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Marketing Lessons from the Candidates

by John Coronella, October 28th, 2008

I am ceaselessly impressed with the marketing skill of both sides in this election. The movie above is produced by MoveOn.org, a political action committee. Democrat or Republican, I think we can all take a lesson from these guys. The viral video, aside from being hilarious, is customizable so that it prompts people to send it again and again to people they know. You can customize it for your friends’ names.

Still, humor is hard to scale. Another well crafted site is Things Younger Than McCain. It came out strong, but has proved hard to maintain, and is proof you can over do it. Still “The AARP is younger then John McCain” sticks with you.

The McCain camp has also not been short on lessons for us. Their biggest lesson: Sex Sells.

McCain: Sex Sells


The election is next Tuesday. Vote early. Vote often.

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1 Comment

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 at 8:27 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Marketing Lessons from the Candidates”

  1. Emer Lawn Says:
    October 29th, 2008 at 5:04 am

    Hey there John,

    Found your post here on Twitter. I definately agree and think a lot of us can learn a lot from not only what the candidates are doing to brand themselves, but also how the public audience are responding. The growth of user generated content surrounding the election is atounding, giving the voters a new voice.

    I wrote about this topic…specific to how we can use YouTube to market ourselves. http://www.interactivereturn.com/blog/2008/10/24/youtube-marketing-working-for-the-%E2%80%9Cyoutube-election%E2%80%9D/

    Thanks for this!

P