Background
In the elections for the Mayor of Bucharest held in may-june 2008, our client was Vasile Blaga, candidate of Democrat-Liberal Party (PDL). It was an integrated campaign and we were responsible for the online campaign.
Vasile Blaga was the candidate with the most detailed and most professional commitment plan for the next 4 years.
As it was part of the general strategy to gain more awareness on solutions to problems, we had to find ways to attract attention to Blaga’s commitment plan.
Creative idea:
We gathered all his projects and presented them on a map created on Google Maps: Blaga’s Map.
The map contains each project with its specific location and text description of Blaga’s commitment on that subject. On most important projects, the map contains videos with Blaga presenting his plans.
As an example, you can see below a translated project:
Each project was part of a bigger matter (e.g. Traffic, Education).
Each project description was also containing a link to a web page on Blaga’s web site where the big matter (e.g. Traffic, Urbanistic Plan, Education) was detailed and users could read all other projects on that subject.
Translated webpage
When launched, users could reach Blaga’s map through a lead from main page of Blaga’s campaign website.
Translated main page
In a few days, people could get to this map from a lot of places all over the internet as a big number of bloggers and journalists spread the word (i.e. link) as they were impressed by this map.
http://codexpolitic.us/2008/05/23/harta-lui-blaga/
http://www.zvoner.ro/harta-lui-blaga-pe-google/
http://subiectiv.ro/media/campanie-electorala-harta-lui-blaga/
http://web2exit.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-map-si-alegerile-2008.html
http://www.pahomi.ro/harta-lui-blaga.html
http://robertsoft.blogspot.com/2008/05/harta-lui-blaga.html
http://www.orlando.ro/?p=581
http://blog.blogorama.ro/2008/05/30/harta-lui-blaga/
http://www.zoso.ro/2008/05/campanie-web20.html
http://www.piticu.ro/2008/05/23/pe-net-ca-e-mai-ieftin/index.html
The map even made it to printed edition of important newspapers:
Screenshot from Academia Catavencu newspaper
Results:
13000 something views of Blaga’s Map.
More than 5500 views for the movies included in the map on Youtube.
Besides the gain in awareness, this map also became a very good PR tool for Blaga as people were recommended it and even became advocates.