Huntsman and the old bad news good news cliche.

Here is the bad news. Those of us who believe that Huntsman has the best resume to sit behind the Resolute desk in the oval office may be a tad disappointed in his take-off from the starting gate. His organization still believes that long emails work. They don’t. A brief tweet with a link to the message would produce more reads and gain more traction for his message. He has a national expert doing videos, which is top of the line current thinking, but even the best video needs to be seen to be appreciated. 

Until those videos and their message are resident in the minds of his supporters, they will not be easily passed along to others. In other words, no communication leverage. And unless you have a billion dollars in your campaign fund, then message leverage is critical to success. And another thing, a plea to have the emails passed on is not nearly as good as work producing content that deserves on the merit to be passed along. Not an easy task, but that is why they call it work. That is the basic concept of viral communications.

Right now the videos and Huntsman's message are going relatively unnoticed, which means no real traction for his resume and for his position on critical issues. It may take a few more organization changes to bring his message distribution technology up to par with his video content.

The good new is there is still plenty of time. Plus the noise level is now high enough that no serious message from a prospective president could be heard above the debt discussion decibel levels. It would be like having a conversation next to a 747 engine during takeoff. We could not hear the other person say, “Get out of the way.”  Huntsman should let the media comments, on his slow exit from the gate, die on the page with a silent response. There are many laps to go and plenty of time to catch whoever is out in front, which at this point is really no one. 

This is a good time for the Huntsman crew to head for a cabin up north and plot  some real strategy for high tech message development and distribution. One thing for sure it is insane to believe that the old political campaign techniques, people, philosophies will produce any new results. And if the debt discussions have showed us anything, it is that we need some new results.


Let's hope that Obama does the "right" thing and refuses to run again as part of a righteous indignation anouncement.