"We've been in this longer than anyone else, and we know what works," says Rock the Vote's director of communications, Jay Strell. "We have the cutting-edge technology and the stars that the kids know." Over 200 actors and bands, from Drew Barrymore to Bono and Puffy to Ashton Kutcher, have lent their shine to Rock the Vote PSAs. As for those "cutting-edge" marketing techniques, they include all the usual online applications: chat rooms, blogs, banner ads, and an e-mail-based "online street team" with about 3,000 members. Rock the Vote gets even more creative with corporate sponsors. Ben and Jerry's has created a new flavor for distribution at its events, dubbed "Primary Berry Graham"; Motorola is offering a series of text-message polls and "voter alerts" on participants' cellphones.

With these jazzed-up generalities, the organizations give off a vibe more commercial than political. Strell uses adspeak like "viral" and "impactable" to describe the group's strategy. By featuring their corporate sponsors so prominently, these groups reinforce the message that young people's real power is as consumers, not voters. In fact, research from CIRCLE showed that boycotting and "buycotting" -- buying products because you agree with the values of the company that made them -- were two of the most popular means for young people to express their political views. Granted, they also take practically zero effort -- but still, while fewer than 20 percent of those aged 15-25 have written a letter to Congress or attended a protest, more than 60 percent have "voted" with their allowance.

The groups all have complex business relationships to media companies: Choose or Lose is MTV's own Web site and series of news specials, while Rock the Vote is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent voter registration group, of which MTV is a prominent corporate sponsor (others include Motorola, Showtime, Ben and Jerry's and 7UP). Smackdown Your Vote! involves heavy cross-promotion of its brand and the WWE "Superstars." The Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, with ties to the NAACP, is the only major group in 20 Million Loud with a specific policy agenda -- an urban-focused campaign that's fighting to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws, and the war on poverty. And while most of these voter registration groups skew Democratic and liberal, their messages are nonpartisan and free of too many specifics. Today, the Web sites of Rock the Vote, Smackdown Your Vote! and Choose or Lose all list general issue areas, like education, environment, and free expression, but not the names of specific lawmakers or parties. "Let the President know what you think!" exhorts rockthevote.com, but Bush's name is nowhere to be found. Choose or Lose's surveys show an audience evenly divided among those who lean Democratic and those who lean Republican, while Smackdown's demographic is more Nascar Kid.

The primaries, on the other hand, showed both the power of peer-to-peer methods and the potential power of the youth vote for Democrats. Howard Dean's "people-powered" message appealed strongly to young voters: There were 1,133 "Generation Dean" groups, and one-quarter of his donations came from those under 30. The excitement Dean generated led to a doubling of youth voter turnout in the Iowa caucuses from 2000, although that bump did not continue, as the nomination was quickly decided and Democratic turnout in general went down. Now, some Generation Dean leaders have become campus organizers for John Kerry. For his part, Kerry appeared on his first MTV special, "20 Million Questions for John Kerry," at the end of March, giving bland props to hip-hop ("it's very important"). Because of his stance on issues like gay marriage and the war in Iraq, Kerry enjoyed a 10-point lead over Bush in the latest Harvard poll.

Young organizers who are already working to turn out voters in this election echo Green's findings about the power of the personal. Tony Cani, 25, is a graduating senior at Arizona State University who will be working on Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts this summer. He's never heard of Green's research, but he discovered the importance of the direct appeal while running the largest Generation Dean group in the nation at ASU. "I think that we're the most cynical generation ever," Cani says. "We're used to being marketed to, and it doesn't have much of an effect. You gotta make things personal, and say, 'My name is Tony, I believe in this. You should vote, what do you believe in? I'll give you a call when it's time to vote.'"

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