Yes Chris Christie made a great announcement via Twitter when he announced Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno as his running mate for Lt Governor. He's getting good press from it but what I found very interesting is the utter lack of paid advertising around the announcement. I don't know who Kim is - I live in Morris County so I know my own Sheriff (Ed Rochford) but I bet a lot of people don't know who Kim is and I bet a whole bunch of people don't know what a Sheriff does.
So when I Googled Kim Guadagno I received no paid advertising ads. None from Chris Christie and nothing from my C- SEM graded Jon Corzine campaign (another reason why he gets a C-). The problem with this strategy is that the Chrstie campaign is totally outsourcing the marketing of Guadagno to main stream media and bloggers in the short term. If they expected a bang out of this announcement, they should be running paid search ads to deliver searches to the official campaign site and capitalize on the traffic.
This type of tactic is what we employed for McCain's campaign especially well during the primary season when the campaign lived with announcements and endorsements (our marketing for FL Gov Crist's endorsement probably helped us win the nomination). We proved how to use the tactic again with Joe the Plumber and Palin's announcement (yes it was during the General which we lost, but still the right strategy).
It really is the best strategy because people will go to the internet to search on Guadagno's name to learn what she is about. This type of tactic especially in NJ would not cost them much money, plus every impression they get helps with branding and every click they get to their official pages and videos helps sway voters. That's why I gave Christie's campaign a grade of incomplete for their paid search advertising.
Oh well, better luck next time.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric
