidate's policy priorities. Following industry best practices, the campaign is integrating online and offline tactics to mobilize both their internal and external audiences (note: AARP's internal audience includes forty million members). AARP has also surveyed its membership to identify its online media consumption patterns. While many members are active online, others are asking questions like, "What's a blog?" in response to the survey.

In the next few months, AARP will be seeking to raise awareness of the Divided We Fail campaign, especially in the early primary states. And Patrick Ruffini's comment in the first panel that AARP is not a likely candidate for a MySpace campaign notwithstanding, in fact, AARP is exploring such a campaign. After all, even young people will eventually retire, they will have retired parents and grandparents soon enough, and given budget issues, government policies to help seniors compete with other programs affecting younger citizens. Thus the title of the campaign, "Divided We Fail," has yet another sub-text.

Next up was Colin Moffett of Strong American Schools. SAS recognizes that user generated media is a reality and must be incorporated into its strategy. Its ED in '08 campaign features a pseudo candidate named Ed who is running on a platform to focus the candidates' attention on education issues. And Ed is "you," as in Time Magazine's person of the year.

Ed is using Eventful.com in its campaign, as are most of the candidates, to create offline events around the issue and the elections. Ed is also using YouTube, Facebook, and Second Life. (Note: The other Ed in the campaign, John Edwards, is running a contest on Eventful... more on that in a future post).

Hess and Lattimore of Children's Defense Fund were up next. CDF is planning an integrated campaign using earned media and "viral" online media. CDF is running Susie Flynn for President. She is running on a platform to provide health insurance to the 9 million uninsured children (Susie is also a child, of course). In addition to her own website, she has a MySpace page and her own YouTube channel. And following best practices, each of these social network profile pages, groups, and channels provide links back to her website and the petition that resides there. So far, they have 19,000+ signatures, which can be seen on a Google Maps mash-up.

In response to the lack of childrens issue-related questions on the candidate debates, the site offers Susie's responses to questions Brian Williams might have asked. And voters are invited to ask more questions of Susie in her online debate.

So whether associations and advocacy groups run their own fictional candidates to draw attention to their issues or run an issues campaign that targets the campaigns, along with the public, the potential for using the elections to draw greater public attention to issue campaigns is great.

I wonder, when the primary dust settles and we move into the general election, will Ed and Susie team-up to create an Independent ticket for President and Vice President running on a children's issue platform? To me, it seems like a natural fit.

The Q&A once again focused on authenticity and how fictional candidates can be authentic. CDF's Lattimore emphasized that Susie, an actress, is a spokesperson who draws people into the campaign website where they can read real stories and real voices from real people. Perhaps the lesson here is that issues, being abstract, have more flexibility in using fictional devices to tell their story than candidates, though Ronald Reagan did manage to get away with telling stories he thought were real, but were actually from movies he had seen. I suppose that wouldn't fly today.