New GOP Messaging Tactic: Be Like Buzzfeed?

I've suggested this sort of thing for conservative media. I'm not sure it works for the party itself to do this sort of thing, but I guess we'll see.

What do cat pictures and GIFs have to do with Republican politics? Not a whole lot, at least right now. But beginning next week, that'll change.

Staffers at the National Republican Congressional Committee are finishing up a site redesign that'll likely be rolled out this weekend. The new NRCC.org does away with all the typical features of a political website, emulating instead the style of the Web juggernaut whose top headlines currently include "10 Easter Bunnies Straight From Hell" and "14 Photos Of George W. Bush Touching Bald Men's Heads."

Yes. The committee that elects Republicans to the House is taking BuzzFeed's advice to heart... by copying BuzzFeed itself.

"BuzzFeed's eating everyone's lunch," said NRCC spokesman Gerrit Lansing. "They're making people want to read and be cognizant of politics in a different way."

Buzzfeed had previously offered just this advice to the GOP. (And that's not actually an overly-snarky bit of Advice Trolling, either: Much of it is not-so-bad messaging advice.)

Previously: I think I've got this incident in mind: Then-RNC-chair Michael Steele titling his blog "What Up?"

Soon after it was not titled "What Up?" He got a lot of grief for it.

There's always a problem when an organization which is basically un-hip (and should be un-hip) tries to be hip. It often looks pretty silly and contrived.

posted by Ace at 01:34 PM

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