June 30, 2003
First Mover Advantage
The chattering classes were shocked last week when Howard Dean kept up his momentum despite what they insisted was a disastrous performance on Meet The Press.
Why was that? It was because of the Internet, and a hoary old (by Internet standards) idea called First Mover Advantage.
Dean was been the first candidate for President to embrace this medium and all it has to offer. He made his campaign truly interactive, and even Democrats who don't agree with him on everything (which he warned them would be the case) have come to respect that.
As with such early companies as AOL (first to online graphics) and Netscape (first to the browser) Dean has managed this feat with a pitifully small investment. I have been to Burlington. The Internet campaign consists of just a few people in a corner of the office. There are also big square offices there, where middle-aged men in white shirts and ties continue doing things the old-fashioned way. But the Dean campaign has, on the whole, left the Internet people alone, embraced their success, and refused the (big company) temptation to co-opt them and turn them into something they are not.
As in the 1990s there are now copycats. Dennis Kucinich is a copycat. Dennis Kucinich is trying, manfully, to copy the Dean innovations in his campaign, and achieving some short-term success. But Kucinich does not have the budget to overtake Dean's First Mover advantage.
This has nothing to do with the stands taken by Dean or Kucinich. I suspect that had Kucinich embraced the Internet first, embraced blogging and interactivity, mailing lists and databases, Kucinich today might be scaring the Democratic Establishment while Dean would still be Howard Who?
Now let us go back to the Netscape example. You're not using a Netscape browser, are you? AOL is no longer even a technology company. (It is a Time-Warner marketing division.)
This is because Microsoft kept making mistake-after-mistake until it got things right. Microsoft spent big and overwhelmed Netscape, and it overwhelmed AOL.
Bush might yet do this to Dean. The Bush campaign is the Microsoft of this political season. But there's one thing that Bush has that Microsoft did not have, a deadline. If his people don't figure out interactivity by the fall of 2004 all the money in the world will not save him.
That is not what I expect. In the end, I believe, the 2004 election will be decided based on how the American people feel about George W. Bush at the time they go to the polls, and on how many are motivated to go at all. It won't be money, and it won't be the Internet. In the end, the decision will be yours.
Dana,
What history books are you reading?
AOL (first to online graphics)? Nope, Viewtron.
Netscape (first to the browser)? Nope. Berners-Lee. AOL and Netscape were the first to mass market such things.
And, heck yeah, I am on Netscape 7.0 right now!
Of course, I give you props on the unspoken part of the Bush/MS compariosn: both can overwhelm with dollars, but both will lie, cheat and illegally undermine thier opponents to achieve their goals.
Robbie D
Posted by: Robbie D at June 30, 2003 11:52 AMI’ve never heard of Viewtron and never used a browser written by TBL. My first online graphical experience was AOL and my first browser was Netscape. I think Dana’s point was more about who was the first to do things successfully on a large scale.
Posted by: rschroed at June 30, 2003 12:06 PMrschroed,
I am sure you are right about Dana’s intention, but it isn’t clear.
I guess I am also stunned by the number of blogs that need to explain Dean’s early lead by saying anything except that his message is resonating.
Robbie D
Posted by: Robbie D at June 30, 2003 12:44 PMIt’s amazing to me how many people will go out of their way to explain Dean’s success so far as just a result of gimmicks and what not. Why can’t people just acknowledge that the primary reason Dean is succeeding is because of Dean himself? The Internet stuff is the political equivalent of the foot in the door. It does not make a successful candidate, only the candidate can do that and Dean IS doing that.
Posted by: Chris Andersen at June 30, 2003 01:26 PMActually, the deal with Dean is pretty simple: nobody’s paying attention to the 2004 election yet except hard-core party fanatics, and that applies on both sides. Dean is reaching out to exactly these people, and do it well by pressing all the hot buttons and channeling the ghost of Paul Wellstone. Whether he maintains his position near the front of the Democratic Party pack, behind Kerry, once mainstream voters wake up is another question.
John McCain had a lot of momentum early on too, and you know what happened to him in South Carolina.
Posted by: Richard Bennett at June 30, 2003 04:41 PMI’ve always attributed what happened after South Carolina more to Karl Rove’s handiwork than to mainstream voters waking up.
Posted by: Ryan Schroeder at June 30, 2003 05:15 PMFirst, thanks to Robbie for the correction. He’s right. But “first mover advantage,” as the term was used in the 1990s, meant the first company to make a commercial success out of something. Not necessarily a profit, but big sales.
Second, why is Dean doing so well? One word — interactive. That’s not just the Internet, although you can talk to his blog like you’re talking here. It puts you in the game.
But have you ever been to a Meetup? Do you know that when a Meetup crowd gets big, they add more sites? There will be about a dozen of these things in the Atlanta area on Wednesday. And at each one, a newcomer can stand up, testify honestly about why they are there, be heard, be recognized, be validated.
It’s empowering. And the Dean people GET IT. That’s why Dean ended his announcement speech pointing to the crowd and screaming, “You have the power. You have the power.”
We do. But it’s fine with me if the Republicans don’t figure it out until, say, January of 2005.
Posted by: Dana Blankenhorn at June 30, 2003 06:30 PMWhat are the chattering classes? Didn’t it used to be the name for the press? But now isn’t it, er, all of us here at this blog? Particularly *you* as the poster?
Posted by: Andrew at June 30, 2003 06:33 PM
