Karl Rove's book vs. Rework - what the American People need to know | Hacker News Reader

Karl Rove's book vs. Rework - what the American People need to know

37signals.com

125 pointshenning35 comments

This is genius. 37signals is already a strong brand, but only in a relatively narrow niche. This is an excellent way of marketing their new book to a much broader segment that doesn't necessarily know that they're behind ROR, or read their blog. There are several things worth noticing:

1) They create an "attack ad" on Karl Rove, thereby putting themselves on level with a much much bigger player and leveraging themselves onto a pedestal where they don't belong. They seem like big guys battling another big guy. They've used this tactic before comparing their product to Microsoft and Google as if they're equals.

2) They've picked one of the most unpopular people in America to attack. No-one will feel sorry for Rove, and everyone will love 37signals.

3) As stated above, they are sure to have this video passed around much larger circles than their normal reach allows them since it's funny, sarcastic and not about programming or project management. Everyone understands it.

4) It'll probably be controversial. This is a favorite tactic of 37signals, and if they're lucky they'll be on talkshows around the country getting free publicity for their book while telling the American public that Karl Rove's book is too long, written in a French font and thus isn't patriotic.

I don't care much for their products but their marketing is absolutely amazing.

While I don't doubt that hitting Karl Rove is effective (because you don't have to push buttons which are emotional for everyone, you just have to push buttons which are really emotional for at least some folks who control links), I just have a quick comment to make: be careful about attributing your own views to the population at large.

(The overwhelming majority of Americans do not know who Rove is and a large portion of the remainder will vaguely remember "Political something-or-other, right? Helped get Obama elected?" Of those who actually know who he is, many come from that weird niche market called "the other half of the country.")

Agreed. He's #5 on the Amazon best seller list for a reason.

Similarly, it'd probably be a bad idea to do an attack piece on religion, however silly the idea of religion is to most of us here.

The narrator needs to be an octave lower, and they could have some more pauses between sentences. But this was a surprisingly good job. There aren't that many attack ad tropes, but they really seem to work.

Although it's missing a picture of the 37signals guys outside, with their golden retriever. I can't buy them as morally superior until I've seen that.

Can you expand on the moral superiority of a golden retriever vs a labrador or possibly a dalmation?

It's not moral, it's chromatic.. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1193657

I think the golden light that would be in such a scene would look better shining through the golden coat of a golden retriever.

Fantastic. I loved the Garamond = french font joke.

"When it came time to choose a font, Rove selected Garamond, a kind of type developed in France, and NOT by hard-working Americans."

Shoulda gone with Goudy.

People: Learn how to market by watching these guys. This is what they do best.

I love their own use of Garamond in the ad.

Ok, I'm going to order this book just for the ad. I hope this doesn't make me a political ad sheep. The sheer genius of the ad makes me think that the book might have something good in it for me.

Neither the book or the ad contains demon sheep. That alone elevates it above much of our country's political discourse [1] ... ;-)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRY7wBuCcBY

I weep for the broad swath of the American public who would view it and take it at face value.

While I dislike self-help books almost as much as neocon apologetics, this ad should be rewarded. Is the Kindle version readable (no DX), i.e. no special layout or pictures get lost/scrambled?

The Kindle version is excellent, the pictures are crisp, no special layout.

I just "picked up" the Kindle version and it looks excellent on my DX. However the Amazon detail page says it's "Optimized for Larger Screens", which means:

"This title has complex layouts and has been optimized for reading on Kindle DX's or Kindle for PC's larger screen, but can still be viewed on other devices.

http://www.amazon.com/Rework-ebook/dp/B002MUAJ2A

I liked it. Good job 37s. They constantly work to grow their brand and have fun while doing it as well.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give that ad an Aleph_37. Well done.

ok, I will respectfully disagree with most of you here, as there is nothing "comical" about it.

This made me officially sick, although so far had high opinion of them. I didn't get the joke of "french" font, and "hard working americans." I feel...insulted, as this is a way how to promote stupidity and national hatred. The guy wrote a book, and just because it is one position higher, he is a subject of an attack like this. Did they even read his book? No, it was easier to search the internet of a guy who didn't like it and quote it.

Maybe tomorrow it is >you< there, with your book, or your product. Or me?

Wasn't the content that mattered? I've seen excerpts from Rework and feel this is a toilet book. Inarticulate and arrogant, I know it all style, but I don't go making a video comparing their book with e.g. Re-Imagine by Tom Peters.

Tom has an attitude, but not an insulting one, but of a creative energy, an innovative arrogance that he wishes to spread.

Again, it could be just me. I would never smack Americans with "All European/Asian/African" labels. Nationality, religion and all other kinds of divide are elements of mediocrity. Real hackers should know that.

I think you're missing a big portion of the picture. They're not just picking on some random guy. Karl Rove is a big-time political figure in the US and is generally regarded as a slimy neoconservative. He invented nasty political strategies like the ones being parodied in this ad. He played a big role in pretty much every single unpopular policy from the previous decade, and then some. As for why they poked fun at a French font, maybe this will help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

I didn't get the joke of "french" font, and "hard working americans."

You don't remember "Freedom fries"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

It's called parody and satire. Real hackers enjoy a creative social "hack" as much as the next guy.

[edit] artists & writers used parody and satire to make the society a better place. I find it inadequate, mentioning the same in the context of advertising.

And..it's not, if you are a part of the labeling, or a victim of that hack.

Dont' be so touchy. They aren't degrading the French. They are making fun of conservative attack dogs that blame things on France. Showing how ridiculous something like this is through humor can make society a better place.

Honest question: are you an American? Have you seen the stereotypical "attack ads" that show up before every election? Do you know who Karl Rove is?

If not, I can see why you wouldn't get it, and the ad isn't targeted at you.

I'm glad a person can have an own opinion here =)

Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad.

This is not an attack ad, it's a satire of an attack ad. Taken literally, yes, it's pretty stupid--attack ads generally are. But that's missing the point.

> Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad.

No, he didn't.

Attack ads predate both TV and radio and were run on both almost immediately after they became available.

Rove learned most, if not all, of his tricks from Lee Atwater, who was the Karl Rove of the Reagan/Bush era.

There's a superb documentary called Boogie Man about Atwater, who died horribly and spent his last years seeking out everyone he had wronged with his ads and asking for their forgiveness. He was an amazing, contradictory character, a larger-than-life sort who holds far more interest than the pusillanimous toady Rove. I watched that documentary late at night in a hotel room during the 2008 campaign; I was on a consulting trip and had to get up early the next morning, but I couldn't turn it off. It explains a great deal about how all that dirt became commonplace.

Yeah, it's an amazing hilarious movie and those guys did it totally independent and then sold it to TV. Buy a DVD on their website (i Did) because it has killer bonus features too and i'm into supporting the Little Guy. www.BoogieManFilm.com

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

Whoever did Johnson's ads was a real piece of work.

However, as I wrote, none of this stuff is new. It predates TV and radio.

Heck, it even predates moveable type.

Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad. Most people here are probably too young to remember it, but in the 1964 US presidential election Johnson attacked Goldwater as a warmonger who was going to get us all killed in a war. He ran an ad that showed the cutest little girl standing in a field of grass holding a flower anad picking petals. Birds chirping. Then you see a mushroom cloud in the distance and, a moment later, the little sweetie is anihilated on camera for your greater edification. (He won the election.)

In a fine piece of irony, it was Johnson, of course, who would later, following Kennedy (and against Eisenhower's approach), dramatically ramp up American involvement in the Vietnam war and get 55,000 Americans killed.

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