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Why go to the trouble of building a new web site for a campaign in progress?  Why not just add content and navigation tools to a new section of the existing site?  Two brand new sites, from the Obama campaign and EMILY’s List (which supports Clinton), illustrate how a mini-site can add punch to a campaign.

Last Monday, the Obama campaign announced it had created a web site to catalogue and refute the attacks on its candidate made by Hillary Clinton.  Wired treated that as news.  I don’t think announcing a new section of the Obama site would have been as alluring to journalists.

HillaryAttacks.BarackObama.com carries out a hostile branding strategy of attempting to fuse Hillary's name with the verb "attack" and the direct object “Obama” in the public mind.  To the extent the brand sticks, it won’t matter if Hillary has the better argument on health care mandates or what kindergarten assignments reveal about character.  What will matter is that, regardless of the issue or the ethics of the blow, she will be seen as the attacker, and Obama will be seen as acting in self-defense.  Now, if we had been the firm contracted to build this mini-site, we would have enhanced the branding initiative with search engine optimization, WebStickers, and blog ads.  Then social and paid as well as earned media would be enlisted in the cause.  But it’s still a clever move.

The Clinton network is not wanting for mini-sites.  The campaign has had an online interface to its rapid-response war room for months.  More recently, the women’s political action committee EMILY’s List launched a mini-site with another good purpose in mind: instructing Iowans on how to participate in a Democratic Party caucus.  YouGoGirl.com features a self-paced tutorial on the ten steps you take to be counted in the caucus.  Photos, videos, and drop quotes attest to how easy, fun, and empowering it will be to participate.  And the sponsors have purchased an ad on Google to “Iowa Caucus,” among other placements in a reported mid five-figure online ad buy to spur traffic.  (Didn’t see an ad on Yahoo!  Odd.  Also saw sponsored links to Mitt Romney’s site at both of the web giants under “Iowa Caucus.”)

Here, the value of an additional web site is focus.  You want your main campaign web site to serve multiple purposes simultaneously, enabling visitors to choose among a smorgasbord of messages and activities.   Indeed, as of today there are caucus participation tutorials and exhortations on the Clinton, Edwards, Obama, and Paul campaign web sites.  However, when there is a single task at hand that demands sustained attention from visitors to master and undertake, a mini-site is a superior option.

Speaking of Ron Paul, there’s word today that supporters are renting a blimp to fly over the East Coast on his behalf.  Dirigible advertising is not one of our services at the present time –but you never know!

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