Media Strategy: What can we learn from a political race?

Here is an article that was sent along to me from Mike DeAnzeris. The full article appears on Adage.com and is worth a read.

Hillary vs. Barack: Who Had the Smartest Media Strategy? Optimedia's Antony Young Rates the Candidate's Primary Campaigns Campaign Trail - The race for the Democrat presidential nomination has been an intensely competitive contest, the equivalent of marketing's Coke vs. Pepsi or Ford vs. GM. In the battle that was Brand Obama vs. Brand Clinton, targeted demographics, TV ads, digital strategies, brand integrations and viral campaigns have all played a role in promoting the two candidates' campaigns.

...Clearly, Obama had a larger budget and significantly outspent the Clinton camp. The relative closeness of the race showed that Clinton was able to deliver a big bang for her buck, and suggests that her campaign's marketing programs were more cost-effective. Obama, on the other hand, had to launch himself as a new brand with low or no consumer awareness. An example of the spending implications, early in Texas (a state which Clinton eventually won) her campaign claimed it was outspent 2-1 or 3-1. Obama's marketing efforts were able to narrow a 20-point lead to 4 points in the space of three to four months in a state in which the Clintons had been effectively campaigning the past 40 years..."

One can certainly argue about whether ad spending equates to votes in direct proportion but the case is rather compelling when you look at these hyper-competitive races.

As I read through the comments I found an interesting post that takes this premise one step further:

Here is my take: http://www.thekmiecs.com/misc/hillary-vs-obama-social-media/ At the heart of it, "I was checking out the Twitter profiles for Hillary and Obama today. Something really jumped out at me that showed with crystal clarity the difference between how they've approached those two targets. As of today, Hillary has 4,019 followers and Obama has 33,069 followers. That in its own right says a lot, but that's not the big stat. The big stat is that Obama is following 33,960 people and Hillary is following 0. Literally 0. That's not an "o" that's a ZERO." –Adam Kmiec, Miami, FL

I haven't investigated this stat myself but regardless I think this points out a very important lesson: whenever you invest time or money, it pays to "follow-up".

Here is the definition of a "follower" from the Twitter site.
What are followers? Followers are people who receive your Twitter updates. When you follow someone else, you're one of their followers, or in other words, a person choosing to follow their Twitter updates. You receive Twitter updates by following other people, and the messages you get only come from people you choose to follow, or words you're tracking. When you send a message to Twitter, your followers receive them. You can see all of the people who follow you on your followers page, and all of the people you follow on your following page.