FIRST LOOK – “Hill+Knowlton Strategies Launches Influence Point … Hill+Knowlton Strategies [today will launch] a new service called Influence Point … With H+K Influence Point, companies can serve online ads directly to individuals identified as influencers. H+K’s combined research and digital teams have developed a proprietary methodology for identifying universes of financial, media and political influencers. These audiences can then be served display, video and mobile ads. This allows companies to dramatically decrease wasteful spending on large online ad buys targeted at specific audiences, even on the most accredited news sites.
The tipsheet then offers a helpful “How It Works” translation:
The cookie-based system uses a proprietary algorithm, combined with consumer data, to narrow the number of people who likely influence public policy, would be inclined to buy a financial product, or who work in media. Factors include demography (age, household income), geography (urban, D.C.), and purchasing habits. It’s a corporate application of micro-targeting techniques pioneered by presidential campaigns.
H+K provides a slicker, more opaque take here. And Mark McKinnon, “a seasoned political advisor and global vice chair of Hill+Knowlton Strategies,” gilds the lily for The Street:
“H+K Influence Point fundamentally shifts how you run influencer-driven campaigns. We can now tailor targeting to the individuals you are trying to reach – creating more efficient advertising that finds the critical super-nodes in our real life social-networks.”
Critical super-nodes, eh? Sounds like something they oughta get removed.
The bigger issue, though, is how all those big shots will feel about being algorithmed and data-mined this way.
Let’s see, in other words, how the influencers like being influenced.
Originally posted on the Newer! Improveder! Sneak ADtack!
• The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action has teamed up with the goo-goo League of Conservation Voters to launch a $1 million ad campaign “aimed at calling out ‘Governor Romney’s pledge to protect Big Oil’s profits and billions in special tax breaks, at the expense of middle class Americans'” according to the two groups and ABC’s The Note.
The spot:
The transcript:
He’s the two hundred million dollar man, and Big Oil’s fingerprints are all over him.
Big Oil has pledged $200 million to help Mitt Romney, and Romney’s pledged to protect their profits and billions in special tax breaks.
So when you fill up your tank, remember who’s in the tank for Big Oil:
Mitt Romney: The $200 Million Man.
(Priorities USA Action and LCV Victory Fund are responsible for the content of this advertising)
Consider that as Exhibit A in a campaign to 1) inoculate Barack Obama against charges that he’s responsible for the high cost of gasoline; and 2) gas-and-feather Mitt Romney all the way to Election Day.
EXCLUSIVE – CROSSROADS GPS SPENDING $1.2 MILLION IN 5 STATES: The pro-Republican outside group, a non-profit affiliate of the American Crossroads Super PAC, will go on the air today against Democratic Senate candidates in Missouri, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota and Virginia. They will spend $1.2 million between now and May 4 with these forceful issue ads that highlight each candidate’s Achilles Heel.
Representative sample (targeting former Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine in the Virginia Senate race):
Bottom (ad) line: “We work hard and save. Obama and Kaine tax and spend.”
Once around the (voting) bloc, James, and don’t spare the horses.
Item: Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Kidding (Ever)
New spot from presumptive (but not taking anything for granted) Democratic Senate nominee Elizabeth Warren (D-Pledge Edge?).
Transcript:
I grew up in a family hanging on by our fingertips to a place in the middle class. But back then, America invested in kids like me. We had a lot of opportunities. Today,Washington lets big corporations like GE pay nothing — zero — in taxes while kids are left drowning in debt to get an education. This isn’t about economics — it’s about our values. I’m Elizabeth Warren, and I approve this message because Washington has to get its priorities straight.
Not to be mean, but there’s something very, well, Joad-family about Ms. Warren, right down to the Oklahoma connection. It may serve her well with the goo-goo crowd, but the hardworking staff is imagining her first debate with Sen. Scott Brown (R-Wanna Ride in My Pickup?) and thinking the optics, as they say, are not so good for Warren.
Item: Transvaginal Bob Goes TransVirginial with Ad
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Hey, Mitt – Pick Me!) has taken some time off from sono-stalking the women of Virginia to cut a TV spot bragging about how good life is in Old Dominion.
Isn’t this getting a little close to Cahillville, you might be wondering?
A group supporting Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell has made an ad buy for the term-limited governor, who cannot run for re-election but is often cited as a potential vice presidential pick.
Opportunity Virginia PAC, a political action committee set up to support the governor, announced a new television ad. The group has been mute on the details of the buy, but a source tells ABC News it cost roughly $376,000 . . .
McDonnell is often cited as a potential vice presidential pick. He’s been on the Romney train since early in the primary season, endorsing the presumptive GOP nominee in January, and campaigning for him ahead of the South Carolina primary.
And now, appraently, McDonnell is campaigning for himself.
“The American Future Fund is poised to launch a multi-state television offensive against President Barack Obama, targeting him across the 2012 general-election landscape with the conservative group’s second TV blitz of the year,” Alex Burns reports. “A strategist familiar with the organization’s plans said AFF will go on the air starting Wednesday in eight states at a cost of approximately $2 million.”
The states include the usual swingspects – Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and etc. The line of attack? Asking “How exactly does Pres. Obama spend your tax dollars?” – as if it’s all just walking around money he carries on him. The answer, not surprisingly, includes the Solyndra green-energy giveaway and the current GSA Las Vegas rumpus.
Tough ad.
UPDATE: But not all that accurate if you believe factcheck.org.
The Missus and I finally caught up on the premiere episode of HBO’s widely acclaimed (representative sample here) new series Girls, and here’s what we have to say:
If that’s not the most insufferable group of of young gals around, they’ll do until someone else come along.
An outcry against the multispace parking meters that replaced hundreds of single-space meters in Brookline last year has convinced Town Administrator Mel Kleckner that it’s time for the town to reverse course.
Kleckner is proposing a plan to remove almost all of the multispace meters that were installed along Brookline streets at the beginning of 2011 at a cost of more than $1 million. Hired by the town in the fall of 2010, Kleckner said he’s been dealing with complaints about the multispace meter system through most of his tenure.
“I just don’t think it’s convenient enough, and for whatever reason it has really created a problem,” said Kleckner. “It’s a big problem. I think it makes the town look bad.”
Actually, this is what makes the town look bad:
Residents have complained that the meters are confusing, slow, and are particularly burdensome for older drivers, who must walk from their parked car to the multispace meter, print a parking receipt, and return to the vehicle to put the slip in the window, even in inclement weather.
Seriously? This is lamer than Chester on Gunsmoke.
Not to mention flushing $1 million down the municipal toilet.
Shit.
(Full disclosure: The hardworking staff is a Brookline taxpayer.)
In a characteristic gesture of self-congratulation, Sunday’s New York Times ran a full-page ad saluting its 108 Pulitzer Prizes, including this year’s duo of Jeffrey Gettleman (International Reporting) and David Kocieniewski (Explanatory Reporting).
Ensconsed in the 2009 slot is David Barstow for “uncovering how the Pentagon used retired military officers, serving as analysts for television and radio programs, to promote the Bush administration’s war policies.”
Barstow is back with a new investigation, this time into “how Wal-Mart de Mexico had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market domination.”
The Sunday Times devoted three full pages to this story, which is the equivalent of Alaska in newspaper real estate terms.
And it’s a corker.
(For more evidence of the Times’ preeminence, see Alan Feuer’s piece on his doppleganger.)
US Senator Scott Brown says he has given up drinking throughout his long reelection campaign. Brown said Friday during an interview on WTKK-FM that he will not be drinking alcohol until the night of the election in November. During the interview, Brown called the decision “one of those New Year’s things’’ that he did “on a stupid bet.’’ Brown’s campaign office declined to offer additional details about Brown’s decision to give up drinking during the campaign to retain his Senate seat.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
But then there’s this from Thursday’s Boston Herald piece by Hillary Chabot shadowing Brown on the campaign trail:
The road yesterday took Brown to the Blue Hills Brewery in Canton, where the buttoned-down Wrentham Republican invited this Herald reporter to loosen up and sip brews from small sample cups.
“You can pound those pretty good,” Brown said as he tasted one of the lighter brews. His favorite was a hoppy beer called Red I.P.A.
“Sit down. Try this one. I’ve seen you in the bars before, don’t act like you’ve never been to a bar,” he said, sliding over a stool. “We’re gonna have her dancing in the back of the truck.”
Campaign Outsider 