J. Crew could not have asked for better promotion, and now they’re cashing in. Just look at the Google results for “michelle obama”:

Simple, effective, topical, and piggybacking on America’s hottest brand (the Obamas), it’s the Holy Grail of paid search ads.

In this tough economic time, even online retail (previously an area of meteoric growth) is taking a major hit. But connecting your brand with America’s hottest couple — the Obamas — is sure to pay off. Numerous studies have reinforced the importance of branding during recessions. As soon as young women have some extra money to spend, they are likely to head to J. Crew, rather than its competitors. After all, the future First Lady shops there.

On Tuesday during his acceptance speech Barack Obama mentioned that he promised his daughters a puppy if he won.  Less than a week later when you search “Puppy” on Google the first related result is “Obama Puppy.”

On Friday president-elect Obama gave his first press conference after winning the election.  One of the questions he was asked was “What type of dog are you getting?”  Barack responded that the dog must be hypoallergenic due to eldest daughter Malia having an allergy and that they would like to get the dog from a shelter.

Google trends shows a DRAMATIC spike in searches for “hypoallergenic dogs”

People seem to have an instant fascination with what kind of puppy the Obama family will get and when they will get it.  With all the things that happened last week these are very interesting terms to see spikes.  But in all fairness, who doesn’t love a puppy?

Here at Geary, we like to cap off each week with an Innovation Session – an informal meeting with food, drinks and a presentation from the front lines of interactive marketing.

Last Friday, we chose to explore the various ways that Barack Obama and John McCain are marketing themselves online — with a particular focus on Web 2.0 strategies.

We tried to keep the presentation non-partisan, but it was difficult because Obama has made aggressive social media efforts his trademark. He has an active presence on MySpace, Facebook, and niche social networks such as Faithbase and BlackPlanet; active accounts on Twitter and YouTube; text message updates; an active social network at my.barackobama.com; and much more. McCain also has a social network on his main domain and presences on the big social networking sites, but his presence on Twitter and niche social networks is bare-bones compared to Obama’s, and he does not have a text messaging program.

We hypothesized that Obama’s aggressive efforts are primarily a function of the citizens he’s trying to reach — young people and first-time voters, as well as independent voters who spend time on niche online communities. We’re guessing that Obama has found that online efforts are a cost-effective way to reach new, disaffected and undecided voters — and he has the deep pockets to back up these efforts.

Here are some fun facts about each candidates’ online efforts:

• My.barackobama.com, Obama’s in-house social networking platform, is run by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook.
• Obama’s various websites get about 20 million visitors a month, compared to 4 million a month for McCain-affiliated sites.McCain is much more active in paid search advertising than Obama. At one point, McCain was bidding on 226 keywords, compared to only 174 by Obama.
• Obama ran 17 negative paid search ads, while McCain ran only three – the opposite of their general strategies, where McCain’s advertising ran much more negative than Obama’s.
• At present, Obama’s infomercial has 1.6 million views on YouTube. This is significant reach, but it’s dwarfed by the 33.55 million people who watched the infomercial on TV.

To learn more about this topic, you can view the full PowerPoint presentation.

I also recommend “Obama’s Wide Web” from the Washington Post and this article from MediaPost, which gives details about the candidates’ paid search strategies.

This is the first time a presidential candidate has taken advantage of the technology which allows advertising within video games that are updated through the Internet. Both candidates were approached with the opportunity, but only the Obama camp chose to utilize this medium. The campaign is targeted to only 10 states, all of which are swing states (Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin).

The ads launched on October 6^th, and will continue running up until November 3^rd.