Exploiting Waffles
Michael Turk offers some ideas for how Sen. John McCain’s campaign could have taken advantage of Sen. Barack Obama’s waffle quip:
# If you’re John McCain, wherever you are, convene a breakfast of local bloggers the next morning. Call it “The Waffle Side chat” and ask them to come sit down with you and talk issues over breakfast. The media will be in tow already, so they’ll not only recap the Obama incident, but portray you in a positive light. You get to score the hit on Obama, but you also get the positive light on you.
# Have the candidate begin a video blog series. He can take questions over the site and every morning, over waffles, answer a few questions submitted online. They could have had the form up that day (earning media on the blogs already chatting about the waffle story). They then would earn media a day or two later when the first episode hits (thereby dragging waffle-gate into a multi-day story.)
# Make this a list building exercise. Quickly deploy a micro-site with messaging that drives the point. “We’ll take your questions between now and Friday. When Obama finishes his breakfast Friday morning, we’ll meet him outside the restaurant with you stack of questions and ask if he’s willing to answer the people’s questions now that he’s finished his waffles.”
# Tie this to the already open-ended storyline you’ve tried to create about Obama’s comments to SF donors, and equate it to aristocratic snobbery. Instead of “Let them eat cake”, it’s “Let me eat waffles.” It may be a stretch, but that’s never stopped people in politics before.
# Finally, given their propensity to level the charge of waffling against Democrats, I can’t believe that somewhere in the GOP there isn’t a waffle costume. Have some CRs follow Obama town to town with the waffle costume and a big sign that says, “Eat me! Then answer some questions!”
He mentions a daily McCain video. Turk joins Patrick Ruffini and myself in pushing that idea. What makes it a great idea is it’s content that builds an audience. If people know McCain will speak daily about issues and the campaign they’ll become return visitors. There’s a greater chance they will sign up for e-mails and volunteer. Also, a daily video is cheap, easy content. All you need is a Flip camera and a notebook computer with mobile broadband. If McCain can do a daily press conference (and traveling with reporters on his bus is a continuous press conference) he can do a video weblog.
Note what Turk didn’t advise: asking for money. The anemic online fundraising performance shows McCain needs to build his list. You need online supporters’ e-mail addresses before you can ask them for money.
If the McCain campaign did want to make a fundraising play I’d suggest a real-time counter counting how many waffles the donations that came win would buy. Donors love feedback. They’ll give simply to see the numbers go up.
“How McCain and the GOP blew the Waffle Shot”
[picture via sonicwalker]
