Category Archives: Campaign Tactics & Analysis

Green Campaigning-NOT!

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So there I was, a day before all that rain, walking home when I noticed something in the doorways of all the apartments on my street…piles of doorhangers. In the picture, note how this “grassroots” campaign covered the front gate with no less than 7 on the gate and a few more on the ground.

Guess what happened to them?

These went in to the recylcer and NO ON SAW THEM. The other ones made their way onto the street, and by the next day, when it rained, they were a papier mache mess.

Now, the candidate in question shouldn’t take all the piss on this one – just about every Big Campaign, especially the “No on B” campaign, did the same thing.

News flash: it is the second decade of the 21st Century. Sending a bunch of people in the last weeks of the campaign to put up expensive die-cut door hangers made of dead trees in piles around the city is NOT GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNING.

(I guess no on listened when I said this before.)

For the same price as a pile of junk mail, these campaigns could have chosen a better way to get the message out. With online advertising being as cheap as it is, they could have spared the neighborhood some dead tree papier mache, and instead put the money into window signs and a hyper targeted mailer.

Just remember: In San Francisco, we force everyone to compost…but we never force politicians to be more Earth-friendly with their tax-funded campaigns.

Wait a minute….this may become a “thing.” What if candidates who took the public financing in SF were required to use only soy inks, super-recycled paper, vegan snacks and other tough regulations?

Hey, it could happen, especially with the so-called “progressives” in charge!

design SUPER FAIL

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This campaign season has been one of the worst in history in terms of the sheer amount of bullsh*t heaped onto the public via the media, and not just from Her Megness and Carlyfornicated and Uncle Jerry and about a million ballot measures. Combine that with some of the worst design I’ve ever seen, and my eyes are ready to bleed.

So imagine the amount of eyeball blood spilled when I saw this ad in the Sunset Beacon. I’ve shown this to professional designers and we all agreed – if they’d submitted this work to a client, they’d have been fired, and rightfully so.

What kills me is that the people who paid for this thing had a ton of cash, and it’s not like you can’t find decent print or web designers in San Francisco who understand political advertising.

Anyway, more political razzies as events warrant.

For years I’ve often picked up pieces of political direct mail and scanned them in, with critiques, much like the way mainstream media does with political TV ads. I’d collected some for this season, but two things got in the way of doing so in advance of the election – technical difficulties (both with the blog software and my scanner) that took forever to fix, and a lack of material.
Normally I tend to get a lot of mail because I’m a mail ballot voter. But this year most of my mail was concerned with things like this zany Democratic Central Committee stuff (I mean really, do you even care who’s on this, much less remember ever hearing about it before this year?) which is lovely for those who produce it and for the people running. As I sat here trying to come up with something to write about the actual mail, it was hard write it in a way that people would actually read. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re writing about advertising for a big campaign for Governor or Mayor, but Central Committee? Really?
I suppose what surprised me the most, with all this money being spent, is how not one slate of candidates, or any of the various local organizations promoting their favored candidates, used any online advertising. When you consider that the typical mail piece costs $600 per 1000* voters mailed to, versus online advertising where you’re paying less than 10% of that**, you’d have thought that maybe allied candidates or whatever would have mixed in a little online advertising to reach voters, instead of relying exclusively on dead tree which end up in the recycle bin. And it’s not like their consultants wouldn’t have made money either – they just wouldn’t have had the overhead of paying designers, printers, mailhouses, postage and shipping, but would have still made their 15%.
Ah well. I’m kinda glad this boring primary is over. I’m really hoping the next few months we see something better out of our candidates for state office, and for city office. I know it’s asking for too much, but would it kill some of these people to avoid devolving debate into small smart-ass soundbites and instead demonstrate that they know something besides what some smart guy told them to say?

So I was going through what little political mail I’ve been getting during this quiet political season, and the other day I got one from the No on D campaign, decrying the horridness of billboards on Market Street and so on. Whatever.
I mean this is one of those magic bullet measures that proponents say will bring an era of rose petals and unending “free money” for whatever, and the opponents say will be the beginning of Armageddon. So I normally don’t pay attention.
However, this little chestnut on the mail piece, next to the union bug was an eye opener:

Wait. WHAT?
You have to be f*cking kidding me. They really went there, huh?
As always, my colleague “Mason Powell” had the best response upon seeing said disclaimer:

“You mean a beer fart from the pressman counts as wind power?”

F*ck yeah!