Mayday.us -- the requested explanation of my reaction
PirateNinja
Icrontian
About Me, About This PAC, and About This Post
I've been more or less asked to expand on my view that MayDay PAC is not worth investing in. Perhaps all of us can put the past 24 hours of assumptions and snark behind us. For now, we can take advantage of the fact that we have a genuine opportunity to have a political discussion on Icrontic.
So how exactly did I sum up my expectations of this PAC in roughly 15-30 minutes yesterday? I'm going to tell you the secret of how and why I look at content in a special way!
But first, let's begin with a beautiful photo. This one to be exact:
Where did I get that image? America herself took this photo! But I found it on the MayDay campaign of course!
https://mayday.us/newpledge/ Where did they find it? They did what any good American does. They stole from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. But I digress, the point is if you look at this image with my eyes you see more than farmland, a white girl, an american flag, and a shity instagramish filter.
"They stole from Wal-Mart..."
You see an organizations target market and you get a little look in to their marketing strategy. You can do the same thing outside of pictures. You can do it with videos, source code, vendor analysis, and so much more.
So What Exactly Did I Do Yesterday
I SHIT AND ATE AND TOOK CARE OF MY FAMILY. And then there was the other stuff I did yesterday. I watched a video that impressed me with its marketing content and not with its message. That made me want to know more about the organization. That made me go to the website. Then I analyzed the website. I gauged the marketing skill of those running the site. Then I read and looked at the content to evaluate the genuineness of the campaign using political and economic knowledge. Then I combined all of that and decided this was useless. Then I posted as much. I did this in probably 20 minutes.
FFS, What Exactly Did You Do Yesterday
My initial thought after watching the video of the sexy smug as fuck looking actor guy that @Linc posted was I need to learn more about who is behind this, because this is pretty brilliant: free celebrity endorsements for small operations are not the norm, I've scored one in my entire career and it was a favor. Meanwhile I noted the video had 2 very clear points, and waited nearly exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds to begin the call to action. All of my video campaigns on YouTube show that CTAs are generally optimized (depending on product/service) by presenting a convincing open ended issue for 2 minutes followed by an overly simple idealistic service/product based solution. The solution has to be pitched with various things like appeal to authority, ad populum, and other logical fallacies that work brilliantly in marketing. This is what I thought about as I watched it. That and things like I wonder if he drives a prius? I wonder if I miss living in Los Angeles? But I digress.
The video caught my attention because it was either expertly done or this smug fucker has a natural talent and may as well join the ranks of Mike Chang.
"...this smug fucker has a natural talent..."
How many logical fallacies can you spot during the CTA?
So with it in my mind that there was a brilliant marketing campaign in the works, and without yet any rational explanation of what exactly the solution was I ventured over to the website.
OH THANK GOD IS THIS WHERE YOU GET TO THE POINT
No. This is where I share with you my recollected thought stream when I saw the may day page.
Now any incoming traffic from the aforementioned video has no spent roughly 2-3 minutes of their day on this topic. All of those willing to not renege on their commitment to a YouTube video after roughly 6 seconds will give you about 5 minutes of time on the topic. Marketing people who do this stuff know this stuff. It's a consultant thing. Much to my not surprise, I arrive at a website that is brilliantly designed to make use of their final 2-3 minutes. There is no wasting time. BAM big ass red call to action button. PLEDGE THE MONEY YOU SUMBITCH, DONT YOU WANT TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY? OR ARE YOU COMMUNIST?
Comments
The Website
I've made this website before. Something in quotes as a call to legitimacy. 3 large sets of numbers on the right hand side with the big stand out call to action directly to the left. I've seen this before. I just made this website a year ago and arrived at this exact same layout after months of a/b testing. I wonder if they a/b test to?
/me checks the source code
Yes, of course they do. Ok, well if it is anything like websites I make, I know that to gain maximum conversion you need to fill the website with confusing content that overwhelms the user so that they psychologicaly feel they have no choice but to just click the CTA button. The CTA button that needs to be above the fold and roughly every 600-800 vertical pixels after that.
Oh my god they've done it! A beautifully sectioned off website with a CTA that stands out like a hooplehead at a Havard smart fuck party. But let me actually read all this and see what the solution is. Oh. Wait. What? What is the god damn plan to address the large open ended problem? I mean I'd like to know how you are going to fix a massive economic incentive based problem with a few million dollars. OH THERE IT IS. The plan link. Let's go there. I'm throwing my marketing head out of the window, and looking at this with a fresh pair of eyes.
"I'm throwing my marketing head out of the window, and looking at this with a fresh pair of eyes."
/me reads this page. Yes I read it. Yes I did. I am many things, I am not a liar.
OH. Ok. I get it. They want 12 million dollars so that they can run a real life simulation to see if they have any chance in hell of the following goal: elect a new congress that is willing to sacrifice the primary incentive of becoming a politician (money).
new alarm bells ring
Isn't the guy running this really smart like the smug one said? Doesn't he know exactly how this simulation is going to -- oh maybe he has an ulterior motive. After all, this entire website is freakishly well put together from a marketing standpoint.
Back to reading the "plan" which is filled with brilliantly confusing sentences like this:
Sentences that are not only confusing, but not at all part of a plan. Instead it is as if this whole plan page is additional information overload. Remember the countdown guys. We get 2-3 minutes of attention span before you lose your customer forever. If you want commitment, you better stress them out about actually reading anything.
Oh but wait, the plan is back. Here it is
Stage 1
In 5 districts, achieve "victory". Victory is not defined. An overarching goal of lamenting campaign finance reform as an important issue among voters is what the goal of stage 1 is. This is to be done with 16 million dollars. There are no specifics provided. No definitions of how this money will be spent, and certainly because this is kick started there is no liability to do any one thing with the cash. This is especially true since no outcome is actually defined as victory. In other words, said group running this shindig can do whatever they want without damning their character. They are in control of the message and the PR, and they can become whatever they want however the results present themselves.
"If only we could get rid of the Mexicans so easily!"
Stage 2
Based on stage 1, we decide if we want to bother with stage 2. If we do, we ask for more money from the masses. We will use this money to come up with a new plan which will dislodge members of congress/senate who are not in favor of our reforms. We are going to need a lot of money to attempt this. Afterall, if anybody could overthrow the interests of both the senate and the house with just millions of dollars then it would happen all the time.
Stage 3
We did it ! We elected a brand new congress in 2017! Somehow something pass a law through both the house, senate, and have it signed by the president.
Stage 4
Revise the constitution and further enforce our new legislation all the way to the supreme court! Now we have new legislation, a constitutional amendment, and supreme court precedence! If only we could get rid of the Mexicans so easily!
Wow! Lofty goals! Great plan! Zero explanation of the particulars. Zero information regarding how this is possible, because if it was this easy wouldn't it have already been done? Among many many other questions.
Ok, I'm done with the plan page. On to the pledge page.
Well that's a pretty picture. Oh good, they accept bitcoin. I think I'll go back to Icrontic and post my first impression now.
All this design expertise and Lincoln and I have been asking for years for some help for icrontic in that department
All this post has taught me is that I really, really want to study marketing and how it works.
Do you have any evidence of the photo theft, or is it damning to use the same stock photo source? It would be pretty amazing to catch an organization run by Lawrence Lessig, one of the most high-profile proponents of copyright reform at stealing images - or anything else, for that matter. "Founder of Creative Commons steals image for website" would make the headlines of every tech website on the Internet.
They're using Bootstrap as their theming source, which is MIT licensed, so your insinuation of "what else did they steal to build this" rings pretty hollow.
Nope. No evidence at all short of per tineye the image appeared in walmart corporate before it was anywhere else, and tin eye also indexs most major stock photo works.
Stop accusing me of insinuations, that isn't what I meant. I was alluding to the fact that the guy plays irony well.
My mistake?
If "do the same thing" means "get a feel for their marketing" and doesn't refer back to the bold, italics headlining self-quote right above that which specifically references a picture, then... OK. But I'm betting I'm not the only person who would misinterpret that.
I was having fun learning markdown, and that was an unforseen consequence of typography. The second sentence refers to the subject of the sentence directly behind it, not the quoted portion above both of them.