Bernie Sanders Is A Digital Marketing Powerhouse

[n2doc]

The dog fight for Democratic Party presidential nomination between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton should be on the radar of anyone who’s interested in modern marketing and advertising. If you live outside the US or aren’t familiar with the two candidates, they have taken very different approaches to solving the same problem – Bernie does not accept ‘donations’ from billionaires and is basically bootstrapping his campaign, while Hillary has a much larger war chest to draw from. Essentially we are seeing user-driven, content lead marketing vs. a big budget traditional approach to brand building. Politics aside, you can see how this battle could generate insights for anyone trying to grow their reach.
Lets start with the the head to head search volume data:


More people were searching for Hillary before her campaign began, we can assume this is because she was a more prominent public figure, Bernie starts from behind. Once the campaign started there was a huge spike from Hillary then a precipitous drop off, showing a PR push, ad buys – traditional ad campaign stuff. For Bernie, there’s a gradual rise until he’s actually generating more searches per month and climbing. Anyone who has worked on brand that doesn’t have a huge ad budget can appreciate this kind of incremental growth, it’s a very healthy sign.

Social performance reveals even more about the story. Hillary is out performing Bernie from a pure numbers game (followers, mentions) but Bernie has the quality.




Lets not forget, Hillary has been accused of the cardinal mistake that many big brands make all the time – sources say she bought over 2 million fake followers. If true, this would explain the high follower numbers but low quality engagement. Meanwhile, Bernie has been sticking with his slow and steady strategy. Either out of desperation or just poor direction, Hillary is starting to go off-brand with polarizing content, such as the infamous Kardashian selfie.


more

http://www.massandreason.com/2015/08/14/bernie-sanders-is-a-digital-marketing-powerhouse/

[roguevalley]

1. if so, that's very trumpian buying supporters.

[djean111]

2. I would have thought that Mitt having bought followers, and was laughed at, would keep

any other politician from doing that. Twitter Audit says over half are fakes.
I think that if people - or their advisers - don't really know how this stuff works, they should not use it.
Three emojis to describe how one feels about crippling debt. Fake twitter followers. Sheesh. That's either bad advice or no real understanding how social media works - people check this stuff out, they don't just accept it, like a TV ad or a mailer.

https://www.twitteraudit.com/hillaryclinton

2,666,832 Real
1,349,481 Fake
Followers

edited - 66% real, so 1/3 fake. Still embarrassing. IMO.