Auckland Super City Election: A measure of brand performance

Following from the previous posting, I have reproduced the search results of the two candidates ("John Banks" and "Len Brown") for the electioneering period ending on 9 Oct 2010.

Google search results for "John Banks" and "Len Brown"

In this period, Len Brown was searched 252 times (55%) and John Banks 210 (45%). While these estimates are not suggestive of the election outcome (Len Brown = 49%; John Banks 35.7%), they clearly revealed who was the leading candidate. Based on the search results, the leading candidate became evident somewhere in the middle of the electioneering period. Compare to Digipoll announced on Sept 16 (Len Brown = 29.8% and John Banks 27.8%) the pattern produced by Google search was much clearer. Making predictions out of search results may be a far cry, but they seem to be able to tell who performed better, at least for this election.

The other candidates were not searched sufficiently to appear on Google search results. Was that indicating how they performed in the election? When considering the election results, perhaps yes. From this small experiment, can we safely conclude that if you are not online then you are not in the competition"? What do you think? Have your say by commenting below.

Now, think of the two leading candidates as brands. Google search results provide a simple measure of which brand is performing better, provided the brand is online and Internet Marketing is the primary marketing strategy. Send me a note if you want help with Internet Marketing.