Filed under: 2008 Elections, Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Election Strategy, Google AdWords, SEM, SEO, SEO and SEM, presidential election

I’m taking a look at some of today’s keyword buys the buys by the two presidential campaigns and - at least as it relates to today’s new stories - they appear to be at least timely.  That’s because today, Wall Street is having a meltdown with the Lehman Brothers heading to bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch essentially selling itself to Bank of America. 

When I put in “Lehman Brothers” I got an ad for Barack Obama:

Worried About the Market?

Read About Obama’s Plan to Revive
the Economy and Sign Up for Events
BarackObama.com/Economy

The link goes to a landing page in which a video automatically starts - a 20 minute long video.  It was rrded earlier this year and doesn’t address today’s headlines.  It shouldn’t begin automatically and it needs to be shorter.  It’s a  speech - not the best idea, but it does address “economic woe issues”.  

The page also lists a few basic proposals that Obama is laying out on taxes and then invites people to sign up to receive into and to be invited to events.

McCain, at least when with is effort on Lehman Brothers, hadn’t purchased the keyword.

But McCain didso for Merrill Lynch:

Merrill lynch

Learn About John McCain’s Plans for
The US Housing Crisis Today!
JohnMcCain.com/HousingPlan

He then asks us to sign a petition, but he doesn’t really tell us what’s on the petition:

There are important steps to strengthen the foundations of the millions of businesses small and large that provide jobs for American workers. There is no government program or policy that is a substitute for a good job. John McCain’s vision for addressing the housing crisis would also strengthen the U.S. dollar and help to control the rising cost of living that hurts our families.

John McCain has proposed principles for addressing the housing crisis in the short-term as well as in the long-term to assure it never happens again. He offers straight talk on the housing crisis and will not play election year politics with the housing crisis. He will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.

When we commit taxpayer dollars as assistance, it should be accompanied by reforms that ensure that we never face this problem again. Central to those reforms should be transparency and accountability.

To me, this doesn’t make sense.  People searching for those terms who then click on these ads will be looking for deeper information.  At least in my opinion. 

Both could use a “statement from the campaign” type of area that addresses today’s issues.

At this point, McCain’s group - led by Eric Frenchman - has been blowing away Obama’s.  Today, not so much.  But that will be just one day of many.

I’ll be looking at their search strategies more and more often until Election Day.

2 Comments » Posted on September 15th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Google, Google Applications, Google Apps, Google Reader, Political Blogs, Political Strategy, presidential election

Google’s come up with a great idea.  They’ve apparently reached out to several leading political journalists and bloggers to include their shared Google reader feeds on political stories for “Power Readers in Politics”, a service that people can catch what some of their favorite political prognosticators are following.

The service includes the Readers from the McCain and the Obama campaigns.  But what I like about it best is that they don’t go after the same standard DC media crowd (that’s if they even know what Google Reader is).  Instead, they’ve turned to guys like Patrick Ruffini, one of the founders of The Next Right.

After a while, I’ve gotten sick of the same old go to folks that are nothing more than fallback personalities because assignment editors or producers haven’t bothered to take the time to learn about anyone new.  This changes that.

Check it out.

No Comments » Posted on August 19th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Social Bookmark, Social Bookmark Service, Social Bookmarking, Social Bookmarks

In a display of how overly focused some of us are on certain aspects of social media, there’s now a story out there coming from a LA Times blog:  Digg bury brigade: 28 negative McCain stories buried in the past 30 days.

Several had received “more than 700 Diggs”  and all had received at least 180 Diggs.

700?  185?  Please.  Maybe on Digg that’s something, but in the world of politics, 700 votes are probably less than the average precinct.  That’s less than two people per Congressional district.

Jed Lewison of The Jed Report thinks it’s organized.  It probably is.  But so is Open Left’s effort to Googlebomb John McCain.  The horrors!!

Such is the nature of politics and it’s intersection with the Internet.  This is 2008.

But back to the amount of Diggs.  Those numbers are so small in the overall scope of things that I’m beginning to think that there’s about maybe 10,000 insiders or so who will follow stuff like this religiously, forgetting that this presidential election may witness 120,000,000 voters casting their ballots on Election Day.

700?  Bah.

4 Comments » Posted on August 12th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Abraham Harrison LLC, Influence, Influentials, Information Technology, Political Strategy, Pop Culture, presidential election

Disclosure: Philosophically, I’m equidistant between John McCain and Barack Obama. I like both. And I haven’t decided whom I’m going to vote for. I’m an independent and I’ve always voted for the person.

Okay…

When I say internet, I don’t mean the thing that was started by the Pentagon after World War II. Nor do I mean this great medium that we can do marketing on.

When I say internet, I mean the internet as a catalyst that’s causing huge cultural shifts in the way we as individuals and organizations present ourselves, from the way we communicate and the way we handle commerce. It’s changed. It’s a massive change, it’s a widespread change, it’s a permanent change.

Therefore, the next American president, regardless of who he is and key members of his team MUST seek to understand digital media. They MUST understand how this will affect society. It’s becoming too important and too ingrained in the lives of too many Americans.

What made me think this way was that I read two articles (here and here) in two days regarding John McCain’s understanding of technology and the internet. He’s got little to no understanding of either.

This past January, McCain responded to Mike Allen, a reporter for the Politico as to what he preferred - a Mac or a PC by saying

“I am an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance that I can get.”

This isn’t about Mac vs. PC, it’s about attitude, interest, and involvement. Commerce has changed, communication has changed, entertainment has changed, and individual behavior has changed. We’ve changed. We need a president who understands this. We can’t afford to have someone who plays the role of the technoboob. The media will smirk (because they won’t see why this is vital), the political arena will chuckle. It will be fodder for Letterman and Leno.

This is no longer cute. It’s no longer good enough to play up one’s ignorance. He’s not your granddad or dad that you’re showing how to use the web with him playing along out of curiosity and courteousness. The internet is not a teen phenomenon. It’s not Elvis and Buddy Holly. It’s 50 years of rock ‘n roll, still going strong.The internet is what the vast majority of Americans are about…and about where we are going.

If McCain is elected, he’ll be the leader of the country…one that has about 225,000,000 people that have internet access, one that has billions of dollars (or is it trillions) of ecommerce being completed each year. He’ll need to get a grip on this cultural shift.

If you think this is silly, then you’re not getting what I’m saying. I don’t care about left or right, Democrat of Republican. And, no, he doesn’t need to have his own Facebook page or join Twitter. He needs to realize that this paradigm shift is being created by and, as a result, greatly impacting his constituents, the people who will be looking for him to lead.

2 Comments » Posted on August 6th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: 2008 Elections, Blog Messaging, Blog of Personality, Blogger Influence, Blogging, Blogging Policies, Blogosphere, Blowback, Cult of Personality, Political Blogs

Throughout this past week, I’ve been thinking much about how America was founded. There’s plenty of articles written lately on patriotism, on liberty. From Time Magazine’s cover piece to essays on Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.

If you read the great documents such as the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, you get a sense that these men were perhaps America’s real “Greatest Generation”. They not only understood the beauty of the philosophies of Locke and Voltaire and Rousseau, but were able to translate them into action, establishing a new nation based upon freedom and liberty.

They were also amongst the most elite of their time. The wealthiest, the most educated, the most “connected”.

A study put out this week by George Washington University’s Henry Farrell, John Sides, and Eric Lawrence bring out to the surface an issue that I think is problematic for American politics and culture: the polarization of the political blogosphere. This had become more evident over the past few years as the country’s political dialogue has grown ever more coarse.

The study finds that those that participate in the political blogosphere are more likely to be further to the right or further to the left, more rigid in their beliefs, less likely to engage in discussions across political ideologies and (as I have personally discovered in my own involvement on blogs) less tolerant opposing views.

I find this troublesome because their study also shows that those whose views are more tolerant, less rigid, and less idealogical are less likely to be politically involved as those who take an active participation in the blogosphere. That’s not good. Here’s why…

Read more…

1 Comment » Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

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