This Newsletter's Garbage
Doomscroll 11.3.2024
Happy Sunday! Welcome to another edition of Doomscroll! You guys…Did you think we’d ever get here? And hey - if you didn’t know, Krispy Kreme is giving out free donuts on Election Day, so go and treat yo’self!
This week’s Doomscroll is sponsored by RumbleUp!
One Question
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question! 81% of you think Donald Trump will win on Tuesday. The people have spoken! Well, at least Doomscroll readers…
This week’s One Question is very open-ended: Now that Election Day is basically here, what’s one big thing you’ve learned this election cycle? There’s going to be so_many_post-mortems written, but I want to get ahead of the curve. Hindsight is always 20-20, so I’m curious to see how you all answer this question without the bias of knowing how we did at the ballot box. Trust me, I’ll be asking this question again in the weeks and months to come.
So: What’s one big lesson you’ve learned so far? And you know what? It doesn’t have to be related to digital necessarily. I’ll even go first:
I learned that there’s a lot of really amazing people who work in our industry who are kind and talented and hard-working. And many of them read this newsletter, for which I am eternally grateful! 🤗🤗
Who’s Doing What
—Some nice garbage
I want to start by giving a high-five to everyone out there who had to scramble this week to scrap their regularly-scheduled programming and pivot to garbage. So…basically all of you. Good work! Got some epic emails. Got some clever texts from the Trump team. The campaign also spun up some sleek “Garbage” t-shirts. My millennial mind lol’ed at the subject line of one of the many emails that went out from Trump National Committee JFC that said “I’m on a garbage truck” since it gave me major “I’m on a boat” vibes. IYKYK.
—Oh, the mystery!
A “mysterious” new PAC filed with FEC on October 16, and has started running ads around Donald Trump’s abortion stance. I noticed the ads from RGB PAC this past week on Twitter - as did the media. I don’t know who’s behind this or funding it and frankly, at the moment, I don’t really care. We’ll find out soon enough. I wish this had spun up sooner! There’s SO much misinformation (buzzword city!) circulating around Trump’s (really any GOP candidate) position on abortion. It’s about time someone spend some serious dough (reportedly $20 million) to push back!
— “Communist” starts with “C,” too…
MORE America PAC controversy. Ok, I don’t have a problem with the c-word ad. It’s daring. It’s tongue-in-cheek. But after posting on X, it was subsequently deleted. My question is, why? Why cave and delete once it’s already out there? I don’t think deleting the video accomplished much of anything. This late in the game, if you’re going to post something you should be ready to stand behind it. If anyone has any good insight here, HMU! I’m curious.
—Influencer Organizing
Thanks to the loyal reader who flagged this video from conservative activist/personality Xaviaer DuRousseau. Apparently, this is a paid influencer ad coordinated through Urban Legend, which many of you are probably already familiar with (if not, look ‘em up!). This specific campaign is obviously being run by Sentinel Action Fund to get people to download the Numinar app so they can text their friends to get out and vote - and get paid for it. (Recall how I wrote about Numinar/Sentinel Action Fund/relational organizing a few weeks ago). This is a great way of marrying influencer marketing and relational organizing. LOVE IT.
P.S. Also note how there’s no disclaimer or disclosure that he’s being paid. Not saying that’s a bad thing per se, but it’s definitely a convo for another day! In the meantime, Fast Company just published a piece about this topic a few days ago. Read, if you’re so inclined.
—Email shout-out
I have to give a shout-out to the Mike Rogers campaign for this email that came through my inbox this week. Just...have to. It’s so hard to break through the noise right now, and this one broke through for me!
—Let’s not forget…
There are 11 gubernatorial races that will be decided on Tuesday as well: North Carolina, Indiana, New Hampshire, Vermont, North Dakota, Washington, Missouri, Utah, Montana, West Virginia, and Delaware. We all know what’s going on in North Carolina (womp womp). New Hampshire has been interesting to watch, but I think most polls point to a Kelly Ayotte victory. She’s gotten a ton of help from outgoing Gov. Chris Sununu and is ending the campaign hitting her opponent, Joyce Craig, on taxes. You can see the ad here. Of the open seats, Mike Kehoe seems to have a lock on his race in Missouri, as does Mike Braun in Indiana, and Kelly Armstrong in North Dakota and Patrick Morrissey in West Virginia.
Who’s Spending Where
P2P
This week’s text shout-out goes to the Trump campaign for the GOTV text I got on Saturday. I know it’s somewhat of a low bar, but I’m glad to see they’re on top of this! Phew.
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Industry Watch
Apple recently announced a bunch of new changes to its email apps. Read about them here. h/t Mike Hahn.
2024 Watch
This is where I make note of a few other things that caught my eye this week.
Preserve America PAC has a great ad out, once again, hitting Kamala for saying she wouldn’t do anything differently from Biden. Watch it here.
Eric Hovde has been churning out ALL the amazing content in the last week and I wish I could link it all, but this closing argument ad is really, really good. Watch it here.
Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who’s a shoe-in for North Dakota gov on Tuesday, has an interesting GOTV ad. Watch it here.
Remember Doug Ducey? Per Axios, his group Citizens for Free Enterprise, has been registering lots of Republicans to vote in Arizona. Read more here.
Not that this is news to any of us, but Republicans are still being outspent. Read more about it here.
Related: Politico has a write-up about Kamala Harris fundraising operation that’s…a little bit scary. Read it here.
The RNC is running “election integrity” ads on Facebook telling people to fill out a form if “something seems off on Election Day”. See an example here. See the form here.
Let’s all high-five Lily Tang for going viral at the perfect time. Will it be enough? Probably not? Who knows? Read more here.
The Grapevine
Rule number 1: Don’t run to The Daily Beast. Rule number 2: Don’t expect to remain anonymous. The GOP digital world is pretty freaking small, honey.
The Wall Street Journal published a how-to for actually getting campaigns to stop texting (RumbleUp’s Thomas Peters is quoted!). TL:DR - some vendors use “stop” replies as a green light to keep texting. Le sigh. Well...Any enterprising individual can take a look at the examples given in the WSJ story and do some basic digging to see who’s responsible for not honoring opt-outs…Maybe one of these days it’ll be worth doing some call-outs!
I love data as much as the next digital operative (GIVE IT ALL TO ME), but I wouldn’t necessarily call it super entertaining…That said, L2’s Paul Wescott talked all the data on a recent episode of the AAPC podcast that’s worth a listen. Unsurprising nugget: We’ve all been super interested in ticket-splitting models lately. SHOCKER.
SPOTTED: Politicoin’s Ken Mika in this CNN video about political texting! #Nice
Oof. Talk about an unforced error.
NPR doing lots of hand-wringing here, but all’s fair in love and war, right? Perhaps these ads wouldn’t be running if the left weren’t spending so much time lying about Project 2025. Just a hunch.
This acquisition is super interesting to note. H/T National Media’s Adam Wise, and recall the Q&A he did for Doomscroll readers about this a couple months ago!
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:
Courier Newsroom got the NOTUS treatment this week. Here’s a snippet:
The left-leaning media company Courier Newsroom is paying Snapchat to target users with unbranded clips of Kamala Harris and her campaign surrogates. At least one of the ads looks identical to an official Harris campaign ad and directs users to Harris’ campaign website. …
One Courier-funded ad shows Nevadans in front of Harris-Walz signs explaining why they’re voting for her. The minute-and-a-half-long clip cost more than $3,000 for about 180,000 users to see the ad and ends with, “Don’t forget to get involved by visiting go.KamalaHarris.com,” and flashes the distinctive, capitalized Harris-Walz logo.
So if I’m understanding this correctly: Courier Newsroom, which operates “news sites” in battleground states to push leftwing messaging, is running straight-up political ads that link to the Harris campaign website even though it’s been deemed a “press entity” and doesn’t have to register as a political committee with the FEC. I’ve been pretty A-OK with Courier thus far because I thought they were mostly transparent in their tactics and agenda. But this seems pretty freaking sketchy, IMO.
P.S. I know this Julia Roberts-narrated ad sparked some dumb reactions, but whatever…I am kind of offended by it too. Nothing that grinds my gears more than when people imply that the only reason Republican women exist is because we’re under the control of our husbands.
From the other side of the tracks:
I thought this piece in Digiday about a new advertising platform founded by two Gen Zers. Here’s a snippet:
You wouldn’t think that old-school marketing tactics on coffee cups and pizza boxes would appeal to social media natives like Gen Zers — yet that’s what a new ad marketplace for on-product campaigns is all about.
…
Founder Andrei Stenmark said he views Anvara as offering “guerilla marketing” at scale on everyday products and places that people are already exposed to — and it’s a way to stand out from the competition on social media and in other forms of digital ads. Everything from shipping boxes to paper towels, from sports stadium signage to branded ride shares are available and measurable on the platform. Stenmark said it works much like other ad marketplaces for commerce media or connected TV.
Why am I highlighting this?
It sounds like they already have an extensive waitlist of companies who are eager to try this.
Politics is always one step behind the corporate world…Is this kind of “guerilla marketing” in OUR future???
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!