Dana Hull covers clean technology and energy policy for the San Jose Mercury News. She often writes about electric vehicles, the smart grid, the solar industry and California energy policy, from RPS goals to Gov. Jerry Brown's big dreams for distributed generation.
Prop. 37 advocates turn to Facebook advertising
Prop. 37 is the California ballot initiative that would require genetically engineered food to be labeled. You can read more about how two farmers view Prop. 37 here: http://bit.ly/S1YQ12
It’s a high stakes fight that nearly $50 million has been poured into. The Prop. 37 campaign has been vastly outspent by opponents with the No on 37 campaign, which is spending millions on television advertising.
The latest LA Times poll shows the measure in a dead heat: http://lat.ms/S6aWq4
Enter Ali Partovi. An entrepreneur who was an early investor in Facebook, Partovi personally donated $100,000 to the Yes on 37 campaign, with much of his donation helping to support advertising on Facebook. Supporters of Prop. 37 are encouraged to not just post about the measure but encourage their friends to “like” and “share” it. Facebook’s new “promoted posts” feature – you pay Facebook $7 – allows you to reach more people and gives the content a higher profile in friends’ news feeds.
“The best advertising is word-of-mouth,” said Partovi. “You can’t buy word-of-mouth, but with Facebook you can amplify it, and that’s what we are paying for.”
Partovi has written a long guest post on TechCrunch further explaining the strategy here: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/28/the-best-ad-campaign-on-the-web/
The Yes on 37 campaign’s Facebook page is here: http://on.fb.me/Vzc1Hx
The No on 37 campaign’s Facebook page is here: https://www.facebook.com/NoProp37
Dana Hull covers clean technology and energy policy for the San Jose Mercury News. She often writes about electric vehicles, the smart grid, the solar industry and California energy policy, from RPS goals to Gov. Jerry Brown's big dreams for distributed generation.
