Initiative. Voice. Democracy.

We got'em.

We're gonna use'em.

John Kerry's Media Corps is a new site on JK.com.

http://www.johnkerry.com/onlinehq/mediacorps/

From HQ to volunteers to the mediasphere.

Talking points.

Issues of the day.

Attacks recorded.

And the tools to put them to use.

We have five months
    to bring the message
        through the volunteers
            to the voters.

So let me tell you about the Rapid Response Model, how Kerry's Media Corps builds on it, and what makes this a beta release.

The John Kerry Media Corps

Embracing the decentralization message, volunteers put together the Dean Rapid Response Network in 2003. Last week John Kerry's staff launched the Media Corps, their first cut at rapid response.

Components:

• For each message (presumed weekly)
  • An assignment
  • A deadline
  • Background
  • Feedback email link
• Other tools
  • Research materials on the assignment
  • Recent television ads
  • Link to the D-Bunker (removed after the first week)
  • Tips for writers and callers

That's the anatomy. What's the whole?

1. Media Corps is a boundary communication channel. It pushes memes to volunteers. The campaign's politics and communications teams design messages. Media Corps throws them over the wall.
2. Media Corps is an end run past the political press corps. It tells volunteers to take the memes and run with them. To local media. To audience participation channels. To letter writing and other P2P channels. Can you spell disintermediation?
3. Media Corps is a memetic amplifier, making messages louder and reaching further. No longer are TV ads the only place you're likely to experience the campaign's message. The community reinforces broadcast memes with their own versions. This improves what advertisers call reach and penetration. 
4. Media Corps minimizes memetic drift, keeping volunteers on point. Its centralized and standardized seed message is the reference version. Unlike a game of "telephone" where messengers garble the message, Media Corps always gives a public point of origin.
5. Media Corps is a localization strategy, tailoring messages. Politics remains local. No national message works everywhere. Most advertising is wasted just trying to find its audience, let alone delivering the right message. Volunteers translate
6. Media Corps is a memetic biodiversity play, a lab for new ideas. Media Corps pushes its memes through thousands of channels, each reinventing the message. Some versions will spread further, survive longer, and have more impact than others. No single campaign office or market research firm can imagine or test all the variations the way the Media Corps can.

Why does it matter?

• Money. Every minute of "free media" is a minute more trusted than advertising. But the payoff is dollars that don't have to be raised.
• Message Innovation. Marketing sciences are all about developing the right sequence, timing, and presentation of the right messages for the right people. The right message is the hard part. Media Corps is a force multiplier for the communication team.  
• Measurable Results. Powering the feedback loop. Managerial gold. 

The Rapid Response Model

Most of the money in this election will be spent on television ads.

Every presidential campaign staff has a political director and a communications director. Typically a political director picks the ideas, issues, facts, and positions that will win voters to the candidate and money for the campaign. Then the communications staff wraps them up in events for the media to cover, things for voters to read, oratory for the candidate to propound, and all the other stuff that gets the word out. Advertising and branding, product management and media relations. Promotion.

Campaign communications are dynamic.

Hot items in the press change a campaign's message strategy hourly. For example, right now Rumsfeld is defending his performance in Iraq instead of attacking Kerry's war record. While a candidate's staff is small and agile enough to respond to attacks, it's not enough. Once leveled, an attack can fester in the air for weeks. And character attacks are best fought by anyone but the candidate.

That brings us to "rapid response."

Rapid Response has four parts:

1. Prepare
2. Detect
3. Respond
4. Feedback

Preparations include:

• Write, edit and test talking points
• Recruit a cadre of first responders
• List traditional media channels by locale
• Write procedures for responding to each channel/program/publication.
• Building training materials for effective response
• Set up a database of responders

Detection in three steps:

1. Notice an attack, through surveillance.
2. Report the attack to your rapid response network
3. Prioritize the attack.

The US has about 300 million citizens, about 106 million voted in the 2000 general election [US Census Bureau]. There are tens of thousands of newspapers, radio stations, television channels, mailing lists, and web sites. Two "free" strategies:

• Volunteers adopt a program/publication. "Mike will read the Business Section of the Miami Herald."
• Automated clipping services, like Google News Alerts.

Response. Every attack should be met with a swift and effective response. Prioritize only when you don't have the resources to respond everywhere. When you choose among multiple attacks, watch for the attacks which:

• are coordinated,
• reach a bigger audience,
• are authentic,
• are more potent, or
• open a new channel or issue.

Join fights:

• You can win.
• Where you can be seen or heard.
• Where you need to learn something from the engagement.

Response has three steps:

1. Assign. It doesn't make sense for everyone to respond to the same thing. Make sure your response team covers all the attacks worthy of response, and that people are matched to the assignment.
2. Draft. Every attack is a little different. So tailor your response.
3. Engage. Mail the letter, call the show, post to the bulletin board.

Feedback serves four goals:

• Risk assessment. Attacks going unchallenged? Attacks with disruptive potential?
• Message improvement. What's working? What isn't?
• Resource allocation. Where should we drive volunteer time and attention?
• Channel/medium profiling. What can we learn about media outlets to improve our effectiveness?

Prepare. Detect. Respond. Learn.

Challenges?

• Deeper-memes. Can you build a sequence of messages that assert an underlying value or point? For example, can "competence" and "character" be built in to how we talk about economy, environment, security?  
• Listen well to feedback. Listening doesn't scale, that's why we vote. And why we summarize. You need a combination of structured ("on a scale of 1 to 5...") and unstructured ("What did you say?") input.
• Positive Reinforcement. Bring volunteers back for new message cycles. Acknowledge people and teams for effort, creativity, and results.
• Experiment with the Process. This means consciously trying messages and talking points with different characteristics. How many words can fit in the bumpersticker version? What's the best day of the week to launch a campaign? Best time of day? Can we run two at once? Four at once? Does it have to be a whole week, or can we run one from start to finish in 48 hours? Test. Measure. Test again.
• Tailored Experiences. Support both high and low energy volunteers.
• Speed. Keep the cycles short. Look to IM and SMS for alerting to new threats.
• Memory. Help volunteers expose successes and failures to each other.
• Quick Help. Attacks aren't homogenous. In addition to research for this week's campaign, put response research for the 25 most common attacks, and 5 responses on each issue.
• Training. Build volunteer knowledge and skill. It's summer: recruit 50 high school teachers to craft tutorials on each issue, on each medium. Interview successful writers and callers for their story. Feed lessons learned back to the volunteers. 
• Attack. Initiate an issue. Seed the conversation. See how long it takes for big media to pick up a meme. See how long other groups take to respond, both friends and foes. Change the rhythm, put opponents off-balance.