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Targeting voters, targeting tones
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My mother commented unfavorably on the call tune my 26-year-old daughter has on her cell phone. A short time later, Mom told me how nice it was that H has changed her tune; the piece she has now is so much more pleasing to the ear.
I didn’t know what she was talking about. At my address I still gnash my teeth through interminable drug-addled death throes till I can leave my voice mail.
Then I visited my Mom, and happened to phone H from there, and got “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies” while I waited. The little chameleon!
This is the age of the targeted message. Obama’s radio ads in Iowa feature white, middle class, middle aged married people, with loud cows in the background. His North Carolina ad is a young black male speaking to rap rhythms.
Which just reminded me of an early 60s television commercial for “Narragansett Lager Beer”: A guy walks into a barroom and orders a Narragansett with an annoying Truman Capote falsetto — which happens to be a dead ringer for the voice of the female bartender. Then a seductive dish sidles up to him on a bar stool and strikes up conversation. The man turns and responds to her in bedroom Cary Grant sonority.
The female bartender, insulted, exclaims: “You were making fun of me!” The man turns to her, and becoming Capote again, points to the coquette and says, “No, I was making fun of her.”
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One more diversion
Reading a post like this, I think, “This is what it feels like to get old. This is what we made older people feel like when we were young. What goes around …”
OK, yesterday I got Andree.
Today, I’m completely lost.
You meet people where they are. One of the first rules of public speaking is know your audience.
What is most annoying is to be in any type of meeting where a cell phone goes off. Young people today who are presumably trying to be serious adults will invariably have junk lyrics as part of their ringer.
Hey how ’bout those candidate Christmas messages?
It is true to “meet people where they are”. But I think the point is that it can cross over to crass marketing and scratching itchy ears.
It reminds me of a politician of the past who was criticized of saying “I’m very concerned about that. That is one of my top issues” to whatever someone said to him.
I don’t understand the need for some to continually make comments on particular bloggers of World Mag. I
Today, I’m completely lost.
You and me, both, sister.
You and me both.
I was in a district with a very tight congressional race last time, so we got microtargeted and ad-barraged.
We are in enough organizations that it was fun to guess who’s mailing ists prompted particular issue ads. My wife in NEA and NRA, so there were a lot of contrarian stuff addressed to her!
After the campaign, she sent a thank you letter to the DNC - to thank them for all of the pro-choice info from their candidate (a woman). She said she took the ads to her woman’s group (at church) and it helped the whole group to decide that they wouldn’t vote for the woman candidate this time.