ABSTRACT
The overarching question for candidates and their campaign staffs is how they can wade through the clutter of offline and online communication to reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time, at an affordable price. Beginning with the early television commercials created by Madison Avenue agencies in 1952 for presidential candidates Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, television soon became the dominant means of communication for candidates for high office. Audience fragmentation presents both challenges and opportunities for political media consultants. Audience fragmentation, observes veteran media consultant Peter Fenn, has made it vastly more difficult to get our messages out to the people want in sufficient enough numbers to really make an impact. MTV and its Choose or Lose campaign teamed up with the social networking site MySpace.com to present the MTV Myspace Candidate Dialogue, which featured video clips of several presidential contestants fielding questions from young voters.
