New Progressive Politics

The Times ran a rather remarkable article today about the future of advertising.  An excerpt:

It is only a matter of time until nearly all advertisements around the world are digital.

Or so says David W. Kenny, the chairman and chief executive of Digitas, the advertising agency in Boston that was acquired by the Publicis Groupe for $1.3 billion six months ago.

Now Mr. Kenny is reshaping the digital advertising strategy for the entire Publicis worldwide conglomerate, which includes agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and the Starcom MediaVest Group and the global accounts of companies like Procter & Gamble, American Express, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors.

The plan is to build a global digital ad network that uses offshore labor to create thousands of versions of ads. Then, using data about consumers and computer algorithms, the network will decide which advertising message to show at which moment to every person who turns on a computer, cellphone or — eventually — a television.

More simply put, the goal is to transform advertising from mass messages and 30-second commercials that people chat about around the water cooler into personalized messages for each potential customer.

“Our intention with Digitas and Publicis is to build the global platform that everybody uses to match data with advertising messages,” Mr. Kenny said. “There is a massive transformation happening in the way consumers live and the data we have about them, but very few companies have stepped up to it yet.”

Publicis announced last Tuesday an important step in its digital plan: the acquisition of the Communication Central Group, a digital agency in China founded in 1995, for an undisclosed amount. The agency, to be called Digitas Greater China, will give Publicis a foothold in the Chinese advertising market, which analysts within Publicis estimate is growing at about 20 percent a year, much faster than global growth in the market, which hovers around 5 percent a year.

“There’s a chance to invest right now in China, India, Russia and Brazil, which will pay off big over the next five years,” Mr. Kenny said. “These economies are going to boom, and ads there are going to go directly to mobile and directly to the Internet.”

Beyond the growth potential, Publicis executives see these economies as important sources of low-cost labor for a Digitas subsidiary called Prodigious, a digital production unit that works with all agencies in the Publicis Groupe. Prodigious already uses workers in Costa Rica and Ukraine to produce copious footage for companies like G.M.

Greater production capacity is needed, Mr. Kenny says, to make enough clips to be able to move away from mass advertising to personalized ads. He estimates that in the United States, some companies are already running about 4,000 versions of an ad for a single brand, whereas 10 years ago they might have run three to five versions. And he predicts that the number of iterations will grow as technology improves....

It was a remarkable event this year.  Jam packed series of panels about everything under the sun, powerful speeches by Markos and Howard Dean, and of course the Presidentials.  As Markos said in his remarks people at Yearly Kos are becoming a community, and it was great to see old friends and meet so many new ones.  

NDN had a very strong presence at the convention.  We ran 4 panels and participated in a fifth.  We talked about globalization, immigration and did three panels on various aspects of what we call the new politics.   Joining us for our panels were incredible people - Joe Trippi, Jerome Armstrong, SEIU's Eliseo Medina, Cecilia Munoz of NCLR, former Kerry Communications Director Stephanie Cutter, John Amato of Crooks and Liars, Dan Manatt of PoliticsTV, FDL's Marcy Wheeler, the all around wonderful Julie Bergman Sender and of course our crew of Pete Leyden, Ron Shapiro and Joe Garcia.  Our sessions were well-attended, and I feel like we did a good job sharing our ideas and engaging with the folks at the convention. 

I want to congratulate Gina Cooper, blogmother, and organizer of Yearly Kos.  A little more than two years ago she had an idea to bring together the Kos community, and the broader progressive and netroots worlds.  In a short period of time this idea of hers has turned what now may be the most important - and certainly the most fun - annual gathering of people in progressive politics.  It is an extraordinary accomplishment. 

I can't wait till next year.

Last week it was the YouTube/CNN debates. This week it’s the YearlyKos gathering of the Netroots in Chicago. It’s been quite a summer for anything to do with New Politics. And we’re just gearing up for what certainly will be an eventful fall. The mainstream media has been focusing an enormous amount of attention on all this New Politics, and the New Politics Institute has been one place where they have turned to for insight into what is happening. With that in mind, we post some links to stories that have been done recently in which we helped out and were quoted. This does not include the new media of the blogs or online world, but more the traditional media of newspapers, television and radio. And many of the non-print interviews do not have a presence on the web so are not included. We keep a running tab of these various media sightings for the New Politics Institutes at our website at www.newpolitics.net on the “buzz” page. You can follow the media conversation there, or check out some of the links below. Thanks

BBC.Com – YouTube Changes Face of US Debate - July 23rd

US News and World Report – A Hair-Raising YouTube Duel - July 29th

The New York Times – In a Highly Complex World, Innovation from the Top Down - July 29th

US News and World Report - Cyberactivists a Must-See for Candidates - Aug 1st 

San Francisco Chronicle - YouTube Steals the Dem Debate - July 24th

KCRW Radio: To The Point with Warren Olney – Will YouTube Change the Substance of Presidential Politics? - July 24th

San Jose Mercury News – Tough questions for Democratic contenders from the YouTube crowd - July 24th

Mother Jones – Interview with Peter Leyden: New Politics Institute Director - June 29th

On the Media: New York Public Radio – Googlitics - June 15th

AP News via Tucson Citizen – Will YouTube revolutionize '08 presidential debates? Don't bet on it - July 27th

Last summer NPI launched a campaign to get progressives to adopt four key new tools that helped boost prospects in the 2006 campaign. Come to an event on July 27th in DC where we launch the campaign around this year’s set of four more tools and explain why they are important and how to easily get started using them.

This Stage II Campaign will expand to promote “Reimagine Video,” “Go Mobile,” “Leverage Social Networks,” and “Target Your Marketing.” We also will update our previous pitches to “Buy Cable,” “Engage the Blogs,” “Speak in Spanish,” and build on our earlier use Search Ads to become the broader “Advertise Online.”

Each Tool will have a short, practical memo to politicos about why this tool is important to leverage, and how to get started using them. The memos are written by practitioners who deeply understand the tools and how they can be used by politics. Many of these experts will be at the launch event to talk and answer questions. They include:

Jed Alpert, CEO and cofounder of Mobile Commons, which helps political people leverage mobile media, on “Go Mobile.”

Dan Manatt, CEO and Executive Producer of PoliticsTV.com, which focuses on internet TV for the Netroots, on “Reimagine Video.”

Laura Quinn, CEO of Catalist, which has built and operates a national voter database for progressives, on “Target Your Marketing.”

Henry Copeland, founder and CEO of Blogads, one of the very earliest ways to advertise on blogs, on “Advertise Online.”

Jerome Armstrong, founder of MyDD, one of the first political Blogs, and Coauthor of Crashing the Gate, on “Engage the Blogs.”

And Ali Weise, NDN Executive Director and former deputy director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, on “Buy Cable.”

The New Tools Campaign, Stage II
Friday, July 27
Phoenix Park Hotel
520 N Capitol Street, NW
10am - Noon
Light refreshments will be served

Please RSVP to Tracy Leaman at tleaman@ndn.org or 202-842-7213.

Feel free to spread this announcement around. The more progressives who understand the powerful new tools and new media we now have at our disposal, the better. Thanks.

The Presidential debate jointly sponsored by YouTube and CNN this evening represents a remarkable moment where new media finally takes its rightful place right alongside the old media. The symbolism of the moment will be as important as the practical outcome of this experiment in melding the best of the traditional political journalism world with the powerful new capabilities of the highly democratized and participatory world of web video.

I will be in South Carolina tonight to witness this coming of age in new media, represented by YouTube, the web video website owned by Google, which is the most prominent of a whole range of new media sites that are now making a big impact on American Politics. The New Politics Institute has been heralding this transition and the importance of these new tools since its inception more than two years ago. We have been helping progressives understand the magnitude of the changes happening in media and new digital technologies, as well as master the new strategies on how to successfully integrate these tools into politics.

For those who want a refresher before the debate on how these new tools play in politics, take a look at the report, videos of our public meetings, and other forms of content at our website at www.newpolitics.net or the various links to the side. Web Video itself has been the subject of quite a bit of recent content, including "The Exploding World of Web Video", a video from a recent event of ours that shows how web video is being used in politics. Then there's “Political Web Video World", an innovative video itself that gives an overview of more than a dozen categories of political activities where web video already is making its mark. Check out the written report by NPI Fellow Julie Bergman Sender on her approach to creating compelling web video, such as her famous “White House West” Will Ferrell impersonation of George W. Bush on a ranch in the lead-up to the 2004 election. Or check out our NPI blog, or the NDN blog, where Tuesday I will post my analysis on the debate and what made it different.

The week may start with the historic YouTube/CNN debate in South Carolina, but it will end Friday with an NPI event in Washington on the launch of Stage II of our New Tools Campaign. We will showcase eight new tools that are ready for widespread adoption by progressives at all levels of politics. We will build off last year’s tools - Buy Cable, Engage the Blogs, Speak in Spanish, and Advertise Online - by adding Re-imagine Video, Go Mobile, Leverage Social Networks, and Target Your Marketing. We will have experts speaking in DC, with video of the whole event, as well as practical memos about how to get started using these tools.

As the name of the debate indicates, the new politics will not be about the new media completely superseding the old, or the old media beating back incursions of the new. The new politics coming in this cycle and the decade to come will be about both old and new working together in unprecedented ways. The New Politics Institute will be there every step of the way, and we hope you will be there with us. Thanks.

The DC City Council approved a new leadership team for our public schools yesterday.  The Fenty-Rhee era of school reform, an era promising bold change, begins this week.  

As a parent of two kids in the DC public schools, I will be checking in from time to time on the new Chancellor's progress.  I for one am very excited about what Fenty and Rhee are talking about for our struggling schools. 

As we at NDN and the New Politics Institute often emphasize, the advent of new technology continues to reinvent politics. The ability to reach and speak to various groups of people has become easier because of emerging tools and strategies like microtargeting, an extremely sophisticated way of maximizing the relevance of a candidate's message to their desired audience.

Microtargeting has become more and more of an asset in politics due to its potential to yield results - results which have caught the eyes of presidential campaigns like Mitt Romney's. And the media has begun to pick up on it. This June article from the New York Times mentions Romney's use of microtargeting as part of his broader advertising strategy. More recently, Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post did an in-depth analysis of the Romney campaign's use of microtargeting, the follow-up to which is featured today on Cillizza's blog, The Fix.

These articles underscore the value of being able to deliver consumer-specific messages. This is why we also recommend using techniques like search advertising and spending advertising dollars on cable instead of broadcast television.

Conservative author and commentator Byron York weighs in today with a true must read.  It starts:

Let's say you're a Republican president, a bit more than midway through your second term. You're scrambling to salvage what you can of a deeply unpopular war, you're facing a line of subpoenas from Democrats in Congress and your poll ratings are in the basement. What do you do?

You estrange the very Republicans whose backing you need the most.

That's precisely what President Bush has managed to accomplish during the two big political developments of recent weeks: the commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence and the defeat of comprehensive immigration reform. But the president's problems with the GOP base go beyond those awkward headlines. Republicans aren't mad at Bush for the same reasons that Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the devotees of MoveOn.org are; there's no new anti-Bush consensus among left and right. No, conservatives are unhappy because the president allied himself with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) over an immigration deal that leaned too far toward amnesty for illegal immigrants. They're unhappy because Bush has shown little interest in fiscal responsibility and limited government. And they're unhappy, above all, because he hasn't won the war in Iraq.

All of this has left Republicans saying, at least among themselves, something blunt and devastating: It's over.

"Bush fatigue has set in," declares one plugged-in GOP activist.

"We're ready for a new president," says a former state Republican Party official in the South.

"There was affection," opines a conservative strategist based well beyond the Beltway, "but now they're in divorce court."

Read the rest here in today's Post. 

In the last several weeks NDN's arguments about American politics have been breaking through in powerful ways:

Immigration and its implications for the GOP - We are all deeply disappointed with the results of the immigration battle this year. However, the political aftermath of the debate has created a unique opportunity, one that may enhance our chances of reviving the bill, or even passing better immigration legislation, in the near future. NDN led an effort, capped by a joint press conference with NCLR last week, which demonstrated how the harsh tone of the immigration debate was pushing Hispanics away from the GOP, threatening their capacity to become a majority party in the 21st century. Our advice to the GOP throughout was "to sue for peace:" work with the Democrats to pass comprehensive immigration reform and minimize the damage to their brand in the Hispanic community, the fastest growing part of the American electorate. While we didn't win that battle, our efforts in the media had a significant impact on the interpretation of what happened as the bill collapsed last week.

The best example of our message success was a highly influential Wall Street Journal editorial last Wednesday, a day before the vote. But you can also find our presence and influence in articles in Newsweek, USNews, Congressional Quarterly and The New York Times, the LA Times (here and here), The St. Petersburg Times, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Salon (here and here), DailyKos, and The Hill. A national AP piece ran in dozens of papers across the country, and several of the stories above got picked up in major outlets like CBS News. This narrative also appeared in a front page story in USA Today last Thursday, and the New York Times on Sunday.

Reviewing these stories, it is clear the NDN team created and shaped the national narrative in these last few weeks around this very consequential immigration battle.

The emergence of a New Politics - Our large argument about how the big changes in three areas - governing agenda, media/tech/advertising and demography - are reinventing politics continued to drive media coverage of politics. Most prominently, a major NPR story by Mara Liasson highlighted NDN's extraordinary efforts to create a culture of investment to help create a 21st century infrastructure for progressive politics. Ron Brownstein's recent LA Times column featured our thinking about the emergence of a people powered politics. A recent New York Times article featured our commentary on the changing face of political advertising. A front page Washington Post story this week featured the thinking of NPI Fellow Tim Chambers, and referred to his excellent NPI paper on mobile media. And NPI Director Peter Leyden is featured in the current issue of Mother Jones where he discusses the potential of open-source politics.

NPI recently released an important new report, The Progressive Politics of the Millenial Generation, which Future Majority urges progressives to "make your bible for talking about young people in politics." A survey of young Americans by the New York Times/CBS News/MTV, released several days later, shows very similar statistics and comes to many of the same conclusions as our NPI report. If you haven't already read this important report, it certainly is worth a look.

All of this press has come in just the last few weeks. This year, NDN and its team has appeared in literally hundreds of stories in news outlets across the nation, in all types of media, in both Spanish and English. We have been quoted in front page stories of most major publications, including the New York Times Magazine, on topics ranging from globalization to the rise of Millennials to the emergence of viral video on the internet. Our Hispanic Strategy Director, Joe Garcia, was also part of the panel on Telemundo the night of the State of the Union.

The reason all this matters is that our work together is breaking through. NDN is not just imagining a better future for progressives, our point of view is being heard, driving the debate, having an impact. I am very proud of this powerful community we've built, together, and promise that we are working hard each and every day to usher in a better future for our politics and our nation.

Advertising takes another leap forward.  From the Times today:

Yahoo will announce new tools for online advertising today that could pull the company ahead in the race for what is called “behavioral targeting,” that is, the ability to better tailor online advertisements to the people most likely to buy.

The product, Yahoo SmartAds, would help marketers create custom advertisements on the fly, using information on individual buyers and information on real prices and availability from the vendors. For example, a person who had recently searched for information about blenders might see an ad from Target that gives the prices for the blenders that are on the shelves in the store closest to that person’s home.

The Internet has long promised this kind of one-to-one marketing, but it has often been difficult for advertisers to customize display advertisements with a broad reach.

“Ad agencies have been really struggling with how to scale the value proposition of the Internet,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of display marketplaces at Yahoo. “We now can get scaleable one-to-one marketing.”

The announcement of SmartAds also comes while Yahoo is recovering from an extensive reshuffling in the executive offices, including the departure of its chief executive, Terry S. Semel, and Wenda Harris Millard, the company’s longtime chief sales officer. Yahoo has struggled to catch up with Google in search advertising and has disappointed investors with its ad sales the past few quarters.

SmartAds is one attempt to catch up. Although the technology is complex, the goal of SmartAds is simple: show the right advertisement to the right person at just the moment that he is about to pull out his wallet to make a purchase.

SmartAds is being tested on Yahoo’s network of sites — which includes local newspapers as well as its own portal — by two major airlines, although Mr. Teresi would not name them. He said the system will be offered to other industries in the coming months, including automobile companies and retailers in the fall.

The technology will also be applied for free across advertisements bought on Right Media, the online ad exchange that Yahoo purchased this spring (although the deal is still pending). The new feature may give Right Media a competitive advantage over other exchanges — like a new one created by DoubleClick, the online company that Google agreed to purchase for $3.1 billion in April. (The Google-DoubleClick merger is pending an antitrust review by the Federal Trade Commission.)

This is how Yahoo’s new system works: the advertiser (or its agency) would provide Yahoo with the components of its display ads — including the logos, tag lines and images. The retailer would share information from its inventory databases that track the items on the shelves in each of its stores. Next, Yahoo would combine that data with the information it has about its users’ demographics and actions online to create a product-specific advertisement....

Read the rest of the piece here.