Google Predicted the Election

November 6, 2008 · Posted in innovation, prediction · Comment 

As I pointed out in my book “Ron Paul Revolution: History in the Making” Google trends is much more accurate measure of the public opinion than limited polls. Since Google searches are what people are really interested in and can’t be swayed by the wording of the questions it’s more truthful. Also Google searches tracks every search so it is not as prone to sample bias.


Google Trends for Obama and McCain

Google Trends for Obama and McCain

I believe the polling methods used are part of the reason the Republican party failed. And even though the election looks like a big win for Obama and the Democrats I suspect they are missing very important aspects of what happened. Looking at people as groups rather than individuals hides what is really going on. People act as individuals not groups. Individuals have very different needs and desires. The entire election process forces people to pick a watered down version of what they really want.

There are enough people who don’t vote to win an election. That is the unserved long tail majority. In politics it might be possible to ignore the real majority by fighting over pieces of the small pie but businesses can’t do that and succeed. That huge group of potential customers are fuel for disruptive innovation. Any company that reaches that untapped group will jump to the industry leader.

Old methods of polling and marketing research won’t find these hidden non-buyers. Predictive Innovation can show you the untapped markets and how to reach them. As more distributed tools like Google Trends become available it becomes more important to learn how to use the Predictive Innovation Method.

Ron Paul Revolution: History in the Making. My new book.

January 11, 2008 · Posted in abundance, economics, innovation, strategy · Comment 


Click to purchase the book

My new book is just released. It goes into great details about what is driving the excitement for Ron Paul and how Freedom is the Ultimate Product for Evangelism Marketing.

During the pre-primary campaigning I’ve been able to meet Ron Paul and consult with the official campaign. I’ve been able to see the inner workings and I’ve been all over the world with the grassroots. Ron Paul’s success is a perfect example of evangelism marketing and the abundance society at work. Ron Paul’s campaign is the epitome of evangelism marketing. None of the success has been from anything the national campaign has done. The fund raising, the signs everywhere, the posts all over the Internet are all from individuals acting on their own to promote the idea.

Factors like the Long-Tail as described by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine have enabled Ron Paul’s supporters to set records for fund raising. Open Source techniques are being used to propel ideas into action and even fund $300,000 projects. This type of free innovation overcomes the scarcity economics.

Few people understand what is going on with the Ron Paul campaign, not the media, not the competition, and not even Ron Paul’s staff. The new culture based on abundance is taking hold and its powered by freedom. I’ve talked with the top staffers in Ron Paul’s campaign many times, and even Ron Paul himself. They don’t have a clue about evangelism marketing, they just know something is working. I can only imagine how big this campaign would be if they had implemented the 22 elements for a complete evangelism system. Ron Paul himself does do the most important thing, he tells the truth.

Many of the 22 elements of a complete evangelism marketing campaign have been implemented by supporters. That is the power of evangelism, abundance and freedom.

Here is a sample chapter.

The Largest Minority

The industrial revolution focused on mass marketing. Success was achieved by making common items in the most cost efficient manner to sell to large groups of people. Standardization was the hallmark of the 19th and 20th century, but as the Information age emerged it became possible for the universal truth of individuality to move to the forefront. The potential for mass customization became reality and is totally revolutionizing every aspect of life. Oddly enough the information age, re-popularizes the ideas codified 230 years ago in the Constitution of the united States of America. The individual is King.

The Ron Paul Revolution benefits from a phenomenon described by what publisher of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, calls “The Long Tail” In his article in Wired Magazine and his book of the same name, he pointed out that 98% of the Top 10,000 books carried by Amazon.com sell at least one copy per month. That means there is a market for every imaginable subject.

Read more

Ron Paul Viral Marketing Success

September 12, 2007 · Posted in innovation, strategy · 2 Comments 

Ron Paul is winning popularity portion of the united States presidential election. He consistently speaks the truth and does what he says. And lucky for Ron Paul the truth makes a lot of people so happy they sell his message for him.

I pioneered viral media on the web. And have since moved beyond viral to a broader more accurate term, evangelism. Its clear Ron Paul has a lot of evangelists. All of his success is from normal people spreading the message all on their own.

Part of my research on viral / evangelistic marketing is what the trends mean and how to get the results you want. Looking at the trends for Ron Paul and the other candidates I see some very striking results.

Google Trends is accurate unbiased data on what real people actually care about. According to Neilsen/NetRatings 232 million Americans use the Internet. That makes Google Trends the largest most accurate measure in the world.
Google Trends Ron Paul vs. Republicans

First, Ron Paul (dark blue line) has more searches than than any other candidate. Plus his searches is continually growing. This is suggestive of real wide spread support. There are 7.7 million pages on Google for Ron Paul.. That is almost 4 times as many as Mitt Romney. Ron Paul has more pages about him, which confirms support not just interest. There are other measures I use and will explain those in future posts.

Romney (orange line) has no real support. You can see this from how his traffic jumps then immediately falls to nothing. He depends on events to get any interest. If Romney was a company I would short his stock. His advertising works but Romney is a bad product.

Google Trends Ron Paul vs. Democrats

Hillary Clinton (the red line) is suffering from the same problem as Mitt Romney. She gets big spikes but people don’t like her and try to forget her as soon as possible. Even with a huge budget and over 16 years of national media attention there are only 5.8 million pages talking about her. And much of that is criticism. Hillary Clinton is the political equivalent of Paris Hilton. She gets attention when she does something insane but loses popularity every time.

Barack Obama is in bad shape. Notice that he got a big jump when he announced he was running for office but his traffic has consistently gone down. With only 2.8 million pages and downward trend Barack Obama he is far behind the leader, Ron Paul. The fact Obama doesn’t get any new jumps means its unlikely he will gain any support. He could linger around for a long time but will have a hard time getting new attention. He is played out.

My Suggestions

Hillary has total name recognition. Since people react so negatively she can’t really benefit from Evangelism Marketing without doing something very different. With her long track record she would face the credibility issue if she tried to be different. She depends on spending huge amounts of money and favorable treatment from the big press to get attention.

Romney is dead in the water. He needs to find something unique that he actually deliver. Unfortunately that would require going back in time. He can’t deliver anything unless elected.

Obama can make it to the election with his current trend. He needs to find a new audience, which is unlikely since he already had a huge jump in the beginning. If he offers something new that might get more attention.