RNC, We Have a Problem

Well, the Republican National Committee launched their new Web site yesterday with much fanfare.  And the result was a …

Resounding thud.

All you really need to know is contained in this Politico piece about the problems facing the new site on its first day.  Is it just me, or do the quotes by Michael Steele make little or no sense?

While the site going down several times on the first day is a problem, it’s not even the biggest problem.

Quite simply, the site looks cheap, empty and slapdash.

It’s got a mishmash of widgets, blurry gadgets and really odd blog posts from Michael Steele.

As one colleague pointed out to me on my Facebook page:

My favorite is the GOP Accomplishments section, more half of which are over 100 years old, only four are from the current century and nothing in the last five years.

Attempting to copy the Obama model, they seem to have slapped together some mashups of what appear to be Ning or WordPress.mu.

In the “Tech vs. Message” debate that has been raging among GOP types over the past year (please read our previous post on the topic), the RNC seems to have chosen “tech” … except they tried to do it on the cheap and failed.

What they’re left with is cheap “tech” — and no message.

They appear to have no content strategy at all.  (Please read our prior post on finding your content strategy.)

Not a good sign for an organization that is trying to rebuild.

I understand that they’re trying to build a “grassroots” site that empowers people.  But they neglected message, and didn’t put enough resources into to the empowerment tools to be successful.

We don’t write this post because we like to be critical.  We write this because we are frustrated that, after 10 months of having new organizational leadership — they wasted valuable donor dollars on a site that, quite frankly, is a mess.

Sorry, RNC.  Fail.