The Monkey Shack

There have been a lot of economic and political posts on here lately because I've been working on a white paper for work, using the election as a marketing case study. The campaign has been a fascinating one to observe from a marketing standpoint, and it won't shock anyone to say that Obama has been the better marketer. Advertising Age even named Barack Obama as Marketer of the Year this morning.

Just one way to look at how Obama has been Coca-Cola to McCain's Pepsi is in the amount his campaign has spent on advertising nationally. From January 1, 2007 through October 6, 2008, Obama has outspent McCain more than 2:1, $199,193,533 to $96,811,821. Democratic-leaning interest groups and parties have also outspent republican-leaning groups.





Citing that election day polls have been wrong in the past two elections, branding and strategic consulting firm MotiveQuest has developed BrandAdvocacy08, an online site measuring naturally occurring advocacy for Obama and McCain occurring in online conversations across the web. Their theory is that online conversations are a better indicator of voting intent. To date, Obama is winning 57% to 43%.