Indiana Pundit

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Hoeffel, Republican for Mayor


Before anybody gets bent out of shape about another candidate jumping into the race versus Kelty and Peters, Realize that this is the Republican nomination for the mayor of Garrett, Indiana to the north of Fort Wayne and west of Auburn (for the geographically challenged).

Her campaign asked that we review her campaign's website. I didn't even know anybody knew about us in the land of the railroader.

People should be able to communicate with the campaign through the website
The website does a great job of communicating and interacting with voters. She even has her own Facebook page which is something like Myspace and is becoming a new trend for candidates (more on that in a different post).

The campaign must be able to show who the candidate is (not just their name)
There is a problem here. While the website does a great job of telling who Tonya Hoeffel is as a candidate and a person, it is hard to find any reference to her last name. Voters need to know her last name when they go to the polls unless her opponent has a similar last name.

The campaign must express its platform/ issue positions. This is the most important purpose of the website
It does a very good job of hat between the website and facebook page.

It must be easy to navigate.
There were no problems here.

Design should be clean and coherent to the branding plan of the campaign.
While the design is clean and coherent, I have a problem with using the first name for branding except in certain situations. Part of the job of a website is to create name recognition with the platform of the candidate.

My experience shows that using the first name in branding a campaign doesn't translate that well at the polls. The importance of this function forces me to give this grade. Otherwise its on track with Adam Mildred's score.

GRADE C+


http://www.votefortonya.com/




Labels: ,

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ouch! I was really expecting our website to score in the A range, but the Indiana Pundit is a tough grader.

Just to clarify the campaign using "Tonya for Mayor" instead of "Hoeffel for Mayor"...

There are a few reasons for this.
1. There was already a Hoeffel elected mayor of Garrett, back in 1977. Harris Hoeffel, who is Tonya's father-in-law, was not very popular during his term, so we tried to avoid using the last name to avoid any connection there.
2. Tonya Hoeffel in Garrett is much like Hillary Clinton in the United States. When people talk about "Tonya" in relations to Garrett politics, everyone knows it is a reference to Tonya Hoeffel, much like "Hillary" is a household name for the former first lady. Thus, we determined that not only would "Tonya for Mayor" be appropriate, it would be the best bet.

Of course, this is all thanks to small-town politics and elections. She probably couldn't get away with this in Fort Wayne, and should she pursue elected office beyond the boundaries of Garrett, we'll likely use her last name in the campaign branding.

Christian Hoeffel
Campaign Manager
Tonya for Mayor

2:39 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

iP

Email

Resource Links

Blog Links

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Copyright 2006 ©. Indiana Pundit.
All Rights Reserved.