With all of the big news stories over the last few weeks and months, you may have missed an interesting tidbit from Virginia last month. In the Democratic primary in the race for governor, Creigh Deeds beat two other candidates, Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran, both of whom were better-known and better-funded.

So how did he do it? Many observers are pointing to the Google blast strategy used by the campaign over the last 24 hours leading up to election day.

Creigh Deeds was running third out of three, a state senator from rural Southwest Virginia, running against two Northern Virginia candidates with vast sums of cash and statewide (even nationwide) name recognition. But things started to turn around after The Washington Post endorsed Deeds, giving him a boost in the D.C. suburbs, his opponents’ backyard. Still, most pundits predicted a tight three-way race heading into election day.

They underestimated the power of the Google blast.

The Deeds campaign, working with a Google sales representative, saturated Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. (where many Northern Virginians work) with advertisements on the Google Ad Network touting their Washington Post endorsement. As ClickZ’s Kate Kay reported, “During the 28-hour blast, about 8.8 million ad impressions ran, and were clicked around 3,000 times. Like many display ad efforts, the click-through rate was tiny. But Get-Out-the-Vote campaigns like this one are not necessarily driven by online action: they’re meant to get people to go out and vote.”

The Washington Post reported, “Deeds has been almost inescapable on highly-trafficked sites such as washingtonpost.com, the blog Talking Points Memo and Oxygen.com, which is popular among women. Capitalizing on his Post endorsement, he peppered those sites with banner ads reading ‘The Washington Post endorsed one Democrat — Creigh Deeds’ until polls closed.”

The strategy, it would seem, worked. Creigh Deeds won in a landslide, capturing more than 50 percent of the vote — over 20 points higher than his opponents — even winning in Northern Virginia. The question is, how critical was the Google blast in the victory?

I would argue that it was an essential component of the campaign’s overall web strategy, plus the logical next step in their ongoing Google advertising efforts before the surge. The Deeds campaign chose to prioritize online advertising very highly — even at the expense of traditional campaign activities (they laid off three campaign workers to pay for the Google blast). The ad buy was not a gimmick; it was tied to an endorsement coveted by all three candidates. And it served a specific purpose: turning voters out on election day. It’s hard to know if the Google blast pushed Deeds across the finish line, but it’s hard to argue that it didn’t play a roll in the surprise, upset victory.

Campaigns that understand the power of targeted search ads — coordinated with other online and offline efforts — will have a leg up on their opponents.

Read more about the Creigh Deeds Google Blast victory in the articles below:

• Did a “Google Surge” Help Creigh Deeds Conquer Northern Virginia? - Personal Democracy Forum
• Can Google Change Election Outcomes? - The Atlantic Business
• Virginia Primary Upset Shows “Google Blasting” Works - Newser.com
• Lessons from Virginia and the Google Blast - Pollster.com
• Score One Against His Own Campaign Mentors - The Washington Post
• The Google Blast: How Effective is it? - Local Politechs

Tags: Creigh Deeds, Google Blast, Google Bomb, Google Surge, Washington Post

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Case Studies, Winning Strategies, eCampaigning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.