From Kittens to Presidents
First it was kittens. KittenWar site pits two furry kitties head to head in a vote for the cuter contender. Stats are taken seriously. Smokey here has won over 75% of battles with over 3,000 contests to his name.
Battle for the White House works in quite the same way – the audience votes for the cuter, um, winning candidate. Battle for the White House photos are accompanied by detailed bios with photos and videos. And the user can select whether to pair up candidates within the party or across the partisan lines. Of course even the top presidential contenders have nothing on kittens – Romney has a meager 900 battles to his name and Obama and Clinton combined do match Smokey’s popularity.
Despite considerable efforts I was unable to discover who is behind either the Kitten Wars or who went into all the trouble to setup the Battle for the White House on Ning. But there are two lessons here:
1. Creative inspiration for your next advocacy campaign can come from any source, including the furry kittens site, so don’t feel ashamed if you find yourself enthralled.
2. Engaging users is the first step to educating them and there is nothing like a good ol’ fashioned competition to get your visitors to participate.
I'm responsible for Kittenwar. It's on our FAQ page.
Posted by: Fraser Lewry | June 18, 2007 at 06:51 PM