Web Sightings - Presidential candidates go to Web

President Bush and Democratic front-runner John Kerry are engaged in a high-tech political battle that is combining the power of direct mail with the glossy appearance of a television commercial.

Thanks to advances in technology, campaigns are making widespread use of Web videos that are quicker to produce and cheaper to distribute than direct-mail literature sent to voters' homes or television commercials.

As a result of this cheaper and quicker concept, the 2004 Presidential Election is the first to fully utilize Web-based methods of campaigning and marketing.

Rather than run TV ads when it became clear that Kerry was poised to capture the nomination, the Bush-Cheney campaign opted to e-mail a made-for-the-Internet video to 6 million supporters that sought to portray the Massachusetts senator as beholden to special interests even as he campaigns against them.

Kerry has run at least a dozen TV ads assailing Bush or his policies.

Kerry's campaign responded by sending its own e-mail video to 300,000 supporters.

The video described Bush as the politician who's taken more special interest money than anyone in history.

Unlike TV ads, the videos that appear on the Internet face none of the content regulations of the 2002 campaign finance law, including the statement by the candidate of I approved this ad that has given some campaigns pause before launching negative political ads.

Web videos have the potential to be nastier than the typical TV ad.

Matthew Dowd, the Bush-Cheney campaign's chief strategist in charge of polling and media, said the campaign chose Web video as the medium of choice because the campaign needed to deliver its message quickly to core supporters.

The delivery of information will expand. When we begin to talk to the general public, we'll go through the broadcast media, Dowd said.

Currently, the candidates have only e-mailed supporters that have registered on www.georgewbush.com or www.johnkerry.com, so they have shied away from generating unsolicited spam.

It should be noted, however, that there is no verbiage in recent spam legislation specifically precluding or exempting politically motivated e-mails.

Larry Fiorino is founder and chief executive of G1440, a Baltimore- based e-solutions firm. His column, Web Sightings, appears in this space every week. He can be reached at (410) 843-3800.

Copyright 2004 Dolan Media Newswires
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