Online Firms Boot Up for Political Campaigns
Howard Dean was dubbed the Internet candidate in the 2004 presidential race, but his efforts to campaign online seem primitive compared to the services companies are touting for next year's election. — From creating video games starring candidates …
Context & Ripple Effects
Howard Dean's 2004 run made him 'the Internet candidate,' but his operation was largely improvised in-house; by March 2007, vendors are packaging that playbook as products, with services pitched for the 2008 cycle that range from web video to video games starring candidates (confirmed reporting). The framing across coverage is that what Dean pioneered is becoming something campaigns can simply buy.
That read travelled: the same story ran in the New York Times as 'The Future President, on Your Friends List' — casting social networks as the next campaign venue — while the Washington Post separately weighed in on candidate web video with mixed reviews. Two national outlets picking it up the same week signals that political digital services were emerging as a distinct market heading into the 2008 race.
First-order effects
- Campaigns gearing up for 2008 gain an off-the-shelf menu of digital offerings — web video, social-network presence, candidate-themed games — replacing the bespoke, experimental approach Dean ran in 2004.
- The firms selling these services convert the presidential cycle into a revenue event, positioning themselves as suppliers at the moment campaigns decide where early money goes.
Second-order effects
- Traditional political consultancies and TV-ad shops face new competition for campaign budgets as clients weigh unproven formats like candidate video games against established media buys.
- Social networks move from optional novelty toward standard channel placement, since the Times' framing puts candidates literally on users' friends lists.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, online campaigning institutionalizes into a permanent election-cycle vendor industry, with each cycle's spending wave funding a class of specialist firms.
- Effectiveness questions — already surfacing in mixed reviews of candidate web video — set up pressure for measurement standards in political digital advertising.
The trend: Online campaigning is shifting from Dean's improvised 2004 experiment to a commercialized vendor market built around the 2008 election cycle.