Last night, when the number of political robocalls reached 6 in the space of an hour, we stopped answering our phone. Tomorrow is election day, so we won't answer our phone tonight, either: the "do not call" list doesn't apply to political campaigns.
I may not be thrilled when a call from a live campaign volunteer interrupts my dinner, but I'm positively turned off by robocalls. At least when I get a call from a live person, I know that someone cares enough about an issue to volunteer his or her time. It’s part of the democratic process. (Full disclosure: I have been that volunteer in the past.) Volunteer calls at least are a dialogue. But robocalls are just annoying, auditory, time-wasting spam.
Doing a bit of quick research, I found Politics Magazine’s Political Telemarketing Guide and Local Victory Political Robocalls: Dos and Don’ts. They resemble CAN-SPAM guidelines and the early email marketing rubric. My favorite paragraph in the Do’s and Don’ts begins:
"Watch out though, some voters get turned off by too many robocalls. Even if your campaign only does one or two rounds of calls, if your opponents have been bombarding the phone lines with calls, the voters may penalize you when they hear your call."
Bingo! And this sort of fatigue resonates with what happens when those in the broader world lose sight of the basics: the proverbial blizzard of round after round after round of holiday and annual appeals is right around the corner. Oh, boy!
When companies and organizations stray, their efforts just add to the general noise that leads to overall viewer disaffection. How many times has your company or organization gotten so carried away with an internal viewpoint or become enamored with a technology that the effort ceased to really focus on the audience? Missing the mark on the basics costs time and money, but rarely achieves desired results.
When companies and organizations stray, their efforts just add to the general noise that leads to overall viewer disaffection. How many times has your company or organization gotten so carried away with an internal viewpoint or become enamored with a technology that the effort ceased to really focus on the audience? Missing the mark on the basics costs time and money, but rarely achieves desired results.
So if you’re turned off by a robocalls or campaign email and literature, take a look at your company’s or organization's efforts through that same critical lens.
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I thought these calls couldn't get much worse. Then I mailed my ballot. Now the calls are not only annoying, they're worthless because my vote has been cast.
ReplyDeleteif the proof is in the pudding, then it will be interesting to see who wins on Tuesday. Unfortunately, simplistic, repetitive messaging works time and time again in political campaigns, because most people aren't fully engaged. It's a numbers game. For every voter that ignores a robo call, far more remember the thumbs up when they cast their vote.
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