How did Obama get the team to create a web of red?

Hunting Cloud Net Note: From Buckle bear report to BuzzFeed video again to chicken feather show, Obama seems to be out of hand on the road, in order to promote Austrian health care is also hard to fight. You can find the answer to this interview about why you should release the State of the Union address in advance in Medium or why you should make the president a net red.

For the vast majority of journalists, even those involved in politics do not have the opportunity to sit with the President of the United States to interview. But this January, three YouTube Reds got the chance. They talked to Obama about drones and network neutrality, and asked him what powers he wanted. Then GloZell Green, a 3 million-fan, took out her iconic greenish lipstick and gave it to the leader of the free world and said, "to your first wife." Obama seemed overwhelmed, and he said, "Do you know what I don't know?"

Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the president, who is in charge of the White House's interaction with the outside world, is a good thing to him: the apparent frankness of a high-ranking head of state can narrow his distance with many supporters. Pfeiffer, who was always with him when he first ran for president, played an important role in broadening his communication channels with the American people. Obama and Zach Galifianakis to each other in Funny or die, the implementation of Austrian health insurance, and the local meteorological anchor chatted about the climate, and in a BuzzFeed video to face the mirror. The White House has also made a grand entry to Facebook, Twitter and medium, even breaking the precedent of a speech on medium before the President's State of the Union address.

Not long ago, the night before the White House left, Pfeiffer agreed to talk to backchannel about their strategy and share his views on the current and future political media landscape. The most striking prediction is that the future White House can produce its own content, which will undoubtedly have a dramatic impact on traditional media.

The following is the content of this interview, for the formulation clearly made appropriate changes:

Steven Levy: When you're in charge of the White House's interaction with the outside world, one of the iconic events is the president's "unconventional" way of showing up, and how does this idea come from?

Dan Pfeiffer: I've been campaigning for 2008 years, and we're proud to take advantage of the power of the Internet and social media. After the election, we built some outdated infrastructure at the White House. For information security reasons, all of us are barred from using any social media, so we have to rethink how we combine our cyber strategy with the White House Rules. During the campaign, we realized that it was not enough to rely on old-fashioned mainstream communication to reach people in times of many choices today, so in the first few years we used not only traditional methods, but also Facebook to communicate with people to enrich our web pages.

After the 2012 election, the pace of change has accelerated dramatically, and our initial approach to the populace has gradually failed to meet our demands. The influence of traditional news reports is obviously reduced. There are some difficulties with how to convey the message we want to convey, but at the same time, there are rumors of gossip in the face of the development of social media. So we try to adopt a "Alpine" strategy and embrace the risks that we don't have to take in traditional political rules.

In your initial attempts, such as appearing on YouTube and Facebook, you are still using the traditional media language, but at some point in time you have taken the new channel model.

Yes, at first we thought it would be different to accept Zuckerberg's interview and the interview with "News 60" Steve Kroft, but gradually we found that we would have to behave differently in different situations. After the midterm elections, Obama told us to redouble our efforts to enhance innovation and aggressiveness. He thinks that when you think about how to communicate with people in the online world to win this battle, authenticity is the key to the online world. But in politics, the rules are the key, and sometimes the atmosphere may be a little tense. So we decided to take the extra risk. BuzzFeed is an excellent example. We know that BuzzFeed video can be a good response in the audience and social media, but it may lead to accusations from commentators and media critics.

We need to take a certain responsibility to do the flattering things. We are willing to do anything possible to avoid dialogue with the White House press corps, which is not within our strategy. Such things always attract criticism.

How does your strategy differ from Nixon's Laugh in or Clinton's Arsenio Hall?

In some ways there is no difference. All politicians are looking for a model to show their true selves. The difference is that we are trying to communicate with a specific group of people gathered in a particular place and using the way they like to communicate. If we are interviewed by Vox, we are in a politically oriented interview with the readers of Vox, answering politically oriented questions. And BuzzFeed is different, and that's why we can do serious interviews with Ben Smith and record funny videos because different people want to see things differently.

This kind of discrimination is very challenging for the White House. You can't just talk to 150 million of people through a national television address, and you'll have to work twenty or thirty times times as hard as you can to reach the results of a previous president's speech. But the good thing is that you can communicate directly with people. Before there is such a diverse channel, the Washington press corps can lead a day of news, like Ebola, which takes up all the news pages, and that's a real concern, but we don't want to limit the topic to Ebola, and we want to promote the health care bill to prepare for the registration season. A decade ago we might have had no channel to promote, but now the president can answer a whole bunch of questions about Ebola, as well as promote the health care bill on the WebMD (Health services website).

Are there any indicators to measure the effect of this practice?

Some。 There is a link at the end of the inclusive NonBlank Ferns video (that is, die interviewed on Funny or Galifianakis) and we find that many people have opened the link and filled out the registration form for the Health Care Act. BuzzFeed video brings more traffic to the HealthCare.gov site.

These events show that the president is willing to try something different. Is there anything you suggest that he doesn't think is "President fan" and refuses?

We will choose carefully before we tell him about it. Like inclusive nonblank ferns video, due to the problem on the HealthCare.gov site we have been behind too much, so we must increase the intensity of publicity. But some things depend on intuition. We'd like to try something that nobody else seems to have, and I've always thought people would like to see their president less serious. He has a lot of comic talent, so he's doing well in all these videos.

You just talked about authenticity. The first time you look at these videos, you will feel "the days of the president made a great sacrifice," but saw five times six times will not have the feeling of shock. How to avoid the reality of becoming funny?

This is something we have to be aware of, and we must pay attention to all the things we do, even the most boring round of speeches. But we must always remind ourselves that at the White House we can only focus on what the president has done, and if you look at ESPN, our Facebook homepage, and the media audience, you'll find few people watching two videos, let alone three. Only the old man who stared at him would feel that he had exposed too much, and the average person would not think so.

I think the only time you've had a sensational behavior was that interview with YouTube Reds.

It's easy to find the New York Times columnist to talk about our climate plan, but influential people on the internet, like YouTube reds, want to talk to their fans. I know there must be a traditional Washington journalist criticizing us, saying that those people will only ask questions that are easy to answer, but in fact they are asking questions that their fans want to ask, which is why they are so popular. This is no substitute for a White House press conference or a traditional mainstream media interview, just another way of trying to attract attention.

Did you have an argument in the White House about this unconventional behavior that you released in advance of the State of the Union address in Medium?

This behavior has indeed caused a slight controversy. Once you say you want to violate a tradition that has lasted for decades, people will feel a little dissatisfied, but as long as you explain the principles, they will agree. I personally think it's absurd to ban the release of speeches in advance. The White House gave a speech twenty or thirty minutes before each speech, and the reporter sent it to the people in Washington who sent it to their friends, so everyone in Washington had a chance to watch the speech, but the public couldn't. So we think that since people in Washington can see it, why can't other people see it? Putting the speeches on a Web site for people to read longer content has a lot to offer, and we think people are better able to receive it and believe others will choose to do the same. A few days later, Mitt Romney announced that he was out of the race and posted on medium.

I think everyone should publish content on Medium.

necessary. Isn't that the subject of this conversation? (In fact, the last day of work in Pfeiffer also released a farewell letter on medium.) )

I hear you're asking some Silicon Valley bosses how to talk to your audience, who you talked to and what you learned from them?

I don't want to put in particular people, I keep them all low-key. In New York and Silicon Valley, we have been interacting with all the big social platforms and people involved in the digital, sales and VC industries to predict what technology will come next. One of the purposes of this project is to make sure that there is nothing unexpected in our perfect plan. The environment is always full of variables.

A few things have been emphasized to us. When I explain our difficulties in communication, many people say: "Yes, it's really hard." "It's not the only story that everyone wants to deal with, but I haven't met anyone who can do it," he said.

The second thing is to take a different approach in the interview with the Internet Reds. The third thing is the need for authenticity, not just for the president, but for all the executives who will appear on the Internet. Their Twitter and Facebook are also an important part of the intervention strategy to interact with people, respond to objections, and thank those who praise you and collect your tweets. Government staff may not be comfortable with this because they are not trained. It also involves a certain amount of risk, and you may just want to be a quiet government official and don't want to attract unnecessary attention.

How would you describe the future of the White House, and what do you think of the 2020-year-old environment?

Most of the work of future government officials may be on the web. If you're in charge of climate change policy at the White House, maybe you won't spend a few hours a week with environmental groups, but instead spend more time on Twitter, Facebook, or other social platforms, recruiting people interested in the issue. In this way, you may not reach more people than before, but you are exposed to more professional quality, can take practical action to help you solve your concern.

In addition, the more subtle point is that White House staff have more resources to create content. There are already a lot of people working on writing, speeches, arguments, or press releases, and you need someone to convey the same message in a more graphic form or video. It's subtle because you certainly don't want to live in a world of advertising, but your appetite for online content is always uneven. Traditional news can't meet the demand of content in the network.

Interestingly, if you publish a press release, everyone will think it's the right way to address the president, but if a video is released it will be seen as propaganda. The idea must change, and the video is just a more participatory and ornamental way of communicating, and it conveys the same message as the press release. Everyone should realize that.

Can you cite an example of this unconventional way of failing?

It did happen that things didn't work out as I expected. A few weeks ago we recorded a video on Facebook announcing the number of ACA registered. We wanted to post more news directly on the digital platform, so we recorded the video. It works well and has a millions of-point hit rate, but not as much as the other recent content. I don't think I've taken into account the fact that the number of registered people is a journalist's concern, and Facebook may not be that concerned.

Maybe you just need a better title.

(laughter) Yes, you're not going to believe what we saw in the video. The most important thing we've learned from this episode is that the news media cares whether we've reached 1 million registered people or 1.1 million, and the public doesn't care.

Last question about you leaving the White House. Jay Carney is already in charge of Amazon's media work, which Silicon Valley company would you dive into?

My first priority is to have a long holiday.

Everyone thinks so.

Yes, I don't know what I'm going to do, I've spent my entire career working for the White House or working for the White House, and for me the next thing is unknown. I would like to continue to explore the successful dissemination of information in today's media environment, whether it is in a company or some project work can be really involved in it or just a long way to see is possible.

Source:medium