As the political season comes to a close...

[Lee Nordling]

I've been doing something a little different with the comic strip medium.

Locally, I've been running for tax collector. While I've been involved in local politics for four-plus years, I'm not particularly well-known in my township. This elected position makes a lot of sense for us, and wraps nicely around the other stuff we're doing, so I went for it...

...and my campaign is a weekly comic strip that's been running in our free weekly paper. It's been running on page 3 with the title "Lee Nordling, Tunkhannock Taxman", and there's a link on the right (where the byline usually goes) to the site at tunktown.com.

It's made some waves, concerned my opponent enough for him to advertise and put out signs for the first time ever, and mostly been a fun way to campaign, a first (I think) in American politics.

The goal of the strips (obviously) has been to get the message across, and it's amazing that people have been reading them all the way through: 60, 70, 80-plus words.

The upside: recognition and a higher profile than any local campaign we've had in the area.

The downside: younger people think it's funny, and older people are not getting it. I've heard/read the word "unprofessional" (attitude/presentation, not comic strip ability), "silly," "mean," lots of stuff from the people who really like the incumbent. I wasn't going to get their votes anyway, but the paper's owner told me he doesn't think "older people get it."

Winning was always a long shot, so I took some advice and "had fun."

And now, with one strip to get drawn and be posted and printed next week before the election, the run will be complete, so I no longer have to monitor the site to see how many people are going to it (locally), and can share this odd story.

There isn't a local person who'd notice I've reused some of the artwork, but everyone of you folks will, so I'll cop to it right now; this was economy-cartooning...but fun never-the-less.

--Lee

[ZingerSteve]

That's not just clever, but a great way to use your natural talent to get your message across in the medium you know best.

[Joshua Skurtu]

That is brilliant! I hope you get elected! Be sure to tell us what the final vote comes out.

FYI: Young people don't vote, unless P. Diddy is threatening to kill them.

EDIT: ALSO, lee, I would suggest you make a "LARGE PRINT" version of your comic strip. This might help the older voters understand them better. They MIGHT think this is a pantomime strip! (Because they can't see very well. This happens to older people.)

-Josh
www.theohnozone.com

[Lee Nordling]

Thanks!

And I won't get elected (because young people don't vote; P. Diddy left the building).

But when it's over, we're going to sit down and crunch the numbers to see how (if at all) the turnout was different from the last off-year election, and we're going to see how I did among Dems, compared to all the Dems who voted in the primary.

We always knew this would be a test case for a lot of local-advertising study and campaigning.

I appreciate the big thumbs up, and if anybody can move here and register to vote as of a few weeks ago (via time machine), I'd appreciate your vote, too; I'll need it.

--Lee

[standard]

cool idea. on a much-less-effort level, I was tempted to make up fake mayoral candidate yard signs for myself and some friends... i was going to combine the two candidates' names together and create a fictional third candidate. But I am lazy so I just talked about it instead. ha.

[Ross K.]

That's a really interesting idea.
The comics do a nice job of "humanizing" you to the audience. A lot of politicians' websites try to make the candidate appear as robot-like as possible. I like your site better.

[Lee Nordling]

Interesting that you should note that, Ross, because one of the reasons I tried this is because everybody knows my opponent, and the older residents who grew up here pretty much know each other, but few of the new folks/people who've moved here in the last ten years, like me, know anybody else, so this was my way of trying to help them all get to know me quickly.

I'm not sure I could've gotten as many different subjects covered and read in a traditional ad.

The potential downside is that, since it's a comic, many aren't likely to take it/me seriously...but that's always been the case about the use of cartoons/comics in advertising--I was an ad major in college, and I've toyed, on and off over the years, with cartooning in advertising...but never anything like this.

It sure got people to pay attention, but HOW they're going to react now will be the proof in the pudding.

I'm likely to get spanked, but how badly will be interesting.

--Lee

[Mike Peterson]

Not relevant to the cartoon -- which I like -- but to the process: Are you paying for space as a political ad, or is the paper donating this space? Do they normally run your cartoons, or is this a new thing for readers?

When elections came at the papers where I worked, there was usually one person put in charge of all political ads because of the record-keeping required. Interested to know if you are getting around that by, essentially, having the endorsement of the paper, or ...?

[Lee Nordling]

I'm happy to discuss the process and rationale for this, now that it's winding down; it's one of the reasons I put it here, because I thought folks might be interested in seeing some different use of our chosen medium.

Yep, this is paid advertising, and it says so (but not clearly online) right where the "syndicate distribution" line usually runs, in the gutter between two panels...which was, admittedly, sneaky. People never read that line in regular comic strips, so I put it in a place where I knew it would never be read.

In the paper, there's a line of type below my ad--and yep, it's a paid ad, masquerading as a "normal" comic strip--that reads, "POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT" but it isn't bold or above the strip, so that's not obvious, either.

My goal was to get people to read "the new strip in the paper," and I got them to do that...except for, humorously, the people who don't usually read comic strips in newspapers--must've grown up on the New York Times--but even there, my name as the first two words in the title helps create SOME name awareness.

The paper doesn't usually run strips, occasionally a couple from King Features, and I'm not sure people even KNOW I wrote and drew these; I don't think a lot of people THINK about people as creating comics, which is fodder for another discussion. So, being the ONLY strip in the paper for ten straight weeks gives me a real advantage over the other ads.

This was a ten-week ad buy, $9.90 (discounted) per column inch. Each column is 2" wide. My ads are 4 col. x 2.5" each, so that's 10 col. inches per ad at a cost of $99 each, $990 total. I don't think I could've spent a thousand bucks any other way and gotten this much readership...though (and we'll find this out later) I might've spent it some other way to get a more positive or less virulent response.

The owners of the paper, the guy who manages it and his EIC wife, have been THRILLED by the response to this ad campaign.

People are writing in letters, liking the ads, hating the ads, and other candidates have been buying ads, which really doesn't happen much; it was like I FORCED them into following me.

One lady wrote an email complaining to me about what I was doing to poor Kenny Henning, not giving him a chance to respond to my accusations. I wrote her back nicely, explaining that he was certainly able to run his own ads, which he's never done before, and now he is.

I've been good for the local economy, or at least for our local newspaper and yard sign companies.

This is usually a really quiet election, but with two supervisor seats open, and all the accusations flying, it's really quite a beehive right now...which works for me. The more people that come out, the better my chances, because the super-voters have been voting for Henning for decades; it's the new registered Dems that I need to do this year what they did last year.

It'll take a perfect storm for me to win the election, but the campaign has already been worth it on a number of different levels.

--Lee

[Pete Murphey]

I don't know why the hell you'd want to be a tax collector, but your strips are very good. Nice pacing and tone, many very funny and pointed. Let us know how the election goes.

[Lee Nordling]

Thanks, Pete.

Where I live, tax collecting is something my wife and I can do from our home, it offers public service, would give us a stable income, and we'd be able to continue our different creative enterprises.

It's not likely I get the job, but in a number of different ways I still win. It's pretty amazing how many people just HAVE to read it, even the ones who are going to run to the polls to vote against me.

--Lee