PR News

Vote For Me Kids!

by matt

She’s on Saturday Night Live. He’s shooting hoops with Tyler Hansbrough. Both have appeared on the Tyra Banks show have and even done stints on WWE Raw. Type one of their names into YouTube and the results tally over 80,000. Who are these celebrities? Why they’re none other than our 2008 democratic presidential hopefuls, Hillary and Barack.


Photo Courtesy: Associated Press

The 2008 race brings a drastic change in campaign strategy as candidates flood every possible medium to access potential voters. The days of relying on standard news coverage and the old-fashioned meet-and-greet at the town hall are history. This year, no TV program is too trivial, no late night talk show too distasteful. The democratic candidates will leave no rock unturned in the pursuit of that magical, rare thing that seems to only exist in legend: the youth vote.

Candidates are wise to seek out new avenues to reach young voters – after all, a higher youth turnout could be what gives the Democrats the edge come November. What’s truly amazing, though, is how quickly the face of campaigning has changed – even since 2004. Virtually every semi-popular television show is a viable option, Facebook and MySpace are now campaign must-haves, and pretty soon we’ll all be getting text messaged from Hillary and instant messaged from Barack.

The aggressive race to get face-time is only heating up and promises to get more exciting and perhaps even more comically desperate. When Barack Obama is fielding “boxer or briefs” questions on the marginally successful Tyra Banks show and being profiled by the always classy US Weekly, one has to wonder – how low can they go?

With the rate that the campaigning frontier has changed in just a few short years, it’s both intriguing and frightening to ponder what the future holds. Guest appearances on Celebrity Apprentice? Candidate-style Survivor? One thing is for certain: the youth voters may still be apathetic and even still uninformed, but gosh darnit, they will be aware.

Permalink |  Save on del.ico.us



Commenting is closed for this article.

Public Relations for the N.C. Department of Transportation (NCDOT) U.S. 1/64

MMI Associates was contracted to handle media relations and to organize various efforts to open the communication lines between the construction entities on the project and motorists. The firm developed a strategic public relations campaign to ensure that local motorists and those passing through would be aware of the most up-to-date traffic patterns.