October 18, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
President Bush’s veto this month of a children’s-health-insurance bill inspired one charity, Families USA, to try a new advocacy-campaign tactic — advertising on blogs.
Families USA, an advocacy group in Washington that promotes high-quality, low-cost health care, took out ads on 14 primarily left-leaning political blogs, such as Crooks and Liars and Talking Points Memo, in an effort to convince Congress to override the veto of a bill to extend and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.
The ads link to a video that the group created, “Kids vs. Bush,” and urge people to sign a petition and contact their Congressional representatives.
Families USA decided to try blog advertisements for the first time because it wanted to reach people who were not on its traditional advocacy lists, said Geraldine Henrich-Koenis, the group’s deputy director of communications.
“This is an issue a lot of people are behind,” she said. “It has broad appeal. We thought that using the Web was one of the best ways to reach people we haven’t reached in the past.”
Ron Pollack, the group’s executive director, said that within a week of posting the video, the number of people signed up for Families USA’s “health-activist network” more than doubled, from about 18,000 to more than 40,000.
It’s not clear how many of them were inspired by the blog ads — the charity also advertised on cable news stations CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, and Mr. Pollack was interviewed for many talk-radio programs.
But as a whole, Mr. Pollack said, “the responses have been overwhelming.”
Ms. Henrich-Koenis said the group hopes eventually to analyze how effective different tactics were in driving people to the video.
To see the video: Go to http://www.familiesusa.org/bushvskids.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the issue, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, placed ads on Google that appear near stories with the keyword “SCHIP.”
The online advertisements include a link to an article on Heritage’s Web site that criticizes the health-insurance bill, saying it sets income limits that are too high and would encourage some families to drop private health insurance.
To read the article: Go to http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm1635.cfm.
