‘Rocco’s army’ driving buzz
Rocco Rossi is the king of social media, but a pauper in the polls.
A Northstar Research Partners analysis of how often and how positively Toronto Escort Agency’s mayoral candidates get mentioned online — measured over a period of six weeks — found Rossi got the best buzz, with 28 per cent of the chatter about him considered positive.
Etobicoke Coun. Rob Ford got more overall mentions during the May 1 to June 11 period, but the polarizing figure was as likely to be scorned as applauded.
So why is Rossi, a former political fundraiser and executive in the non-profit sector, a darling on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other such sites, while two recent opinion polls put him at only 10 and 15 per cent of decided support — well behind Ford and George Smitherman?
Because he has an army of online supporters, many from the marketing world, posting comments and shaping the online debate to generate positive word-of-mouth, says Patrick Gladney, Northstar’s director of social media.
“Rossi’s aggressive online marketing is driving positive buzz,” Gladney said.
“He has a team of people who are the architects of his image online, called ‘Rocco’s army.’ If anything, they are inflating the positive impressions of him.
“As we get closer in, I would expect more of the public to enter the conversation, perhaps giving a more accurate reflection of how people feel towards the candidates — masking the impact of having a social-media-savvy campaign team.”
Sachin Aggarwal, Rossi’s campaign manager, makes no apologies for the full-court press.
“We know that people get a huge amount of their media from online and informal sources online, so we are trying to drive as much ‘earned’ media as we can,” he said.
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