Conversion versus Activation
by Chris Bowers, Sat Jul 09, 2005 at 08:28:42 AM EDT
Reaching swing voters and targeting the most [politically] profitable consumers [i.e., the unconverted] actually may or may not be the right thing to do in the short term. But successfully reaching already politically committed consumers can be achieved by reaching citizen customers over the long term.
Let's look at the conservative movement. The conservative movement energized and modified a base conservative constituency to generate significant revenue and build powerful media organizations. The commercial power of Rush, of Sean Hannity, and of Ann Coulter, made them mainstream media figures. These energetic base consumers powered the fast growing media companies of the hard right conservative movement and enabled them to then, in turn, on a business level, profitably target swing voter markets and influence mainstream media over the long term.
As we seek to build a progressive media marketplace, we can preach both to the choir in a highly profitable and visible way that then in turn enables us to preach to the unconverted. It's politics but it's also just smart business.
(Also, see page 57 of the pdf of this presentation). Without an active and energized base, your ability to target swing voters is significantly reduced. One of the reasons why the right has so consistently had more resources to target swing voters is because they have generated so much revenue from their choir. For too long our model has been to skip the choir altogether and move directly to targeting swing voters and the unconverted. This has resulted in the political equivalent of progressives bringing a knife to the gunfight over swing voters.The short-term success of the new progressive media marketplace that is the activist progressive blogosphere has been to generate far more resources from our choir than we have at any other time over the past three decades. What was, for at least two decades, a pathetically single-minded model of voter persuasion, just go straight after swing voters, has now been replaced by the start of a circular model where we can do the following:
- 1- Preach to the choir
- 2- Activate the choir and generate revenue
- 3- Use that revenue to target swingers and the unconverted
- 4- Return to step one with an expanded choir
The early success of this model should be obvious even to the most ardent supporters of nineties-style "triangulation." The progressive blogosphere is growing faster than the conservative blogosphere. Progressive radio is gaining on conservative radio. Not surprisingly, Democrats are raising a lot more resources than they ever have in the past. Of course, Republicans are still raising more, but they have been doing this longer and, at this moment in time, have both a larger and a more active base.
If we don't preach to the choir and activate the choir, we are dead. This dense, short-sighted, repetitive and endless focus on appealing to a shrinking center is not the way to go. It's not smart politics, and it is not smart business.
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