Sometimes it’s tough to be a copywriter. The deadlines never stop, clients can be insane and, in the depths of August, good hooks can be very hard to find.
To see what happens when these three elements converge, we need look no farther than the most recent fundraising appeal from the McAuliffe campaign. It starts out like so:
Do you recognize the name Erick Erickson? I wouldn’t be surprised if your answer is “no.”
Not a promising start. You don’t want readers to say “no” in fundraising appeals, and you most certainly don’t want them to say “no” in the first sentence. But it’s not a fatal mistake. Recovery is possible:
He’s an ultra-conservative blogger who popped up on the radar earlier this week when he called Texas State Senator Wendy Davis “Abortion Barbie,” a disgusting comment that’s not remotely out of his character.
Um…using bloggers as hooks? But at least he said something outrageous. About a politician in another state. But he said “abortion!” And that may be all the dog whistle some people need to start paying attention. But just in case…
And then yesterday, Erickson raised $10,000 in small donations for Ken Cuccinelli — before 11:30 a.m.
That’s a tenth the amount AFSCME gave McAuliffe on Tuesday. To the barricades!
We can’t let that kind of momentum build unchallenged. Donate $5 right now to help Terry match the Tea Party’s moneybomb.
It’s not ideal that the Cuccinelli campaign picked up a quick $10K that they’ll use to smear Terry. But it’s worse that Erickson was able to raise the money so quickly.
The reason to give is…this 10k for Cuccinelli was “not ideal.” Really? No, it’s because a blogger the reader has never heard of could do it again and do it fast.
So Terry’s team wants to have a short-fuse money bomb of its own to show this Erickson dude who’s boss.
That’s the hook. Or what passes for the hook. It takes the stock concepts — “tea party,” “abortion,” and “smear,” mixes them together and hopes it translates into donations.
Perhaps it will. The real value in this pitch, though, is the window it gives us on the McAuliffe low-dollar fundraising operation. It’s tired. It’s out of ideas. And the client wants more.
Anybody got AFSCME’s number?
