The Content Wars of 2024
Doomscroll 4.14.2024
Happy Sunday and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll! May the doom scrolling commence!
One Question
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about P2P texting! I got a TON of responses, so let’s dive right in.
A whopping 68% of you agreed that using threats, fake matches, and not honoring opt-outs are a “huge problem” and those who do it should be “publicly shamed.” Well, I can’t necessarily help with the public shaming part, but I hear your frustration! Another 60% of you are extremely concerned about donor fatigue and the size of the GOP donor pool. 100% of those who responded said anyone sending political text messages should absolutely honor unsubscribe requests. AHEM. Glad we sorted that out!
In terms of who’s to blame for the mess that can sometimes be P2P texting (in terms of donor complaints), 58% of you said you blame everyone: the vendors, the campaigns themselves, the texting platforms, etc etc. At least we’re all in this together, I guess?
A bunch of you also submitted additional thoughts. Like, a lot of thoughts. It’s clear this subject struck a nerve, and honestly I could devote an entire newsletter JUST to publishing the essays you all wrote me this week about P2P texting. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll do spin-off Doomscrolls where I do just that, and publish all the comments that have yet to see the light of day :)
Tonight though, I’ll just be publishing some excerpts (and it’s still A LOT). Thank you to EVERYONE who took the time to opine about this issue, though. I appreciate the effort and thoughtfulness that goes into it! And just in case anyone ever wonders why I never reach out personally and respond - just remember everything I get via the One Question form is 100% completely anonymous!
There are so many bad faith actors not following carrier requirements, especially with 10 DLCs, that they’re causing deliverability issues for the rest of us. I kept getting unsubscribed from clients’ lists and we finally discovered it’s because I was on someone else’s list and they kept getting flag by my carrier for being spammed.
The problem is there’s very little emphasis on copy writing & content. I’ve talked to higher level people across agencies and at committees, and very few believe the actual product we’re putting out is the most important element. Reporting, audience segmentation, or a new WinRed feature will never cover up crappy content. This in turn forces copywriters to be lazy. When you’re behind your goal, it’s easy to throw a 15x matching bandaid on your EOM content.
I think this is a product of the fact that we've had the same candidate at the top of the ticket for 3 presidential election cycles now.
I'll start with reality: Spam is the name of the game in politics. If you're a direct mail donor, you're getting spammed. Email? Spam. P2P? Spammed 7x in an hour. It sucks major ass, but there is no escaping it other than: A) passing a law like CAN-SPAM for peer to peer that covers vendors, campaigns, and third parties and B) the campaigns, who have total control over their brands, stepping in and actually doing something. B) will never happen-- the campaigns are too addicted to the cash to do anything even if it's less than it was three years ago. … I think it is wrong to assume the pool of donors on the GOP side is shrinking substantially-- this is an often repeated soundbite that has very little evidence other than the overall money raised on the right has declined for the past few years...but that trend can also be matched by the drop in Democratic giving. What is overlooked is the implication of that last sentence: people are pretty fucking down on politics right now. We all know this, but woefully few of us are saying it. For the right, this is added to the fact that we've had 8 years of MAGA 10x Matches with no change. You have to be insane to think that will consistently produce at the same rate for any candidate almost a decade later.
My final, bonus point in this tome is one that is an absolute wildcard, yet something we are forced to deal with constantly on the right. I know of at least one vendor who uses no fewer than 4 different deployment services (services, not aggregators) for p2p. Why? Simple: platforms and phone carriers are VERY harsh to anything right of Susan Collins, and will shut down our content with zeal before they even touch anything on the left. … The result: digital vendors attempting to bend over backwards to ensure delivery would just spam the shit out of someone to get something, anything, through the opposing goalkeepers. A race to the bottom produced in an environment that is outwardly hostile to us.
P2P donor experience in 2024 is like trying to walk to your car after work and being hassled every day by the same 27 homeless people all shaking you down for money. You can say No, take a different route to your car, change parking garages - it doesn’t matter. They still follow and shake you down.
We are already seeing the results of the disrespect for unsubscribes in the tightening rules and controls by the carriers. If we continue to disrespect the consumer/donor further, the carriers will restrict us more to protect their customers. Sorry, but the Trump campaign and the RNC are leading the charge on that - they totally disrespect peoples will and they will - particularly because "Orange Men = bad" - cause the carriers to cut our side off. The Dems training material is recommending to people NOT to over saturate people with Txts..
The number of texts I receive from just the Trump campaign are excessive, not including senators, RNC, etc. It all bleeds together and I ignore them all. If I'm that annoyed as a comms person at the volume, the average small donor must be completely fatigued.
The content that some campaigns and committees are putting out are so frustrating as a list vendor. Time and time again, GOOD convincing copy works. Not “1,000,000x match activated for 15 min before big tech deletes it!”. Like seriously what are we doing here? Also stop riding off trumps name, find a new hook. It’s tired. Copy should make donors happy and hopeful about what they are giving to. This gimmicks are old and lazy.
Start engaging people (petitions, open ended questions, etc). Treat them like people. And please....segment your lists if you are using broadcast texting. Donors and non-donors need different messages!
Important context - everyone seems to be talking about texting in a vacuum. The explosion in texting is a direct result of big tech blockading us (mostly republicans, but also dems) at the email inbox. So, resources are now diverted to vastly more expensive texting channel because it is a result driven effort. Look back at the Rubio pilot program with Gmail and see the massive returns when they whitelisted his emails - I think donations were +70%.
I'm surprised "not unsubscribing" is a thing - the platforms i've used automatically unsubscribe if they use the right words. I manually unsubscribe people who don't use the specific words - why should clients pay to piss people off who don't want to get texts?
This week’s One Question is a little existential…and inspired by a recent episode of Wes Donehue’s Campaign War Stories podcast. In the episode, Wes and longtime digital guru Corey Vale end up chatting about how digital has evolved in the last 12ish years - and how we define digital on a campaign has even changed drastically since the days of Obama hope and change. So it got me wondering: How do we, as an industry, really define ourselves these days? And to take it a step further, do you think campaigns will even have digital teams in the future or will digital be so ingrained in every aspect of campaigning that every department will basically be a digital department?
And not to get on too much of a tangent, but I see this merge happening most rapidly between comms and digital, as much as it pains me (I’m not even going to touch the TV buying thing right now, lolllll). AND I’m reminded of it every time a comms director insists on reviewing my fundraising emails.
Here’s what I mean: Digital teams are basically comms shops these days, with a lot of added technical expertise around things like video production, email deliverability, and ad buying. But like it or not, digital IS comms, in terms of the sheer volume of content we push out that’s balanced with the need to STAY ON MESSAGE. The only real difference is digital teams talk to voters and comms teams talk to the media (more or less). That, and I doubt the average comms director has any idea what a DSP is. But still, if you’ve been in digital for any amount of time, chances are you’ve noticed some, um, tension between digital and comms. I think it’s because of this very issue. Like it or not, digital is a part of everything - and everyone knows it. I could go on, but won’t. For your sake and mine!
Who’s Doing What
—Can’t stop, won’t stop
Donald Trump has always loved speaking directly to camera, and this week he went on a tear. Someday, somewhere, in the not too-distant future, a political science professor is going to teach a course on how Trump revolutionized the way politicians communicate with voters (you heard it here first, folks!). I know he gets some grief for these, but content aside, I actually think they’re kind of great. (side note: call me old fashioned, but I thought Republicans did want to get rid of Obamacare and NOT make it “stronger”?). More and more candidates are taking notice, too. Just look at how Kari Lake announced her “new” abortion stance this week. Look at how WI Senate candidate Eric Hovde responded to Biden’s student loan cancellation scheme. Gone are the days of things called press releases. Why not just post a video instead? What’s more, this is a key way the Trump campaign can and will draw contrast with Joe Biden. Biden can’t do these videos. He can’t speak directly to the camera and his team can’t post anything that doesn’t have a million jump cuts. Also, fwiw, the media can talk all they want about how Biden stopped at a Cook-Out in North Carolina, but is there close-up audio or visuals of the man ordering 30 milkshakes and chicken and picking up the tab for everyone in the room?? I think not. Look, all I’m saying is there’s a knee-jerk reaction among some of us (I’ve been guilty myself) to cringe over these videos. But lately…I’m changing my tune.
—Wild, wild Washington
Raise your hand if you’ve been paying attention to the Washington state gubernatorial race. Ok…I can’t really raise my hand, either. BUT! That’s about to change, my friends. A recent poll has Republican frontrunner Dave Reichert ahead of his main Democrat challenger, Bob Ferguson. Other polls show him neck-in-neck. Could this be the sleeper race of the cycle?!? Maybe!?
Anyway, I’m giving Reichert major props for his digital presence. His website is slick and he’s got some nice, if basic, merch. I like it. His recent video, which I 100% missed when it first came out earlier this month, is one of the best I’ve seen lately. It’s so intense. Maybe too intense, and yet it works. If I could, I would send it to every Republican candidate running in a Democrat state to use as a blueprint:
Note how the state has been under one-party rules for decades
Note everything that’s going wrong
Note the need for change
Highlight your background
Lump your opponent in with the party that let everything go to hell in a hand basket
End with how the best person to deliver real change. Drastic change.
Also doesn’t hurt if your candidate can deliver his lines like he’s up for Best Actor at the Golden Globes.
Dave Reichert, I salute you, sir!
—Please sir, can I have some memes?
I love when candidates utilize memes on social, and this week, my new King of Content, Eric Hovde, did me a solid:
—Who’s ready for 2025?
Me, me! Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who came shockingly close to unseating Phil Murphy in 2021, just launched his second campaign for New Jersey governor. Good for him. I sincerely hope second time’s the charm. He put out a pretty decent announcement video, too, though I’m knocking a few points off for the fact that Ciattarelli never speaks directly on camera himself. That’s a little bit of a faux pas in my book!
2024 Roundup
This is where I make note of a few other things that caught my eye this week.
Senate Leadership Fund and One Nation raised a combined $51 million in that 3 months. Not bad. Read more about it here.
DeSantis is saying he’ll fundraising for Trump. Read more here.
The RSCL said it raised $12 million in the first quarter of 2024. Congrats! Read more here.
Clear Choice PAC released a 60-second spot hitting RFK Jr. Watch it here.
Who’s Spending Where
From April 5-11, Americans for Prosperity was the top conservative spender on Facebook ads, at $165,000. The majority of their ads are lead-generation and they’ve got some new ones about Biden’s electric vehicle mandate. Second place goes to PragerU, which spent just over $82,000 on ads. Trump National Committee JFC spent around $75,000 on fundraising ads through Lara Trump’s page. Fourth and fifth place go to AFP Action ($65,000) and I Love My Freedom ($51,000).
During that same time period, Trump Save American Joint Fundraising Committee was the top spender on Google ads, at $90,000. Trump National Committee JFC spent about $67,000, while AFP Action spent $62,000. Americans for Prosperity came in fourth place at $60,000, while pro-Mike Braun group Hoosiers for Opportunity Prosperity and Enterprise Inc (wow that’s a mouthful!) spent about $55,000.
P2P
Industry Watch
So…this is an interesting application of AI. Per Politico:
Activist groups are using a typical advocacy tool — voicemails to members of Congress — with a new, uncomfortable twist: They’re from the deceased victims of gun violence, generated by artificial intelligence. …
The voice memos feature six victims of gun violence, including those killed in mass shootings, suicide, and people like 15-year-old Ethan Song, whose accidental death was the result of an unsecured gun in 2018 in Connecticut. The digital rendition of Ethan’s voice briefly explains his passion for helping animals and people and the inability to continue to “help anyone in need anymore.” It quickly segues into a plea to lawmakers to “finally do something to protect kids from guns” and a warning to members of Congress that if gun reform bills aren’t passed, they face the risk of being voted out.
Woof. Talk about uncomfortable. Still…it’s interesting, right? Can campaigns use AI to generate voice messages from their candidate if the candidate is too busy to record them him/herself? What about a message from Ronald Reagan or Antonin Scalia? I don’t know…it just seems like there's a lot of applications - good and bad - for those willing to put in the time and effort.
The Grapevine
RumbleUp is hiring a client support specialist. See the job posting here.
Apex Strategies is also hiring, so slide into those DM’s if you’re interested!
Brock Lowrance is now in charge of the NRSC’s IE operation. Congrats, Brock! Read more about it here.
NOTUS reported on the drama within the Arizona Republican Party (TBH, when is there NOT drama). Read the story here.
And in case you need a refresher on programmatic ad buying…this is a pretty good one.
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
Lest anyone think it’s only Republicans who deal with inter-party squabbling over P2P fundraising, Dem operative Josh Nelson posted on LinkedIn this week something that I thought was worth flagging.
The post, which you can read for yourself here, notes how the liberal Save Democracy PAC is responsible for sending out super spammy texts to Democrat activists. And as of February 29, the group had dispersed a little over $1.2M in funds. The catch? Basically none of that spending went to actual campaigns. Writes Nelson:
None of that has been spent on independent expenditures in support of or opposition to a candidate. And none of the top 10 recipients of that cash Democratic campaigns.
So who did the money go to?
The biggest beneficiary of Save Democracy PAC's fundraising is Mothership Strategies, which received a whopping $541,492.25 for "text message services", "email services" and "digital consulting." That sum makes up 43.89% of every dollar the PAC has spent so far this cycle. Nearly half!
Yikes.
ALSO, I had to flag this NBC News piece that’s been making the rounds about the Biden campaign’s strategy to prioritize content over in-person events. Read it here and remember: the Content Wars of 2024 are upon us.
From the other side of the tracks:
Came across this other LinkedIn post that went viral recently. Surreal, which makes “health cereal,” posted about their horrible sales and social media stats. And…yes it went pretty viral. I think this is hilarious and could totally be worth doing for the campaign that’s brave enough to do it! (example: 9 out of our last 10 emails raised $0. Help us!)
Ha. If you test copy like this, HMU and let me know!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!