Search News: Election ‘08 - Obama Uses Search Engine Marketing to Manage His Reputation Like a Pro
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Written By Andaiye Taylor | October 7, 2008 | Share This
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On the heels of a New York Times article on the subject, the McCain campaign over the weekend, primarily in the person of Governor Sarah Palin, eschewed talk about the ailing economy and instead talked up Senator Obama’s purported “palling around” with former Weather Underground member and Chicago area civic fixture William Ayers.
To their great credit, the Obama campaign launched a gold-star search engine marketing response to the attack, one that hit all of the best practices outlined in my previous post – and then some. In the evolution from a campaign that was phenomenal on social media but behind his opponent on search marketing to a campaign that is nimble and proactive we can see the basis for a first-class search reputation management campaign.
The Obama response to the McCain camp’s attack was swift: the search ad was launched in time to scoop up undecided voters headed to search after Monday’s evening news, when coverage of McCain’s new tactic received a major airing. Unlike previous ad copy out of the Obama camp, the message here left nothing to the imagination: “Don’t believe the lies. Get Facts About Anti-Obama Swift Boating.”
And finally, of paramount importance, the landing page delivered on relevance and content: it pulled together supporting quotations from major newspapers; it offered verbiage for users who might like to forward the site to contacts; and it linked to a signup form for a “Fight the Smears” Action Wire that enables subscribers to help push out the Obama campaign’s rebuttals. From a rapid-response perspective, Obama’s search team hit the mark. As of Monday evening, the McCain campaign was not running any ads against Ayers-related terms.
The Obama campaign also went on the offensive. Under the aegis of keatingeconomics.com, the Obama campaign has also bid on Keating 5-related terms - a late 80s scandal involving John McCain. The resulting landing page features a 13-minute documentary about McCain’s involvement along with a statement drawing a line between the Keating 5 and the present-day financial crisis. The site also invites people to share stories describing how they were affected by the scandal, and offers downloadable data points, including letters written by John McCain himself.
Tough stuff from the Obama campaign. I’d bet that they already had these assets on hand when the Ayers accusations flared up again (they had originally been aired during the long primary season.) The effectiveness with which the Obama team spun those assets into an effective front-to-back search strategy is remarkable, and the McCain campaign has yet to show that they know how to respond in kind.
It will be interesting to see how both sides capitalize on tonight’s debate.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Google, SEM: Ad Creative, SEM: Keyword Generation, SEM: Paid Search, Search: How-To, Search: News |
Obama really is doing ridiculously well with his SEM efforts. McCain is slacking big time…especially with the Keating results!