Paris Hilton

So... Paris Hilton totally has my respect now. No, seriously, just watch.

Wonder if this will help people understand that American Youth have a clue as well.

It's a bit of a slow news day (unless Obama decides he's going to announce Bayh as his VP in the next couple hours). Most of my reading today has been tech heavy. Here's what I'm looking at:

• At WireTap, Sarah has an excellent piece up about rural broadband.
• For any organizations out there thinking about revamping their website, The Bivings Report will help you figure out if you need a content management system.
• Colin Delaney looks at how CRM software can help legislators better manage constituent relations work.
• Kevin Bondelli notes that the College Republicans are trying to counter program in Denver during the DNC. I've already signed up to receive their text messages and emails. Can progressive youth groups in Denver counter-program their counter-programming?
• PEW finds that McCain's Britney/Paris ads did have some effect after all: they dragged his campaign out of the shadows, giving him parity with Obama in the media coverage for the first time in weeks. I guess in that sense they were effective.

I promise, last time I'll post about Britney Spears and/or the MoveOn MTV ad buy. There's no solid data about whether or not humorous and/or pop culture heavy ads are effective, but Peter Levine has some interesting thoughts on the matter and it's worth it for everyone to be on the same page wrt best practices:

I am not aware of research or public data that would allow us to compare the effectiveness of a sarcastic or silly ad versus a serious and information-rich one. Nor have I seen evaluations of games that are designed to promote voting, whether the games are silly and parodic or challenging and educational. (The campaigns may have tested games and various broadcast messages, but they never share the data from such experiments.)

My hunch is that anyone who tries a very light approach is making a mistake. Remember that less than half of the youth population will vote. Heavily represented in that group are young people who are seriously concerned about issues, from their own economic prospects to the future of the planet. Voting is not much fun, but it is rewarding if one feels one can make a real difference by casting a ballot. Potential voters are likely to be people who believe they can make a difference, or at least are open to the argument that the election is important. This is true of all citizens, but young people are especially likely to say that they need more information and explanation before they can vote. Often, in focus groups and polls, they say that the main reason they may not vote is that they feel inadequately informed to make such a serious choice. Thus I suspect that an information-rich, explanatory ad or game could be very effective. But a jokey approach is likely to make young people feel that the election is unimportant (thus lowering turnout), or may offend them by patronizing them.

This doesn't rule out some use of humor and amusement in various media. But one should always take the audience seriously.

And just in case you haven't seen this yet: