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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (34486)	3/15/2004 1:42:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793670

Presidential Ad War Hits the Web Harsh Attacks Leveled Online, Where TV Rules Don't Apply By Brian Faler Special to The Washington Post Monday, March 15, 2004; Page A10 The presidential ad war has gone online. Last month, before it had even released its first television ads, the Bush campaign unveiled a video online -- links to which were e-mailed to 6 million supporters -- calling Democrat John F. Kerry a hypocrite for railing against special interest money. It concludes with the message: "Kerry -- brought to you by the special interests." The Massachusetts senator quickly responded with a video, which his campaign e-mailed to 300,000 of its supporters. "Who's the politician whose taken more special interest money than anyone in history?" the announcer in the video asks. "The same one who's attacking John Kerry's record because he can't defend his own." The exchange represents one of the latest twists in online politicking. As more people get access to high-speed Internet connections, candidates have begun moving beyond e-mails, blogs and other Web sites. The Web videos combine the audio, video -- and, experts said, emotional impact -- of television advertising with the ability to target a message to a particular audience. "This is a unique way to share a message with [supporters] that becomes quite memorable," said Scott Stanzel, a Bush campaign spokesman. "In this case, inform them about -- give them context to -- the attacks that we have been seeing from Senator Kerry and put them in perspective." Political groups and candidates have used Web videos before. The Democratic National Committee has released a number of videos in recent years. Its most noted effort, an animated clip released in 2002, featured Bush pushing a wheelchair-bound senior citizen down the line of a graph tracking a plummeting stock market. The Republican Party got into the act, e-mailing supporters last year a video that portrayed the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates as running on little more than anger. Some congressional and gubernatorial candidates have launched video ads, too. Last month, former representative Bill McCollum, a Republican from Florida who is running for the Senate, released a video calling his GOP primary rival, former Bush housing secretary Mel R. Martinez, "liberal." Several former 2004 Democratic presidential candidates incorporated video into their Web sites in other capacities -- providing behind-the-scenes footage, for example. But Bush and Kerry, experts said, appear to be the first presidential candidates to use Web video to create campaign ads. "It's an inexpensive way to reach a very large group of people and mobilize your base," said Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Kerry. "We get a number of new members to our Internet site through them -- people come and sign up -- and we've also been able to raise money from them." Internet strategists outside the presidential campaigns said the ads are also a relatively cheap way for candidates to get their messages into the news media. The spots can be made for as little as a few thousand dollars and released for a fraction of the cost of airing a television commercial. Because the ads are still novel, experts said, they also attract the attention of journalists, whose reports carry the candidates' messages to an even wider audience. The presidential candidates' online ads have been more biting than their television ones. The Bush campaign has produced, mostly, positive ads emphasizing his leadership in "tough times." Friday it released its first negative ads attacking Kerry as a big taxer. The Massachusetts senator has criticized Bush in ads he ran during the Democratic primary, and has responded to the new Bush television ad, but none were as sharp as his Internet ads. Experts noted that the online ads are sent to some of the candidates' most die-hard supporters -- those who bothered to sign up for their e-mails -- who probably would not be offended by hard-hitting attacks on the competition. The ads are also exempted from a new rule that requires federal candidates to say specifically in their television spots that they approve of them. That loophole, some strategists said, might encourage candidates to send their more caustic messages online. Kerry noted his approval of his Web videos in both spots, while Bush did not. Jonah Seiger, a Washington-based Internet strategist, predicted the ads may get tougher still as their novelty wears thin. "As the media stops giving this real attention, there's more degrees of freedom for these types of communications to be more aggressive because they'll be under the radar," he said. © 2004 The Washington Post Company