The making of a governor case study (3)
It all started with a simple Facebook message that ended up in the junk inbox ,before going to bed which is usually at 4 am I clicked on the others inbox on my Facebook and saw a message from a girl I dated briefly some months ago (let's call her Ana) .
Hey can you call me ? we need to talk!
After reading that my brain started racing and the two dominating thoughts were :
- Do I have to get tested !
- Wait? do I have a kid ?
I immediately texted (acting all cool) :
Hey , how you been ? send me your number (ouch!)
Having location independent work and traveling around makes getting a hold of you a tricky conquest , and of course say goobye to sleep or food for that matter after receiving that message .
After endlessly refreshing my web browser , logging on and off , checking my router WiFi signal ,calling my mom , I finally got a response , it took 13 hours but who's counting!
I was gonna wait at least an hour before calling but couldn't wait more than 10 minutes .
ring ring the usual chit chat and I cut to the chase , sooo what did you want to talk about ?
-oh , are you still doing that thing ?
--what thing !
-you know when you post things on Facebook and Instagram
--you mean advertising ! why
-My dad (let's call him Mr. white) wants to run for the governor's office and I thought you could help him out and maybe make him a nice fanpage
-- Sure , why not!
I had no idea why I said yes since I got tons of other stuff to do and I despise politics , but I just felt relieved it's not my original thoughts and creating a fanpage was a bargain , or so I thought ...
because What followed was a three months roller coaster
Part One : The meeting
After a three hour Skype call with Ana and her dad, filling me in on all what is going on and how things run I realized how smart and naive he was , I kinda like him but let's face it , he doesn't stand a chance at winning .
The political scene in that state was dominated by a family (with history and unlimited resources , corrupt to the core) , there is no chance a new guy will take over an entire family and their friends in high places who will do whatever it takes to win and run him over (bribery , blackmail ect as we found out later ...) .
I straightly told them that a fan page no matter how cool it is it doesn't stand a chance , you need a strategy , a totally different approach , you need a budget and smart exposure .
well can you help us ?
No , sorry I have other projects that need my full attention at the moment plus I am not one for politics .
Please , pretty please !
still a No .
how about you just give us some pointers .
hmm sure , but you do exactly what I say
Ok.
Part 2 : Preparing
honesty I don't know much about politics or really care who won or didn't , I have a hard time believing that some random dude spend time , money and energy to win so he/she can serve my needs .
as far as I'm concerned , running a political campaign is like running a nutra campaign we all know the legitimacy of the claims and the product .
Since I don't know much about politics , I am in a whole different continent as Mr white and don't even speak their local language , i had some trouble tackling this at first .
after walking for an hour (it helps me think and relax) and some meaningless sex that still feels just as good , it hit me , yes I don't care for politics but I can just promote Mr white like any other product or offer .
Phase 3 Branding :
I created an instagram account, facebook and twitter and told Ana to find some volunteers from the university , hopefully some who know about filming videos , editing and are tech savvy and to start at a journalism /film making and computer science schools .
we got a few candidates .
we created a list of the main issues the city and state suffer from , we sent volunteers to do street interviews to find out what people want/don't want and how they generally feel about the election.
I also run some quiz type campaigns to know the issues .
I run another campaign asking how likely are you to vote and re-targeted those who said No later on with an you not voting is a vote angle .
Part 4 Launch
At this point I decided to make this like a product launch , so we took a few of the main problems and categorized them .
I told Mr white to shout some videos talking about some of this main issues .
The first video was him going to an abandoned state project which they spent so much money on and never finished , after that hospitals and school ect ...
we started posting this videos addressing the issue , we contacted some famous people on instagram to do shout outs , some were free some were paid .
I started some facebook campaigns video and fan page with bait and switch type of ads .
started native campaigns with ads like you can't believe why was this xxx project abandoned ect ...
I created a website with an opt-in and donation button later on (split tested different styles ) and a store where they can order a t shirt , coffee mugs ect .. of Mr white for $1 (investment)
we started gaining momentum , everyday there was a video posted talking about some related issue , recent news that affects the city and state with some entertaining documentaries type videos in between .
we started getting so many likes and shares , so we ramp up the video productions .
I noticed that casual videos were the most interacted with .
so we started doing videos where Mr white will be walking his dog and finding a damaged road , or running in the morning , having dinner with family , it was like one of this Reality tv shows .
we got contacted by newspapers , local and national to do a cover story since this was an internet sensation .
Clicks were ridiculously cheap in this country .
we started getting calls and emails from the Governor office and other state employees to take downs some videos that were exposing some dirty secrets on them and their never finished projects or we will face jail (oh wait who , who's going to jail! ) .
you guessed it , we started posting this emails and calls too haha .
as the voting time started getting closer and closer ,I started posting ads like , Meet your new governor linking to the Facebook fan page that have posts videos of the daily life of Mr white .
it's fascinating how people love and engage with this stuff especially when they only see their governor or senator on election day .
videos with Mr white walking his dog , playing golf or running in the morning were most liked by older men.
Videos with family time , hugging or kissing his wife , having family dinner ect were most liked by women .
Videos doing cool stuff like playing guitar or football ,were most liked by younger crowed .
so I segmented this videos to the right target while doing campaigns
The other competitors started doing videos too but it was pathetic , some of them made videos bad mouting Mr white which drove their audience to our pages and we got them hooked haha .
People started hashtag Mr white as cool governor .
some celebrities contacted us to do videos with Mr white which surprised me to be honest , but I guess they felt left out , but we only picked sport celebrities not to end up on the love hate or too shallow box .
Final Thoughts :
This was in the span of three to four months before election and before Mr Trump 
.
Two days before election we did a vsl and started redirecting all traffic to it , email and another campaign targeting everyone who lives in the state.
Advertising costs were under 10k including paying for shout outs .
We focused mostly on videos because people generally will gladly spend hours watching a video than 5min reading something .
Some people emailed us or commented on the Fan page that they don't really use Facebook or Instagram (word of mouth) but created one so they can like and keep watching our videos
Mr White now is a Proud governor , he won but not by much since money still talks in that country and ignorance still alive (a win is a win especially if you were a nobody) .
Mr White Facebook and Instagram pages are still active but not as much .
it's crazy how much influence we as marketers can have and how little we know .
I did it all here , Facebook , google , native , mobile , email we even sent postcards and targeted the whole state when possible .
This wasn't about money for me , I learned a lot about me and other people .
There is lots of other stuff in between that I haven't mentioned but that's mostly the gist of it , and I hope you can learn something from this .
Best,
Timezone
Amazing story Timezone, truly. Social media really is bringing the power to the people. However in this case 100% credit to you. Not many marketers would be able to accomplish this and execute it with such class.
I must know. Did anything happen with the girl?
Originally Posted by timezone
Originally Posted by bobliu
as for the girl haha I haven't been back in that country since our first goodbye as you may have noticed I got a travel bug .
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