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I definitely have a love/hate relationship with politics. After years of following “the game”, I’ve come to realized that I actually dislike politics, for the most part. Probably because politicians are frustratingly out of touch. But I do have to admit that I love the competitiveness of the races and the challenge to get your/my/our ideas out there and accepted by the public and by politicians. I also love to watch the plethora of marketing activities, both good and bad.

In some ways, I could see myself enjoying working for a political marketing firm – especially in the digital area, where so many campaigns are lagging behind in understanding. On the other hand, I think I’d be frustrated at the inability of campaigns to define and cling to their core values – something I think is sorely lacking in politics right now.

I actually followed closely the races to win the party nominations on both sides – Republican and Democrat. I discovered POTUS ‘08 on my XM radio and was addicted to it through the primaries. However, as soon as both parties had their candidates, I completely weened myself from the election. I wasn’t jazzed by either candidate and just needed a break. Here in the last 3 or 4 weeks, I’ve paid more attention again. However, mostly to watch how the campaigns carried out their marketing. With a quick disclaimer that I consider myself a libertarian-republican and don’t have an axe to grind for either side, here’s what I’ve seen.

Barack Obama has done a fantastic job all around. His message all along has been simple: Change. He forced Hillary Clinton to adopt that message to try and compete in the primaries, then beat her with it. Likewise, McCain tried to adopt the theme of change early when it was apparent it was ringing true with voters. It worked in the primaries, but he just couldn’t make it play against Obama, who originated the Change message in this election cycle.

Obama has a great website, both attractive and well built. When you enter, it focuses on their single message: Change, and then as you go deeper into the site it delivers more information. Obama has also done a pretty good job with onine tools such as Twitter. His is the first account to break the 100,000 followers (people following his online posts or “tweets”) barrier. (You can read more on Obama’s use of social media in the campaign here.)

No matter if you like or dislike Obama, you have to give the man and his team props for delivering to the American electorate a message that they so badly wanted to hear. And delivering it in a believable fashion. He’s managed to get in negative jabs when necessary, but still delivered an overwhelmingly positive campaign. He’s given enough specifics to make his message “real” and understandable for the average person without putting them to sleep. Even his infomercial grabbed people’s heartstrings and fired their imaginations and belief in him. Afterward, it seems so many people forgot this was a commercial, not a documentary. It was trying to sell something and viewers wanted to buy, so they went for it hook, line and sinker. From a marketer’s point of view, his campaign has been the poster child of the point of Seth Godin’s book “All Marketers Are Liars.”

On the flip side, John McCain abandoned the “Change” campaign message (more or less) when it was obvious he couldn’t compete with Obama on it. He still talks about changing Washington, but it’s not the tagline for his campiagn. His signs, stickers and website instead promote the message “Country First.” It’s a simple slogan, but not a simple message. It has a couple of problems. First, it plays into the Democrats charge that Republicans are isolationists. Second, it’s not a universal message. In a time when we have an incredibly unpopular president AND congress, “Change” means something (generally the same thing) to just about everyone. “Country First” is rather subjective and a bit unclear. McCain has a very attractive website, but the visitor is hit with too many messages from the get-go. There’s lots of great info and resources on the site, but a good website needs to “funnel” the user to where they want to go. There’s just too much info to process at once from the beginning of the McCain site. And McCain is on Twitter too, but only by default and someone else’s actions. (His campaign’s past indirect Twitter interaction ended badly.) That’s too bad because The Mac is missing out on a world of digital interaction. Talk about going “grass roots”!!

McCain supporter or not, objectively I don’t think you can give him and his team as much credit as Obama’s. He just hasn’t found a message that resonates with the people. He’s found a couple recently that resonate well with his base and may help bring a few defected Republicans back into his column, but mostly they’re too little, too late. McCain’s also gone negative, which is necessary, but he’s done it in a way that doesn’t leave you with a positive message from his camp at the end of the day. And I don’t think he’s given enough specific information about his plans. He’s given some, but they’re not things that people remember and buy into. Most of the statistics I hear people quoting from the McCain campaign are related to his attacks on Obama’s plans. It’s really hard to be FOR a guy who seems to mostly be AGAINST someone else. In the end, I don’t think McCain’s campaign has been “bad” per se, but they remind me of the Texas-Texas Tech football game last weekend. Obama and his team have simply outplayed McCain. Like Texas, McCain simply doesn’t look like a #1 team who deserves to win.