Day: November 20, 2003

Baseline magazine analyzes how the Howard Dean presidential campaign is successfully using technology to drive his nomination.  From his blog  to online community sites, Dean’s campaign is a fantastic story on how communication over the Internet is becoming more important for every sector.

“The marketing of presidents and even state and local political candidates may never be the same. By early November, the Dean campaign claimed 500,000 online supporters, up from zero at the start of the year. Only 4 percent of Democratic primary voters said in March they would cast their lot with Dean; now, he is backed by 15 percent of likely voters, according to an early November Zogby poll. That puts him ahead of every other Democratic candidate, by at least five percentage points.”

And he’s raised over $7.4 million online along the way. 

Forget your politics, this is an intriguing case study. 

Of course, traditional tactics remain vitally important, but the ability to effectively use the Internet for communications is becoming a critical element of every marketing campaign.

Jim Horton has some interesting thoughts on this very topic.

 PR Week’s US Edition is celebrating its fifth anniversary and has published a special issue which includes a look over the interesting trends over the past five years. It has also re-published an interview with Walt Mossberg of the WSJ from April this year.

  Meanwhile PR Week UK looks at the changing mobile phone market and a look at the problem of spam.

 Slashdot is a phenomenon. One mention on it’s boards will send tens of thousands of visitors to your website. But PR beware, any meekly veiled attempts at ghosted PR postings won’t cut the mustard. LinuxWorld has an interview with Slashdot’s founder Rob Malda which tackles how companies can deal with the volume of traffic you get from a mention on Slashdot.  However, there’s also some interesting background on the site and Rob’s thoughts on the Internet and some tips on what stories get posted and why.

 Interesting story from Florida on the importance of PR fostering more diversity by encouraging minority groups to participate in the profession.