What the President’s puppy reveals about the press
Bo, the new First Dog
The newest appointment to the Obama administration has been a long time coming. Covert conversations, visits to a clandestine training centre and even a change of name all preceded this weekend’s White House arrival.
Less than 24 hours after wagging his way into Washington, the latest addition has already been interviewed for his unofficial website and given his own blog by The Telegraph. Six-month-old Bo is now America’s First Dog, and probably the most publicised pooch in the world.
But the presidential puppy has also highlighted the most effective form of promotion for the digital age: strategic product placement. Google Trends data reveals that searches for Bo’s breed, the Portuguese water dog, have increased by more than 30 times in the last four months. After a slight rise in the fourth quarter of 2008, when the dog was first rumoured to have made the Obama’s shortlist, interest soared in February 2009 when Michelle Obama confirmed the family’s decision.
The top ten sources of this traffic are all US cities, with Boston in pole position, but the statistics also show a surge in searches from Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. In other words, getting something into the White House taps into the most lucrative advertising market in the western world.
The Obama effect: Google Trends for the Portuguese water dog
This is the Obama b(r)andwagon at full throttle, and the power of presidential product placement is not limited to pets. In January, when Sasha and Malia donned outfits from American label J. Crew for their father’s inauguration, web searches for the brand rocketed to their highest levels since records began in 2004. Most importantly, this traffic translated into a tangible boardroom boost: clicks through to J. Crew’s product pages increased by 3,000 per cent and the company’s stock jumped by 10.6 per cent.
The close attention paid by journalists to the First Family means that any brand touched by the Obamas finds itself on what Time magazine dubbed “the world’s biggest showroom floor”. The number of internet users worldwide searching for “BlackBerry” reached its all-time peak at the same time as the President’s addiction to his BlackBerry was reported in the media. Searches for Kenya, where President Obama’s father was born, also increased after his election. However, the Obama effect lasts only as long as the product continues to be pushed by the press: web searches for Labradoodles, the other breed shortlisted for First Dog, quadrupled in January but have now fallen to almost pre-Obama levels.
The Obama family welcomes Bo
When I worked in PR, we operated on the assumption that the editorial endorsement of a product is worth three times as much as a traditional advert. The level of interest in the President’s choice of pet suggests that when this coverage implies the approval of a popular public figure, its value increases again. For branding agencies to make themselves relevant beyond the recession, they need to find a way of harnessing this promotional power of suggestion: and journalists must ensure they are commercially clued-up enough to pursue stories on the basis of public interest, not just increasingly clever public relations.
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