Acquiring the celebrity status has been a race that the Californa governor candidates would like to win and definitely, win big. It’s amazing how the candidates are fiercely getting what’s up and about the technology. There’s a lot of technology enthusiast that can attest the good things that online campaign can bring about compared to the traditional offline print and ads. In fact, based on a survey conducted by Forrestrer research, 60% of marketers are more likely to shift from traditional to online marketing.
Celebrities, radio station, institutions and individuals who offer services are now moving to online media marketing. And those who know how to do it right, have successfully built a brand online and was able to interact with their fans, customer, consumers and users. Anyone can almost get an immediate feedback about what they offer.
We all have witnessed the power of social media when President Barack Obama took over the White House. And this is clearly a test to all California governor candidates to see if they can repeat what happened in 2008. “Speak and ye shall hear,” these famous words from the The Book of Job are aptly suited to define what Internet social networks are.
The landscape of a political campaign has been changed, for good, by the use of technology. Producing and mailing campaign brochures, have the candidate message printed in newspapers and schedule public speeches, these kind of campaign, are old hats. Today, you even don’t have to meet in person to plan on your campaign and also do not have to spend a lot of money.
As the saying goes, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. In this modern world, we might not be literally using a pen, but writing has served as a very powerful strategy to communicate with the whole world. One amazing breakthrough are the social networking sites which allows not only hundreds but millions of people to blurt out everything that is in their minds. This strategy is now being used by celebrities like Oprah, Britney spears and Ellen DeGeneres, who even hire professionals to make sure they are in the pulse of this new trend.
The field of California governor candidates are no slouches either. In fact, a couple of them have reached “celebrity” status themselves. Gavin Newsom has 1.1 million Twitter followers and Jerry Brown somewhere in the 900,000 range. These numbers put the politicians on par with real celebrities like Paula Abdul (ex-American Idol) and John Legend.
At this moment, it’s safe to say that there’s an inverse relationship between the success of online marketing and campaign expenditures. Meg Whitman who spent $900,000 and Steve Poizner who spent $100,000 on their campaign, both Republicans, have the least number of votes by a factor of several thousand percent! What does this mean? Did they failed to take advantage of technology or simply they just have the wrong message? It’s far too soon to tell perhaps.
There’s a big challenge to all California governor candidates. The challenge is not to get the most followers on Twitter or most number of friends on Facebook. America has a budget deficit of $26 Billion, an unemployment rate of 12% an unfavorable business environment, and California’s education tanking, more and more employers and families are moving elsewhere…. these are the challenges. And the challenges cannot be solved by your celebrity status.