Today a pollster from Katie Couric's show called and surveyed me on my pre-election political leanings. Having studied survey creation and implementation, I noticed that the wording and sequence of questions strongly favored Obama. This supports my opinion that the mass media has been completely won over as a result of Obama's incredible marketing campaign. It wasn't a huge shock when AdAge named Obama as 2009 Marketer of the Year (http://adage.com/oy2008/article?article_id=131810). In my opinion he surely deserved it. What is a mystery to me is why McCain didn't fire his campaign president three months ago.
Even with significantly less funding, an intelligent, strategy-driven campaign could have gone toe-to-toe with Obama's. But time and time again, McCain's camp failed to come through. Their awkward, poorly-timed, out of touch efforts to reach young voters reeked of desperation and cluelessness. It's not enough to say you're cool or hip or whatever adjective you aspire to be, you've got to make like Nike and just do it.
The virtual world is one area in which the republicans really missed the boat; and to their extreme detriment. Sites like palinaspresident and mccainfreewhitehouse create a huge stir, but go unanswered. Whether these sites are created internally or externally doesn’t really matter. McCain's campaign should have made sure there were equal and opposite forces at work. Defying Isaac Newton doesn't seem like a good idea!
To further illustrate, on the popular microblogging site Twitter Obama has 112,423 followers, or subscribers, while McCain has a mere 4,597. McCain has also updated his account just 25 times, compared to Obama's 257. Another example of failure to connect.
Is Obama's position as media darling a result of his campaign? That's the great thing about advertising, ROI is a slippery and elusive concept, and it's difficult to ever be sure what direct influence an ad exerts on one's actions. And who knows, perhaps the survey wasn't really colored by a pro-Obama sentiment. Maybe it was my views on the campaigns that colored my interpretation of the survey.
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1 comment:
Well said, but it is sad commentary when form outweighs substance. The true issues and the candidates proposed solutions (if they have any) are lost in the media hype and blitz. The problem seems to be that the vast majority of voters are truly unrepresented by either candidate and a 3rd party which truly is conservative and compassionate would be a welcome addition to the political landscape.
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