David Carr, one of my favorite columnists, points out in today’s New York Times that the embarrassment of riches the Obama campaign is heaping upon television broadcasters is about to come to an abrupt, and unwelcome, halt.
Broadcasters, like their brethren in financial services, are no doubt are preparing for their own revenue apocalypse with similar grace.
From the piece:
“Last week, the Obama campaign surpassed the record in advertising spending set by the Bush campaign in 2004, and the end of the campaign has yet to be counted. These final days are when campaigns spend the most to influence the least — those last few undecided voters.
By some estimates, Senator Obama will have spent $250 million on local, cable and network television in just five months, a rate of advertising that outstrips Burger King, Apple and Gap on an annualized basis. And it dwarfs the $188 million that President Bush spent in 2004.
Campaign advertising comes and goes in two-year cycles, with presidential years being a particular bonanza, and then it reliably goes away. But the bubble was bigger this year: In the last presidential election cycle, all political advertising spending was about $1.7 billion. This year it will be $2.5 billion, according to current estimates. The bullish year in broadcast political bull has served as something of a Band-Aid on a hemorrhaging ad market. Pulling that bandage off on Nov. 5 is going to hurt."
As I wrote last February in The Brand Called Obama, it was the campaign’s unusual deftness with internet and new media that ultimately fueled this huge cash bonanza. Traditional advertising may be straight from the playbook, but for a candidate who was largely unknown - and was never going to woo the big money Dem donors initially promised to Hillary Clinton - a direct introduction to voters was his only shot. (And it’s worked. Obama is looking for places to spend money at this point.) But as powerful as television advertising is, it is the great two-way conversation that occurs on the internet that remains the Obama campaign's greatest achievement.
Deserving of special mention is the campaign’s remarkable use of video as the ultimate media weapon, one which has helped the campaign cheaply and effectively raise cash, create a formidable ground operation, and ultimately, get out the vote.
Last summer, I interviewed Obama’s director of field video, Arun Chaudhaury, at an event sponsored by Frog Design. The 32 year old filmmaker has had a remarkable ride – literally, learning to drive so he could make the trek between Chicago and Iowa - documenting the campaign in real time, and shaping the candidate's brand image in powerful ways.
You can watch the conversation in its entirety here.
Chaudhaury and the entire video team has been busy. As of this posting, the organization has churned out more than 1,678 videos, getting an astonishing 87.5 million views -nearly four times that of the McCain campaign. (This does not include the many thousands more that have been generated by supporters.) Even more remarkable, says Chaudhaury, is that for a video to be counted as “viewed” it has to be seen in its entirety. Nor is this just for the kids. Chaudhary reported being astonished to discover that the average Obama video viewer is 45-55 years old, who was watching - and forwarding - mostly long form videos such as speeches, unscripted moments and media interviews.
The campaign has also gone to extraordinary lengths to include regular people in their videos – turning them into media stars themselves - something that the McCain campaign has grasped only late in the game, with their “I Am Joe” video.
Nothing has escaped documentation - like this shaky-the-cameraman-video of Obama addressing his volunteers. This get out the rally video was followed within 24 hours with this video of the event itself. The Obama campaign has turned itself a full fledged media organization - a fact which should make broadcasters truly hungry for their fingernails.
But, as members of the Obama campaign told me before Super Tuesday, their biggest challenge early on in Iowa was simply teaching young voters the simple things, like what a caucus was, what they were expected to do there, and how they could get there and back. (A great example - Citizen’s Guide to the Iowa Caucus – a charming throwback to those hideous film loops some of us had to watch in grade school.)
"What we were able to do, for very little money, was just get people up to speed on the basic process," I was told. Of course, reaching out to people on their existing social networks - like Facebook - made sure that new voters had fun and managed to get rides home. "And now, they're hooked on the promise of a participatory democracy."
Rita Gunther McGrath, a reader from NYC (and an associate professor at the Columbia Business School) writes:
"There I was, in my favorite local wine shop, and attempted to pay by check (as I usually do – they charge more if you pay by credit card). The young man, a new employee, serving me, said “Oh, I don’t know if we can accept checks any more – in this last month, we’ve had a huge increase in bounced checks.” Bounced checks at the liquor store – a sure sign of down times. Oh, and the manager did OK my check, eventually. I guess when life looks glum and you can’t think of a better solution, getting some hooch and drowning your sorrows looks pretty attractive."
Rita is the author of the forthcoming Discovery Driven Growth (2009 Harvard Business School Press). Check out http://ritamcgrath.com for her books, bio and blog.
In the grand tradition of Dear John letters, anchor sign-offs and birdflip manifestos, Andrew Lahde has broken new ground.
The head of a Santa Monica based hedge fund bearing his name, Lahde quit the business after posting an 870% gain last year. His good-bye letter to, well, everyone became a viral hit in the last two days as he took a victory lap by delivering a body blow to the deeply flawed system and people that allowed him to rake in more than his share.
From the letter:
" Recently, on the front page of Section C of the Wall Street Journal, a hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy, only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."
And then, some advice:
"I will no longer manage money for other people or institutions. I have enough of my own wealth to manage. Some people, who think they have arrived at a reasonable estimate of my net worth, might be surprised that I would call it quits with such a small war chest. That is fine; I am content with my rewards. Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life."
He also calls for the legalization of marijuana and for George Soros to form an alternative government.
"The car business is in the dumper - a local dealer offered me a 2009 used Nissan Murano ($45,000 sticker) for $20,000 yesterday and offered to buy it back in three months for $17,000. Gas hog, otherwise I would have considered it."
Last week, London’s tabloidy News Of the World broke the story of a handful of AIG executives who dropped a bundle on a cushy partridge hunting retreat, of all things, at a tweedy English country manor. The newspaper sent “undercover investigators” to catch the eight “fat cats” fiddling while the rest of the world burns:
“The recession will go on until about 2011—but the shooting was great today and we are all relaxing fine.”
Another, AIG chief Alvaro Mengotti, who later repeatedly LIED that he hadn’t been on the trip of shame, slurped fine wine as he kept pace with the world crash on his Blackberry mobile.
“It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better,” he sighed before heading off with the eight-strong AIG party in tweeds to gun down some birds.
Ouch. Hardly a glam junket, but still not smart, what with NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo on the case. Plus, it’s just a little creepy.
And with the largest government bail-out in history still unfolding, does a campaign accusation of socialism really make sense?
All this leads me to a question: When was the last time you witnessed a genuine act of penance? Not the auto-generated Catholic school confessional kind that made virtually no impression on anyone, but an actual expression of remorse?
While hiking on Saturday, I literally stumbled upon an interesting tale of penance – which got me thinking about all this. On an early morning walk through the Ward Pound Ridge Reservation, my friends and I came upon a sign leading us off the trail to something called the “Leatherman’s Cave.”
The story turned out to be as tragic as it is romantic. The Leatherman was a man who wandered through Connecticut and Hudson River Valley in the mid 1860s. He trudged a 365 mile circular route, sleeping outside in as many as 100 different caves (some of which, like the one we found, still exist) and occasionally visiting homes along the way for a bit of food. After he mumbled his thanks, he pressed ahead on his appointed rounds. He wore, as the story goes, a suit of heavy leather. The extraordinary thing – he arrived in the same location every 34 days, and traveled his clockwise route for nearly 30 years.
Here is what we think we know: The Leatherman was actually a man named Jules Bourglay, who had been driven to a life of penance from a failed business and a broken heart.
Originally from Lyon, he had fallen in love with a young woman of a higher station; his pleas for for her hand in marriage were sniffed off by her parents. Finally, they relented: If he proved himself worthy by working in their lucrative leather business, they would consent.
Bourglay did well, and was given more responsibility, including a bit of nineteenth century arbitrage – supervising large purchases of leather in the open market. But, after an unusually large purchase, the market price of leather dropped precipitously overnight. The reason was technology – a new chemical compound had been developed that could tan leather more quickly, cheaply and easily, and Bourglay didn’t know. Suddenly, he was stuck with leather that could only be sold at a loss. His intended’s family business in ruins and his prospects for love destroyed, Bourglay left their estate in shame. How he ended up in Connecticut is anybody’s guess, but in short order he began his penance trek, becoming an odd, if sympathetic, fixture every 34 days.
These days there are so many people "to blame" for the mess we’re all in: Wall Street, Main Street, ratings agencies, Congress, regulators, liars loan-makers and the liars who lapped them up. Maybe you and me. Although it would be hard to imagine Alan Greenspan, Christopher Cox, Angelo Mozilo, AIG pheasant hunters or Stan O’Neal, just to name a few, casting themselves on an endless trek, it might be satisfying, or at least comforting, to see someone at least look penitent. Even if it was just public relations for our own broken hearts.
It began with the shock of recognition that every woman dreads: A lump, found while showering. Wrote artist Vicki Behm, "the first image that popped into my head was Mr. Clean. What will I look iike bald? And who will I look like? Telly Savalas? Yul Brynner? Homer Simpson? G.I. Jane?"
Behm was 57 years old when she was diagnosed with stage IIa invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer. An artist and teacher, she chose to turn her nine month journey through the madness of diagnosis, surgery and recovery into an illustrated notebook that unfolds as part travelogue, part medical chart, and part love letter to the people and practitioners who shared her adventure.
"Chemo involved many pills, blood vials, and drips in each five-hour session. I always invited a friend along for bedside dinner and a movie on my MacBook. Jean-Luc and I dined on Badlucci's pate, cheese, fruit, and Young Frankenstein. Rachel and I watched Grey Gardens with Caesar salads and fresh pineapple."
A subsequent project highlights her fight with the terrifying congestive heart failure that may have been caused by the cancer drugs that saved her life.
Behm credits her husband, Glenn, (a former editor of mine) with being her rock. "[He] has been the dream husband: long back rubs, flowers and a Balthazar croissant now and then." But she has been through the ringer - she now has to wear a defibrillator vest everywhere she goes which will shock her now permanently damaged heart, should it suddenly fail - all of which she documents with vivid detail and humor. "I'm still wearing the sexy harness with heavy battery pack and will be popping pills forever. But a dark cloud has passed over our heads and things are clear..."
Check out this extraordinary video – a motion-graphical interpretation of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The video was created to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its adoption by the United Nations. (More on that below.)
The poignant piece - virtually no one knows about the Declaration or its history. Can the YouTube age keep the conversation going?
I found some background on the artist and his method at Cool Hunting: To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CH friend and colleague Seth Brau recently completed the rather daunting task of bringing the words to life with motion graphics. The result is on one hand elegant — using a two-tone palette, linear — and on the other an experimental take on scale, the use of typography and symbolism.
Given complete creative freedom and a little over a month's time, Seth used a mix of After Effects and Illustrator to seamlessly connect the 30 articles of the document into a captivating piece. In this case, no plan was the best plan. Seth comments, "There were times when I had no idea what I was going to do for the next section of the document. I would churn out something that I would hate but in that process I would come up with the idea, layout or imagery for something I ended up developing and liking."
To recreate the feeling of an older document Seth chose a simple color palette of black against a textured tan and kept it modern with Helvetica. "Originally, I hoped using to a two-color scheme would simplify the process but it actually ended up making things harder because creating single color imagery, especially when it's the the same color of the text, was very challenging." He proved up to the challenge, creating a dynamic flow between the text and the morphing illustrations that impels the viewer to follow along. Using the text itself as a graphic element that shifts and plays across the screen, both pays homage to the original document and cleverly blurs the line between words and images. The melodic music, "Minds Awake," by Rumspringa off Cantora Records is also nice touch.
The anniversary of the Declaration offers a poignant reminder of how far we’ve come and how little has changed. The movement for an international declaration of human rights arose out of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust; before that, the notion had largely been considered a domestic issue. The concept was first raised by President Roosevelt in a 1941 speech to Congress in which he outlined four freedoms that could never be abridged - freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. His wife, Eleanor, took up the greater cause with the United Nations, which ultimately ratified the Declaration in 1948.
Finger pointing and blame-gaming are traditional political fare. But last night's debate was a missed opportunity to talk about the foreclosure crisis in real detail.
There is perhaps no more important, or emotional, indicator of the health of a community than the solvency of their homeowners and landlords. Clusters of abandoned homes have a destructive ripple effect that can depress entire zip codes for decades. Lower property values and decreased tax revenue lead to property abandonment, absentee landlordism, small business closures, vandalism and crime. Once the cycle starts, it’s hard to stop.
And times are terrifying – one housing expert recently told me that some 20 million mortgages are underwater, meaning that their homeowners owe more than what the home is currently worth. Regardless of what we think we know about who these people are or how we got here, the fall out is going to be severe. And it's going to hit cities particularly hard.
The Center for Responsible Lending has a powerful interactive tool that looks at the estimated fallout from the foreclosure crisis state by state – specifically in terms of lost home value and tax revenue. The potential for wealth destruction is chilling.
The heated debate around the current round of bailout packages, and the credit market meltdown that preceded them, have obscured review of some important provisions that were included in the Housing And Economic Recovery Act that was passed in July, and are specifically designed to protect homeowners facing foreclosure. (Frankly, it’s vexing that neither candidate, nor most pundits, have been talking more about this.)
Grab a cup of coffee and read it in detail here and here, but the bill allows lenders to bring failing mortgages to the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), which will guarantee a new mortgage at 85 percent of the current appraised value of the home. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that lenders will bring up to 400,000 mortgages to the FHA over the next three years. The clock on the offer started ticking on October first, and I'll be curious to see how it goes.
But experts fret that this will not be enough, even with the additional legislation.
Hopefully, these troubling times will be an opportunity for financial innovation in the best sense. One such idea has been put forth by a Democratic congressman from Tucson named Raul Grijalva. His “Saving Family Homes Act” proposes to help homeowners whose mortgages have been foreclosed petition to stay in their homes as renters. From his website:
“The Saving Family Homes Act is one of the few proposed remedies for the current mortgage crisis which requires no expenditure of federal funds or additional bureaucracy, while giving immediate relief to millions of families facing foreclosure and preventing home vacancies that harm neighborhoods.
To prevent abuse by speculators, the Act limits eligibility to mortgages on single-family, principal residences, occupied for at least 2 years, which sold for less than the median home value in the metropolitan statistical area in which the home resides or the median value in the state if such information is not available.”
No doubt this debate is personal to him - Congressman Grijalva is the son of a Mexican immigrant and lives in one of Arizona’s poorest districts. (He also voted against the recent bailout package.)
I’ll be posting more about homeownership and financial innovation in the weeks to come, and would welcome ideas and solutions from the crowd.
If you like your political news (and bile filled commentary) in easy to digest, 140 character long chunks, then you are living in the best of times. Twitter, the micro-blogging site previously best known by techno-narcissists, has worked diligently to turn itself into a short-form digital square. The results are encouraging – two media companies we love, NPR and Current TV, have launched election oriented Twitter experiments that endeavor to harness the power of the masses to comment, fact-check and otherwise rate the political debates.
Twitter has been smart about this. In late September, Twitter announced that it created its own Election 2008 mashup, a central hub for all the popular political issues being discussed throughout the site.
From their blog:
“During the first presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi and each subsequent debate leading up to and beyond election day, Twitter will be performing real-time algorithmic analysis on millions of unedited public reactions. These trending topics along with a live ticker of continuously fresh opinions are available now at election.twitter.com.”
The mashup is actually fun to watch (and perhaps a clue to a future Twitter monetization strategy?) Since its inception, “hot political topic” tags have bubbled to the top in quasi-real time, mirroring the collective water cooler chitchat. The usual memes: Obama, McCain, Tina Fey, Sarah Palin, ACORN, Ayers, etc – but also more interesting ones like “that one” – a reference to Senator McCain’s unfortunate debate jab at Senator Obama. Today, #Colin Powell got into the mix, as tweeters began discussing what appeared to be an inevitable Powell endorsement:
michaeleherman Colin Powell is getting ready to endorse Obama. http://tinyurl.com/4c8bhy 3 minutes ago
roomerholmes Colin Powell's Obama endorsement will break John McCain's face like cleats, soccer cleats. http://is.gd/47qE 6 minutes ago
SoundSystemSDC Colin Powell to endorse Obama. In related news, Bush to receive 'Medal of Purity' from the Klan for deep 6ing Powell's presidential hopes. 6 minutes ago
Funny stuff.
One of my favorite media innovators, Current, has also embraced the tweets, allowing their viewers and fans to comment in real time, and perhaps end up on television. From their press materials:
"'Hack the Debate'” will, for the very first time, integrate real-time Twitter messages (or tweets) over major portions of a live television broadcast. As Twitter users tweet throughout the course of the live broadcasts, Current and Twitter will collect comments regarding the debate and layer the individual messages over the debate feed."
Check it out here. To get in on the action, use #current in your tweet to put it in the stream for TV.
NPR has also embraced the ultra short form, by asking their audience to send the URLs (primary sources only) to help with on the spot fact-checks, or register their response through a virtual “dial test” - that annoying focus group tool that CNN now uses to mesmerize their viewers and/or demonstrate that at any given time an entire gender doesn’t know how to work the controls. For more on how to participate, head here.
I'm going to try to keep up with the twits with my own efforts to fact-check and entertain - follow me here. But for my money, no one thrills an audience like the Borscht Beltway commentator, Norm Crosby.
Want a dirty job done right? Ask some dirty boys to do it.
That’s the takeaway from my visit to the “set” of Dirty Jobs, the runaway hit series from the Discovery Channel. Mike Rowe, the star and rogue philosopher behind the show, is profiled in this month’s cover story. But I would be remiss, and he would be disappointed, if I didn’t spend a bit of time talking about how it all comes together. Because it’s dirty work indeed.
Filming the show is inherently challenging. The crew have to show up to an unfamiliar work site and try to capture what someone does – and what they teach Mike to do – on film, without missing anything or getting sucked into some sort of machine. Or worse. Dan Eggiman, who toggles between production assistant and occasional camera operator, describes his first time with the crew, filming “Cave Biologist,” last fall. To get the story, they had to crawl through miles of treacherous caves in Kentucky hunting for new species. “It was physically tight, and a two-day shoot. We basically crouched in muddy caves carrying 100 pounds of equipment that couldn’t get wet.” One wrong step, and you’d slide into what appeared to be a hellish abyss. But Dan, a recent college grad who has had only one previous job, couldn’t be happier with his new gig. “This is the greatest job in television,” he grins. (And not just because his first one was a reality dating thing called “Girl Meets Cowboy.")
Besides the untimely death of crew members - or the destruction of expensive HD cameras - other problems can occur. Many elements of dirty jobs are things that only happen once - once a tree is down, it’s down, for example, - so getting the shot right the first time is important. No easy task, since every job, location and cast of characters are utterly different. Think of it as improv theater with heavy machinery. “It took a long time to find this crew. And I waited a long time to find Barsky,” says Rowe. “He’s a process person. He gets the mission. He may even care about it more than I do.” Barsky doesn’t have a lot to work with. “There are no location scouts, no advance people, and no scripts,” he says. The hosts have to get comfortable with doing their jobs with Mike and the cameras around. And the crew have to aware of their potential impact while on location. “One example: We’re in a salt mine. There are explosives around. We have people and equipment to protect. Not to mention, this is someone's actual job.” Barsky pauses. “The people we visit have to feel comfortable with us because there is so much at stake for everyone.”
But things do happen that even Barsky doesn’t see coming. He describes with obvious annoyance being interrupted on a job site in Louisiana (spraying insulation, the kind of thing that’s hard to orchestrate a do-over) by a local reporter who toddled into the shot on high heels and with higher hair, to get the scoop on what was happening. “Did the owner call her to get local publicity? I don’t know,” Barsky said. “But I tossed her off pretty fast.” It may be someone else’s actual job, but it’s Barsky’s set. (The crew members are freelancers, so they occasionally rotate out when when they get other gigs. Barsky, however, is always there.)
Doug Glover (fans may remember seeing Doug throw up on the abalone farming episode) is the lead camera. “He gets the wide shots and sets the scene,” explains Barsky. Doug also is the butt of numerous jokes regarding his artistic vision – the former indie film cinematographer is frequently teased about the amount of time he spends setting up a shot. “ARE YOU WORKING ON YOUR REEL AGAIN?” is a frequent Barsky taunt. But at the end of the day, Doug helps sets an important documentary tone for the crew. “It’s not a real visual show, we’re not trying to be the best looking show in the world," he explains. "We’re trying to serve the content. So we really focus on the process, and mainly try to give Mike as much freedom as possible – he’s at his best when he gets to do whatever he wants to do.” Something is working: The show was nominated for an Emmy in 2007 for "Outstanding Cinematography For Reality Programming." (In addition to directing, Barsky also operates a camera, filming the host.)
Chris Whiteneck is Camera B, and films Mike. Chris is now a worldwide celebrity after having been famously attacked and bitten on the leg by Paddy, a profoundly disturbed monkey. (They were filming an episode that took place in what can loosely be described as a monkey sanctuary in South Africa. ) As a result, the fans love to see his scar. On the subject of work, Chris says: “The only thing I would say is that I try to follow Mike’s lead. So, I try to stay as close as possible to Mike, which brings the viewer closer, and gives them a more intimate experience.” He also provides an invaluable service by filming the mishaps of other crew members who have been punked, or perhaps, have lost drinking contests. (It is simply amazing what one intrepid filmmaker can do with a camera phone under challenging lighting conditions.)
Audio is expertly handled by Chris Jones. Frankly, it's hard to hear people on these job sites under the best of circumstances, let alone elevating the didactic chit-chat to broadcast quality. And anyone who has had a microphone go wild during a powerpoint presentation understands the challenges of the medium. Forget the animal noises or diesel engine burps: "You definitely don't want to have to do a re-shoot because of static on a mic, or a dead battery," he says.
Rounding out the crew is Ira Leonard, the production assistant, who brings an unusual grace and humor to his relatively humble place on the production food chain. Put out your hand for anything from a cord to a prop to piece of equipment, and he's there. (He also gets the lunch from whatever local eatery is near the shoot, and keeps track of all the stuff that Mike wears for each episode.) I would suggest, however, additional safety gear for him. Perhaps something in Kevlar.
To put into perspective how sparse the operation is compared to other shows in the genre, Mike describes a funny encounter they had with another film crew, while shooting the recent eel boat episode, which is on rotation now:
"Against all odds, we're in Maine - just getting off an eel boat. And Extreme Home Makeover was there doing a shoot on the same street where the eel processing facility was. By way of contrast, we get off the boat. Six guys. Looking like we’ve been to hell and back. We had a call from the EP [executive producer] at Home Makeover. Everyone on the crew is a fan of the show, and they want us to come over to have lunch in their incredibly catered trailer. So I said of course, and we go over. Maybe about 400 people from these various businesses are there working on the house, everyone drops what they are doing, and they come over. And it's just the six of us. Who have been vomiting for hours and are lucky to be alive, basically.
Three hours we sit there and we answer questions and we eat. It was very instructive. We're a show about work with six guys. Totally unscripted, completely organic, doing it as we go - versus this big network hit with hundreds of people, all the talent all wearing earpieces, being told what to say. Everything is orchestrated. It's such a different world, and it was stunning to see it all play out this way."
In my next installment, I'll introduce you to Campbell Coxe, the South Carolina farmer who was the good-natured host of the show I observed, and who taught me a thing or two about rice, tornadoes and wild boar.
