Political Season

Hello all,

I hope that you’ve all been enjoying the dog days of summer. I wanted to give you an update and let you know some of the great things that can be done with Digital Production.

Today, I’m going to talk about Political Season for a couple reasons. First, it’s a great way to focus some of your talents and do some larger and more connected campaigns utilizing several of your talents, and Second, because I myself have been busy helping a friend of mine with his campaign for Sheriff.

Political Campaigns can give you a wealth of production tasks that can really give you those opportunities to put several of your talents together in one.

I’ll give you the example of what I’m talking about in relation to what I’ve been doing these past few months.

I found out that a friend of mine was going to be running for Sheriff. I contacted him and told him I’d be happy to do whatever I could to help him with his campaign, and that I could bring a pretty good toolbox to the task.

Think about it, if you’re a Producer, you can put those talents to task on a variety of fronts, but if you’ve got some other things that you are capable of doing, those things fit nicely into the campaign as a whole. For instance, as I mentioned I’ve been helping my friend with his campaign. That can produce quite a variety of tasks.

We’re utilizing Podcasts as a cost effective way to run a grass roots campaign and address all the different issues that my friend is running on and the things that need to change about the current administration, all in a format that gives you as much time as you want, is set up to stream off his website and can be promoted by other means of new media distribution such as email lists, posting on public political forums, etc.

Also, when we got a bunch of them cut and under our belts, we started cutting them onto CD’s to hand out to folks that don’t have access to the net, or don’t really spend much time online. As a secondary approach, if you have a CD with you, then you aren’t asking someone to remember a web address, or go home and take the pamphlet that you gave them with the web address on it, and jump online to listen to anything.

You’re handing them something that they’ll pop in their car and listen to on the way home. It’s much easier to give someone something than to ask something of them.

So we’ve talked about podcasts, now lets talk about radio spots. Radio is still a huge way to get your message out if you’re in a campaign. In this instance, reaching the local folks is the goal. What better way than with ad’s on the local radio stations.

If you’ve put podcasts together, and you’re a producer, radio ads are natural right? Well, what about making your radio spots interesting with clips from the opponent and using those as a great way to show the voters your trying to reach that your candidate and his opponent have different views and ideas?

So we’ve spoken about podcasting and radio ads. How are all these things gong to be created? Well of course we know about the physical cutting, editing, mixing and mastering of the spots (See, makes a lot of sense to be a Producer or engineer as well as a voice talent these days doesn’t it), but how about developing the content?

If you can write copy, then you’re able to offer another service to the package that won’t need to be outsourced. I help my friend with all the copy, and help to translate what he wants to say into content that will fit nicely into radio ads and podcasts. You can take the theme of what they’re trying to get across, and help to craft that message into something that will maximize the impact with the time and format guidelines that you have to work with.

All these things are very helpful to continue to broaden your toolbox, and help keep things in house. If you have the ability to perform a variety of tasks, you can help to reduce the clients stress about the whole thing, keep things in house to help in these trying times to increase your bottom line, and the best part, deliver a more consistent message. How? If you’re keeping everything close to the source, and not sending out for copy, information gathering, etc. the less diluted the message becomes.

If everyone is on the same page and there’s not a bunch of chef’s to the meal, you get better consistency and a much better taste.

Till next time,

Bye For Now