Celebrity California Governor Candidates
The California governor candidates are obviously in this race to win and win big. One of the most fascinating aspects of this race to me is how furiously the candidates have gotten technology religion. Being a technology advocate, I can attest to the effectiveness of online campaigns, especially as they compare to the ineffectiveness these days of traditional offline media of print, radio and TV. A Forrester research survey reported that 60% of marketers will shift their traditional marketing budget to interactive [online] marketing.
It’s no wonder that celebrities, entrepreneurs, news stations and more are moving to online media marketing. This new media allows direct interaction with and between publisher and consumer. No other media exists that combines the speed of implementation with the analytical horsepower of “near immediate” feedback.
The California governor candidates are an interesting test case to see if they can repeat the success of the Barack Obama campaign. There have been many politicians who hopped on to the technology bandwagon after they witnessed firsthand the ferocity at which President Obama took the oval office. The famous words printed in The Book of Job “Speak and ye shall hear” are aptly appropriate to describe the Internet social networks.
Technology has completely changed what we have called political campaigning. In the past years, California governor candidates would go extra mile in terms of their political ambitions. The kind of campaigning they had back then requires months of strategizing and planning not to mention ample amount of money so they could produce and mail their campaign materials to newspapers and scheduled speeches to get more publicity.
As the saying goes, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. In this modern world, we might not be literally using a pen, but writing has served as a very powerful strategy to communicate with the whole world. One amazing breakthrough are the social networking sites which allows not only hundreds but millions of people to blurt out everything that is in their minds. This strategy is now being used by celebrities like Oprah, Britney spears and Ellen DeGeneres, who even hire professionals to make sure they are in the pulse of this new trend.
The California governor candidates are no slouch when it comes to getting in the pulse of this new trend. On Twitter alone, Gavin Newsom has 1.1 million followers and Jerry Brown has more than 900,000 people following him. The have almost the same followers of the real celebrities like Ms. Paula Abdul and John Legend.
It’s interesting to note that, at least at this moment, there is an inverse relationship between campaign spend and online marketing “success.” The two Republicans who have spent the most amount of money, Meg Whitman ($900,000) and Steve Poizner ($100,000) have the least number of votes by a factor of several thousand percent! It’s too early to tell what this really means. Is it because they need a new team of technologists or is it just that they have the wrong message?
Whatever the answer, these California governor candidates have a huge challenge on their hands. With a budget deficit of $26 Billion, an unemployment rate of 12% an unfavorable business environment, and California’s education tanking, employers and families will pick up stakes and move elsewhere. No matter how you slice it, no amount of technology is going to create a quick fix to California’s problems.
loading...
loading...