So there I was, a day before all that rain, walking home when I noticed something in the doorways of all the apartments on my street…piles of doorhangers. In the picture, note how this “grassroots” campaign covered the front gate with no less than 7 on the gate and a few more on the ground.
Guess what happened to them?
These went in to the recylcer and NO ON SAW THEM. The other ones made their way onto the street, and by the next day, when it rained, they were a papier mache mess.
Now, the candidate in question shouldn’t take all the piss on this one – just about every Big Campaign, especially the “No on B” campaign, did the same thing.
News flash: it is the second decade of the 21st Century. Sending a bunch of people in the last weeks of the campaign to put up expensive die-cut door hangers made of dead trees in piles around the city is NOT GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNING.
(I guess no on listened when I said this before.)
For the same price as a pile of junk mail, these campaigns could have chosen a better way to get the message out. With online advertising being as cheap as it is, they could have spared the neighborhood some dead tree papier mache, and instead put the money into window signs and a hyper targeted mailer.
Just remember: In San Francisco, we force everyone to compost…but we never force politicians to be more Earth-friendly with their tax-funded campaigns.
Wait a minute….this may become a “thing.” What if candidates who took the public financing in SF were required to use only soy inks, super-recycled paper, vegan snacks and other tough regulations?
Hey, it could happen, especially with the so-called “progressives” in charge!