Campaign Review: Mark Warner's YouthRoots

As the Democratic presidential primary begins, candidate websites are coming online. Politicians are starting to take notice of young voters, and some are starting to build a base among millenials. With that added attention comes new programs – many of which attempt to leverage social networks and new technologies to reach out to the millennial generation.

As these programs and websites launch, I'm going begin writing reviews of these efforts. These will be honest critiques of both design and program aspects of the candidates' youth outreach efforts. They are not intended to be mean-spirited or snarky swipes at politicians who don't get it. I hope that these will be read more as strategy memos meant to help candidates increase their support among young voters. I don't really have a horse in the race yet, so my biases are small and I hope to keep them out of these reviews. At the end of the day, it's all about increasing the ability of Democrats to engage Millennial.

First up in this series is Virginia Governor Mark Warner, who this week launched YouthRoots, the youth arm of his Forward Together PAC.

The website basically consists of four chunks: Video/Feature Content, Sign-up/Action, Testimonials, Links. I'll tackle each chunk separately, providing review of what's good, what's bad, and what's missing.

FEATURE WELL:

This is probably my favorite part of the site, and one of the strongest overall. Getting your messages out via video is a huge step for politicians looking to engage millennial voters who have grown up with high-speed broadband access and/or are part of the millions who have abandoned TV and Print media for YouTube and Blogs. 99% of those people won't read a mission statement or an editorial about a position, but they might watch you talk about those things for 2 minutes in a video. It's a smart move all around and a good recognition that politicians need to adjust the medium through which they communicate to young voters.

If people want to delve further into issue positions, or the Governor's history, nice big graphic links are provided for that purpose just below the fold. While some of the content could be better, I think that in terms of format this is a pretty big leap forward considering this is the first of what I'm guessing will probably be many iterations over the course of the campaign cycle.

What's Good: The introductory video is particularly good. The Governor addresses young vistors, and emphasizes the important role that they can play in the election. It's a smart first message to be sending. It shows that the governor actually has respect for young voters, and research shows that simply asking young voters to participate can be a huge factor in increasing turnout. The third video (Why I'm a Democrat) establishes the Governor as a proud partisan, not ashamed of his principles and it helps brand democrats in general as a strong party. It's the anti-Kerry video meant to help inoculate against charges of mealy-mouthed flip-flopping.

What's Bad: While much of the introductory video is good, there is one point where the Governor asks people to sign up so he can keep them informed of what the "youthroots movement is doing." The people visiting the site ARE the YouthRoots movement. The Governor should be encouraging them to be creative in building the movement themselves, not waiting around for a campaign to tell them what the movement is. This is totally backwards and represents a failure to internalize the lessons of the Dean campaign. The Dean campaign didn't create their youth arm - Generation Dean. It sprung up organically by the work of many supporters. The same thing should be happening here, and Forward Together PAC should be facilitating that organic process with its YouthRoots page. This video sends the opposite message and its the wrong message.

Some of the videos have nothing to do with young voters. One video is an 8 minute campaign brochure recycled for content. Very little of it directly concerns young people, and it doesn't speak to the issues at the top of young voters concerns – Iraq, college education costs and jobs. It's filler that brings down an otherwise interesting concept.

Another video, bizarrely, focuses on an appearance by the Warner in the virtual world of Second Life. My impression is that Second Life is populated more by older folks with heavy geek and nerd tendencies (not meant in a disparaging way, I certainly have some of those myself). I'm fairly certain that if I polled everyone I know under the age of 30, 95% of those people wouldn't have the faintest idea what Second Life is.

What's Missing: Lots. In the introductory video, the governor shouldn't just be asking visitors to vote and sign up, he should be pushing them to use his TXT Voter tool and encouraging them to participate in the voter registration competition. What's more, he should be asking them to participate in other ways as well. It's early in the presidential cycle, and lots of die-hard supporters that are going to get a candidate through the initial months and form the foundation of early, decentralized field ops are now visiting this site. Give them something to do or find a way to let them self organize through your website!

Comments: These videos offer an amazing chance to start a conversation with young voters and hone the messages that will grow the governor's appeal among millenials, but there is no interactive component. Ideally, these videos should function as a two way converstion between the Governor and young people about the campaign, current events, and the policy concerns of young people. Adding the ability to comment on the videos on the page is a way to do that.

SIGN-UP, TAKE ACTION

What's Good: YouthRoots embraces social networking and engages young people in one of the places they already congregate - FaceBook. Whereas traditionally a campaign will ask for phone numbers or email addresses and add new "members" to its list, YouthRoots gives visitors the option befriend Warer's FaceBook profile instead of joining a mailing list.

YouthRoots is also experimenting with text messaging as a voter registration tool. Users sign up and are encouraged to sign up their friends. The process is simple, and the registration competition (for an iPod) is as good an idea as any to spark participation in the project. Warner should make a point to talk this up at every campaign stop, otherwise this might end up looking like the fiasco that was MyGOP.com.

I think that registration campaigns via text message are just scratching the surface of what is possible with Text Message organizing. And mere registration is not exciting in itself - not like the participatory and fun vibe of the flash mobs of 2004, and not in the sense of creating a real, organic movement as in this past spring's immigration demonstrations. This is a young program, and I'll be interested to see how YouthRoots develops this in the future.

What's Bad: The message I received when signing up to be a part of text voter:

S'up michael,
Glad you signed up to be a registrar.
To get started, login at: http://www.txtvoter.org/ryoc.html

How does it work?
1. Logon to the site and reserve your keywords.

2. Roam around your neighborhood, school, house, wherever - and
tell people to text [your keyword] to 75444.

That's it! We give you extra stuff on the web site to make it easier
(like postcard templates). In the very near future, we'll also be
offering prizes to top registrars!

Get this party started.
Cheers,
the TxtVoter team

"S'up Michael" ???? At the end of the day, YouthRoots is a federal PAC from a presidential contender, and its trying way too hard here. It just comes across as ridiculous. In this case, the medium is the message and YouthRoots shouldn't try to be something it's not when it comes to the precise wording. This will be young and hip because its a TXT program, and TXT programs are (or aren't) going to be a successful way to engage Millenials. It's not going to succeed because they were hip to the kids slang. And besides, if someone has gotten this email, then you've already convined them. No need to over sell the product.

What's Missing: MySpace. Plain and simple. Warner is seriously handicapping his own capacity to engage millenials by limiting their online interaction with his campaign to FaceBook. And with all the boneheaded moves they've been making lately, it's not clear to me at all that FaceBook is the social networking site you want to be on if you're only going to be on one. With MySpace's larger membership, and it's new voter registration campaign, Warner should have his own MySpace page and be pimping it just as hard on the YouthRoots page. I just searched MySpace for Warner - using multiple terms and even scouring other Democratic Party pages - and came up blank. He's got zero presence in what is currently the most talked about online community in the mainstream or political press. (MySpace search is pretty bad, so if I'm incorrect here, please point me to Warner's page in the comments section).

Social Network-Based Programs Getting on FaceBook and MySpace is great, but its just the first of many steps that a campaign can take to fully utilize these tools. YouthRoots and Forward Together PAC need to create programs that will engage these people on MySpace and FaceBook. Campaigns need to engage people that are supporting them online, get them to do something offline, and feed it back into the online yet again. Create a cycle of activity that will help you on the ground and continue to grow your presence on the social networking sites. A great example of someone who does this well is comedian Dane Cook.

At this point, Warner and YouthRoots don't even have an HTML badge that supporters can post to their personal pages. This is a highly underutilized tool at the moment.

More Interactivity: There is nothing to do on this page. The whole thing looks very Web 2.0, but it's very 1.0 when you really get down to it. There is no way to comment. There is no way to get involved other than to participate in the text voter campaign and submit your name to the list. I realize that its very early in the cycle, but I'd hope to see more opportunities to participate and help the governor popping up on the YouthRoots page in later iterations.

TESTIMONIALS

What's Good: Nothing

What's Bad: Everything. Canned quotes in the age of participatory media? These quotes and pictures were handpicked, and if these were the best the campaign could come up with, then they are going to be in serious trouble when they try to reach out beyond a base of earnest, already politicized people. I'm an earnest, politicized Millenial and I don't identify with anyone in these photos, nor do I find their quotes interesting or inspiring. The quotes are lame, the pictures are of bad quality, and neither are representative of the many youth subcultures to which the Governor should be reaching out.

What's Missing: This is the place where the interactivity of the site could be bumped way up. Looking at Warner's FaceBook page showed me an active Wall with lots of folks (with pictures due to the wonders of social networking in the age of cell phones and digital cameras!) leaving great (and real) quotes about Warner. The PAC should be running a feed of those quotes right into the testimonials section of the YouthRoots page. Or it should construct the testimonial area in such a way that visitors can submit a testimonial and their picture. Why create a a subpar testimonial area when you've already got a healthy, active version of the real thing?

LINKS:

What's Good: YouthRoots has a lot of good, solid links.

What's Bad: Nothing

What's Missing: Lots of other groups that are actively engaging young people where they live and hang out through cultural and technological methods. This far from the election, the links area should be a space to plug people into the progresive movement and get your supporters into the groups that make up the base of the progressive youth movement - Drinking Liberally, Music for America, The League of Young Voters, National Hip Hop Political Convention, Young People For, etc. Plug your people into other groups and get them evangelizing on your behalf.

DESIGN:

What's Good: I like the clean, Web 2.0 design that YouthRoots has got going on "above the fold." It's simple and easy to use and its inviting.

What's Bad: The whole roots metaphor is overblown. Youthroots starts with a clear blue sky atop the page and as you scroll down it goes "into the roots," becoming a dirty green color. Quite honesty, the color scheme below the fold is ugly and unattractive. And since the worst content on the page (testimonials) occupy that part of the page, the negative qualities of both the design and the testimonials are reinforcing each other and making the site less attractive - on multiple levels - the further down the visitor is willing to read. Not a good strategy for encouraging involvement.

A FINAL WORD

It's a pretty good site overall for where we are in the campaign cycle. There's a lot that's wrong with it, but for a first roll-out this early in the cycle, it's trying out a lot of the right things. I can't blame Warner too much for not getting it right on the first go. I hope that by late janary a lot of the items I've mentioned here - MySpace profile and social networking-based activities (like the Dane Cook example), more interactivity, and ways to allow supporters to self organize - begin to appear on the site.

Warner needs to do a lot more to turn YouthRoots into an actual youth movement. And that means handing over responsibility for content and programs to enthusiastic young supporters. Like I said before, Generation Dean wasn't built by the campaign, it grew organically. YouthRoots should be a hub to support that growth and harness the energy it creates in service of the campaign. Right now, this site makes a gesture towards that, but it's still got a long way to go.