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Obama does have a better grip with his brilliant marketing campaign, but McCain is not very far behind, says Manish K. Pandey of 4Ps B&M

Hillary would be pondering over, with regret, how Obama’s terrific marketing blitzkrieg, in particular with the youth, brought her to the status of an also ran from the overwhelming favourite for the Democratic candidature. But at this stage, one can well recommend a famous book, What got you here won’t get you there for Barack Obama. This is the final leg, and now he has to battle a number of perception issues, the most critical, of course, being his age and lack of experience.

Both Obama and McCain are pouring over $1.5 million per day into the battleground to win the election combat. No doubt, as a first-term senator, Obama doesn’t have much of a political track record when compared to McCain, who on the other hand, has been in the Senate since 1982. However, when it comes to marketing, McCain seems to be the minnow. Where Obama outshines McCain is in Obama’s marketing endeavour which is highly pro-active, while McCain’s hard work is definitely reactive.

Obama has his own social network and he is even using the much-hyped Twitter to keep supporters posted with the ongoing events. However, McCain seems to be winning the clash when it comes to Internet search marketing. McCain is busy buying up spots on search engines such as Google and interestingly for terms likely to be searched for by Obama’s supporters. Result: McCain has surpassed Obama for two successive months in search engine advertising. According to Nielsen Online, while McCain bought seven million sponsored search link impressions in June and 15.1 million in July, Obama bought just 1.15 million and 1.2 million in June and July respectively. But that does not mean Obama is sitting quiet. He, for now, is focusing more on online ad spending around display ads - the reason why Obama campaign had 416.7 million image-based ad impressions in July, compared with McCain’s 16.5 million.

Certainly McCain cannot miscalculate Obama’s money, but then Obama should also not misjudge McCain’s obstinacy. Though Obama is connecting with his supporters vividly through social networking, he’s definitely failing to bond with undecided or floating voters when compared to McCain. But then, the five million people on Obama’s social network are just the start of what political strategists say is one of the most sophisticated voter databases ever built. Certainly, Obama seems to have combined new online marketing management with age old techniques of voter outreach and is hitting his audience with messages they are most likely to be wanting to hear. In fact no campaign has been more aggressive in tapping into social networks and leveraging the financial power of hundreds of thousands of small donors by using the Internet than Obama’s campaign (more than $10 million of Obama’s second-quarter contributions were made online, and 90% of them were in increments of $100 or less).

However, the two candidates are keeping pace with one another when it comes to online and TV advertising, each spending over $500,000 a day on ads. In fact, in July, Obama had 51,000 total commercials running, both online and on TV, while McCain had more than 30,000 commercials, which generally were of longer duration than Obama’s. TNS Media Intelligence estimates that the candidates have spent over $7 million and $300 million on online and TV advertising respectively since February last year. In fact Obama first made a record by buying $5 million worth of ad space during NBC Universal’s Olympics programming and then stunned everyone by running the first infomercial of the 2008 presidential campaign. Political analysts describe this as an effort to reach voters who don’t see normal ads. While Obama is trying to protect his brand of new politics, McCain is raising questions about Obama’s capability to lead. While Obama is using his monetary advantage to stretch the playing field, McCain is tapering it by using his political weight.

Moreover, political ring tones, wallpapers, and SMS updates also seems to be part and parcel of election campaigns. In fact, Obama’s recent SMS (the announcement of Joe Biden as the Democratic vice presidential candidate) was, by many accounts, the largest mobile marketing incident in the US, till date. And it made sense, as today 116 million US mobile subscribers (52% of the total subscribers) actively use text messaging, which makes it a new mass medium for marketing efforts. “This VP message may not itself give Obama a great edge, but the ability to communicate with supporters through Election Day, via a medium they can’t ignore, will serve the campaign well,” avers Nic Covey, Director of Insights at Nielsen Mobile.

No doubt, Obama’s campaign has progressed like a corporate campaign; but then, McCain’s campaign is a more like a guerrilla war. He is definitely fast when it comes to adapting to a changing marketplace and reacting to attacks. All thanks to his seasoned political functioning. Moreover, the McCain campaign doesn’t entirely get to the Internet, but it gets the principle behind it, of suppleness and adaptability, which Obama doesn’t. He has a huge cash edge, but it’s McCain who seems to be winning the race as of now. Great marketing leads to excellent politics, but Obama has to realise that marketing alone cannot make him seal his place in American history.

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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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