Just Asking: How to Improve Candidates’ Marketing

This week, we asked agency, client and media executives, “How would you have improved the marketing efforts of Obama or McCain during this campaign?”

“There is an outpouring of emotion from Americans stemming from harsh political and economic challenges, making attack ads run out of steam. Sticking to the issues and plans to remedy the problems Americans face could have given any candidate the opportunity to show the voting population that the glass is half full concerning this country’s future.” –George Irish, president, Strategis

“McCain should have kept the message simple. Obama’s has been ‘change.’ McCain’s has been ‘change by putting country first with no Socialists or high taxes and drill, baby, drill, and hey, what’s the deal with that Bill Ayers fella, anyway?'” –David Coats, vp, ecd, Slingshot

“I might have discouraged McCain from sending fax messages to young voters telling them he was ‘not too out of touch to be president.'” –Jonathan Schoenberg, cd, TDA Advertising & Design

“You could not improve on the campaign that Barack Obama has run. The strongest presidential campaign I have seen in my lifetime. Ronald Reagan’s 1984 ‘Morning in America’ is now relegated to second place on my all-time list.” –Bob Hoffman, president, CCO, Gearon Hoffman

I would have told McCain, ‘More T, less A.’ And by that I mean, he should have spent more time talking about lowering taxes and less time talking about Bill Ayers. –David Bernstein, ecd, The Gate Worldwide

“Obama’s advantage with young voters was made all the more obvious by the gap in Web savvy between the two campaigns. Had the McCain campaign challenged our perceptions with surprisingly innovative interactive work, he might have at least elicited a look from voters who immediately wrote him off as ‘old Washington.'” –Brian Eden, senior copywriter, Carton Donofrio Partners