2008 Presidential Marketing Online - Who Is Best Online Generally?

The 2008 presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain have been exercising an interesting twist on conventional political marketing, employing online marketing techniques that might even be branded "black hat" with some of the seasoned Internet marketing crowd. However, the technique does not violate anyone's terms of service and does appear to be highly effective.

An example of the 2008 election marketing touches that could be considered a bit underhand is the term, "economic crisis." Search for that on Google, and especially if you are in north California, you could be presented with a small AdWords advert on the right-hand side of the page that tells you how much John McCain is out of touch with the economic situation facing the USA. You'd also be right if you think that the Democratic Party paid for the ad.

It's not all one-sided either. A search for "Joe Biden" can reveal an ad that takes you to a video of Mr. Biden being surprisingly critical of Mr. Obama during the primary elections. It seems that whoever is willing to throw the most money at a keyword within Google AdWords can control it for their own purposes, and those purposes can often be damaging to the other 2008 presidential candidate.

This kind of electron snowball fight, while fascinating to idly watch from a distance, is deadly serious stuff. The Obama camp spent in excess of one million dollars on Google AdWords in a single week in February. That was more than the Bush and Kerry camps combined spent on AdWords during the entire 2004 election circus! Obama seems to be spending more than McCain on AdWords, but that's not to say that McCain is far behind where it matters - he's not.

Modern political marketing still relies to a large degree on the kind of time honored face-to-face confrontational rhetoric we see on our screens day after day, but increasingly the battle is being fought through online marketing and is relying on ever more sophisticated technology.

Even comparing the technological sophistication, or lack of it, in the 2004 election to the 2008 election is no match. The four intervening years has seen online tricks for presidential hopefuls come of age. Now there are serious email campaigns that have details of the recipients such as name, age, sex, zip code, and a host of other relevant details. The email you receive can be personalized to an amazing degree to make you feel special. The technological psychology employed is capable of swaying an undecided voter either way, and often it depends on who gets there first.

So, who is winning in the Internet miscellany of techniques and technologies? It's hard to say. The Republicans, despite a poor email campaign in the early days, have been streets ahead for several months. However, the Democrats have more than fought back. They are leading in some quarters and seem set to continue. When it comes to exchanging the shoe leather for the mouse pad, the Democrats are taking to it like ducks to water. It's really all still up for grabs in this 2008 election marketing section at least, but for now the Democrats seem to have the slight edge.