Search results matching tag 'John McCain'

The digital candidates, who wins?

2371004 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:28:00 GMT

How do the two US presidential candidates fare on the various social networking websites that take up so much of our valuable time? Glad you asked, luckily the Scottish-based social media company, Yomego has compiled a list:

MySpace On its Impact Channel, where young voters can watch the live debates between the candidates and get questions answered, McCain has 55,000+ friends to Obama's 700,000+ friends.

Winner = Obama

Facebook A partnership with ABC brings reporters' articles, videos and blog posts from the campaign trail and voters can pitch their views and compare them against those of the candidates. Here Obama has 2.1m supporters to McCain's 500,000+ supporters.

Winner = Obama

Second Life This site hosted a major music festival arranged by the Obama for President organisation in a drive to register hard to reach Americans.

Winner = Obama

Twitter Our new favourite microsite gathers public opinion about the presidential election, aggregating live ‘tweets' about the election, including thoughts, reactions and observations. Here Obama has 98,000+ followers to McCain's 2000+

Winner = Obama

YouTube Here the candidates every move is exposed, analysed, discussed and parodied. However, many successful clips are campaign-oriented, such as the ‘Yes We Can' music video (10 million views) and Sarah Palin's first ABC interview, which attracted as many online viewers as it did on TV

Winner = A draw!

Well, these results should be surprising to no one. If you need it hammered into your head just once more, the 2008 US Election will go down in history as the first political campaign to capitalise on the true power of digital communication. And as millions of Americans line up at the polls today to vote for their 44^th president, in a pure utopian digital world, Obama is slated win by a landslide.

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McPolitics

2248082 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:51:00 GMT

‘Gimme a double-beef Obama burger with a large McCain fries and a supersized Joe Biden shake to go, please. Oh – but hold the Sarah Palin, will ya?’

Across the pond, the long race to the Whitehouse concludes tomorrow (Tuesday). That’s assuming there isn’t massive voter fraud in Florida again, of course. This is without doubt the most closely watched and contested Presidential contest in many years. For good reason, as – to paraphrase our very own Winston Churchill – during such troubled financial times, never have so many in the UK and beyond had a vested interest in the outcome of the deliberations of the (comparatively) American few.

Forget six degrees of separation. We’ve all got a stake in which road America decides to head down for the next four years. Financially, culturally and (perhaps most problematically of all) militarily, the implications for the planet are enormous.

So can I just vent for a moment at the tawdry X-Factor-ness of the whole Democrats v Republicans shebang? My PR guy often reminds me that we live in a ‘post-content’ media environment, but the Yanks seem to have upped the ante by entering what is surely some sort of ‘post-policy’ political environment. Detailed policy-making and robust debate have seemingly gone totally AWOL in favour of Oprah-styled personality sound-bites designed to promote brands ‘Obama’ and ‘McCain’ to the widest possible consumer-base. Whilst it’s heartening to see that the projected voter turn-out for election day tomorrow is likely to be the highest in years, I have to ask: When the choice between the candidates is, fundamentally, only one of centrist degree, wherein truly lies the choice?

After voters have bought the t-shirt, lipsticked a pig and/or slapped a bumper sticker on their SUV, what flavour of McPolitics will they order at the U.S. of A’s great democratic drive-through?

For good or ill, we’ll soon see.

Obama is Google, McCain is AOL and more detailed measurement is the Holy Grail

980161 — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:23:00 GMT

So I've read this morning that the US think that Barack Obama is more like Google, and that John McCain is more like AOL. So what does this say about these brands?

It's good news for Obama, as Google is no young pretender to the throne. Some would say it is the throne. And what about AOL? Is it all traditional American heartland values? What we don’t realise over here is the strength of AOL in the US. AOL is the fourth largest website in the US, with 111 million unique users a month (thank you Comscore). Google is on 142 million – so it would win the online election, but on a time spent per site basis it’s fair to say AOL may be giving them a run for their money (can’t find the statistics on this one, but it’s not hard to imagine that people will spend more time on a content site than on a search engine). Does this mean Obama’s a dead cert?

Well here comes the science bit – I am a research person after all – the context of the online visit varies dramatically. Some work done by MSN, MEC Interaction and OTX Research earlier this year gives some great insights into what people do online and the times of day and moods that they are in when they do these things. All fairly obvious stuff, but it is increasingly obvious that as online usage diversifies and time spent online grows that traditional measurement metrics do not give the full picture. In fact unique user statistics barely give any picture at all, except the numbers of people through the front door. How much time they spend on a site, the route they take, the tasks they carry out and the level of engagement and interaction they have is not quantifiable on unique users and page impressions alone.

You could conclude then that it’s not all bad news for McCain (on this poll, possibly there is much worse news out there for him if the papers are anything to go by). Being compared to the 4^th largest website online with a reach of 111 million is no bad thing. Further demographic and reach and frequency metrics would be needed to properly quantify the value of his 111 million versus the value of Obama’s 142 million. As anyone who has heard of JICIMS will testify, unique user numbers alone do not tell the whole story - it’s just the starting point. You need engagement measures and reach and frequency data to really know what the value of a unique user is. Interestingly McCain was also likened to Ford, whereas Obama was BMW. If you looked at things that way, the trusted American brand would be McCain, with Obama the more stylish – but expensive – foreigner.

Over to you blog readers – what brands would Gordon Brown and David Cameron be? All suggestions welcome, though I take no responsibility for the findings! And don’t try and pretend that you are far too busy to answer this, you’re reading this blog aren’t you?

Never ending friending with John McCain, Sarah Palin and Stephen Fry

812253 — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 01:07:00 GMT

I have recently made friends with John McCain, Sarah Palin and Stephen Fry - none of this reflects my political persuasion or sexual orientation but rather shows how pervasive, democratic ('scuse the pun) and voyeuristic social networking has made society - it is fascinating seeing that 30 people have recommended John and only 1 (that is one)- who incidentally is John McCain, has recommended the lipstick'd pitbull AND I know that Stephen (first name terms now we are "friends") is currently filming in Africa and loves F1 and Lewis Hamilton. This anecdotally backed up some research I read last week from TNS, TRU & Marketing Evolution called "Never ending friending" which shows how social networking has caused a quantum change in how we interact – with each other, with bands and brands, and with the entire media landscape. Perhaps most importantly it also details a
set of best practices that will govern behaviour in this new world - this should help me understand how I interact with my new found friends - I am just waiting for Obama, Hilary and the original "6 degrees guy" Kevin Bacon to accept my "friendship" - Who would you connect with if you had the chance ?

Who will win the 2008 US presidential election?

2308643 — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:12:03 GMT

[Poll]

The White House race is just a re-run

255762 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:59:00 GMT

I know who wins the race for the White House. It's the Democrat, that Matt Santos, you know, the first Hispanic to run for president of the United States who beats this old white guy with health issues?

Okay so that's the plot to the final series of one of the most brilliant television shows of the last decade, also known as 'The West Wing', which is revisited in part by BBC Four tonight.

The programme picks up on the similarities between that dramatised White House presidential race in which the long-shot candidate played by Jimmy Smits came from nowhere to win the Democratic Party nomination.

He takes on the sitting Vice President Bob Russell (or Bingo Bob as we remember him) and the former Vice President John Hoynes to face off against late sixty something Republican Senator Arnold Vinick who is a dead ringer for John McCain.

The similarities are there for all to be seen. Okay Santos was Hispanic and Barack Obama is black, but there are of a similar age and both were/are making break throughs in political life.

In 'The West Wing' race the ending was a fairytale one that saw Santos enter Camelot accompanied by his campaign manager and chief of staff Josh Lyman.

In the show tonight Hollywood historian Dr Ian Scott from the University of Manchester, who was a consultant for BBC Four on 'President Hollywood', describes how former Al Gore speechwriter Elie Attie became a writer and producer on 'The West Wing' and approached Obama aide David Axelrod in 2004, asking about the background and life of his boss.

That apparently set in train a sequence of events which predicted the real-life events as they unfolded two years after the final season of the series had been screened.

"After Attie heard Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, he was convinced the prospective Senator's tone, style and rhetoric should be the basis of the Matt Santos character. There have always been strong links between Hollywood and Washington conceived through film.

"But at the moment this is even more unusual and pertinent as Senator Obama's campaign is so similar to the campaign of the fictional Matt Santos in the final season of The West Wing. While it is true that Hollywood has often been accused of simplifying debate, they have nevertheless been crucial in opening up wider social and cultural awareness."

The real life script looked to have been running just as the script of 'The West Wing' had with Obama on course for a historic win, but then something else historic happened with the naming of Sarah Palin to the McCain ticket. That has shaken up the race like no one could have guessed.

My guess is that it would not have done so quite as powerfully if Hillary Clinton had been the candidate vice presidential name on the Obama ticket rather than Joe (where have you been for two weeks) Biden. But that boat has definitely sailed.

Talking of which have you seen Tina Fey's sketch as Palin standing alongside fellow comedienne Amy Poehler as Clinton? Brilliant.

Sadly they foolishly cancelled 'The West Wing' so we never got to see what a Smits led TV presidency would have held in store for us. Shame, but then Martin Sheen's Josiah "Jed" Bartlet was always going to be a hard act to follow.

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