we assume “real” followers are other twitter accounts with individual humans behind them that follow a twitter account. they are acquired over time who follows an account based on a match on interest, point of view, tweets that are simply interesting or where to get information from.

“fake” followers are bots (internet robots) who are added to the list of followers just to add numbers to the followers list. the thinking is that, the more followers have or the greater the number of followers, the more popular the twitter user/account is. we have all heard of a twitter following contest of some sort between the likes of justin bieber and lady gaga for example. that is the whole idea behind it.

we are guessing someone having a bigger number of followers will feel important or encourage others to follow the person.

apparently, there are internet services from whom you can buy twitter followers. social media practitioners apparently do this all the time for their clients. when you hire a social media practitioner, adding or padding your follower list is one of the things they do for you.

with this in mind, we ran some 2013 senatoriables twitter accounts to find out what is the ratio of “real” vs “fake” twitter followers they have on their accounts.

we do not know if these politicians actually “bought” followers and we are not even giving an opinion on it. maybe they are all “real” followers and that the twitteraudit.com is wrong or giving us bad data or they have a large number of twitter followers whose accounts have become dormant for a long time. these things happen. and we really do not know how accurate or reliable twitteraudit.com is.

take these with a grain  salt, decide on your own what they mean.

for good measure, we also put here our own (@wawam) twitter audit and other politicians who are active on twitter. looking at the other audit results will give you a better gauge of what the data all mean for the rest.

surveys give the people a view, scientific and objective, of what others think about candidates and issues. it can help others shape or confirm their own views. in this complex world of ours, more information is always better.

for candidates and handlers of the candidates, it can be more than informational, it can be very instructive. they can use the results to re-shape, change directions or strengthen their winning strategies or fix and avoid their losing strategies.

but that is very much dependent on the skill sets of the candidates and their handlers on analyzing and understanding surveys. that is the first step.

the second and the more important step is formulating new strategies and plans based on the survey analysis and conclusions.

we are providing here a first step analysis of the  survey results. there are a few more steps on analysis that needs to be done and more steps at formulating action steps in strategy change and plans formulation. but those are for another day.

in the meantime….

data sources: Pulse Asia & SWS

• Pulse Asia : http://pulseasia.ph/
• SWS : http://www.sws.org.ph/

also read (click) :

• dramatic gains for aquino & poe, dramatic drops for trillanes, zubiri & enrile – pulse asia february 2013 senatoriables poll
• dramatic drops for UNA & dramatic increases for Team PNoy in february SWS sentatoriables survey

for this february 2013 pulse asia 2013 senatoriables survey, 15 senatoriables are competing for the top 12 position. in order of highest to lowest ranks as follows:

1. legarda (Team PNoy)
2. escudero (Team PNoy)
3. cayetano alan peter (Team PNoy)
4. villar, cynthia (Team PNoy) 
5. ejercito (UNA)
6. aquino, bam (Team PNoy)
7. binay (UNA)
8. poe (Team PNoy)
9. pimentel (Team PNoy)
10. honasan (UNA)
11. enrile, jack (UNA)
12. trillanes (Team PNoy)
13. angara (Team PNoy)
14. zubiri (UNA)
15. gordon (UNA)

6 senatoriables  are battling for the last 3 positions, the 10th to the 12th, senatoriables honasan, enrile, trillanes, angara, zubiri and gordon who are all tied.

at the bottom among the candidates of the two major coalition parties, UNA and Team PNoy, are mitos magsaysay and tingting cojuangco  both from UNA. their rankings have not changed from previous.

among the 15 candidates fighting for the top 12 spots, 9 are from Team PNoy and 6 are from UNA.

among the top 9, only 2 are from UNA (binay and ejercito) while the rest are from Team PNoy. among the 6 who are battling for the last 3 spots, 4 are from UNA and only 2 are from Team PNoy.

with those rankings, if elections were held today, Team PNoy has a chance of gaining 9 out of the 12 seats at best or 7 out of 12 at worst, a clear majority of the seats.

Team PNoy has generally done very well in this survey.

source : https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3b9qPFV1cRDNGJWVXpKN0ZhZU0/edit

dramatic increases in rank and rating were gained by aquino and poe, both by +9 places who are now tied at 4th place from previous survey at 13th place; and +11.8 percentage points and +11.2 percentage points, respectively.

3 senatoriables suffered dramatic losses in rank and rating, 1 from Team PNoy, trillanes and 2 from UNA, enrile and zubiri.  all three lost 5 places in the rankings although all three still came within the top 12.

contradictions from senatoriable jv ejercito? we were not surprised. over at twitter (@wawam), we have talked about the many other contradictions from ejercito, including the name change that ejercito had done for himself.

the first paragraph in the PDI article plainly states what it also found as a contradiction:

He likes to be known as his father’s son, yet senatorial candidate Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito also says he wants to be his own man.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/371355/estradas-son-jv-wants-to-be-his-own-man#ixzz2NCVc5Ibm

there were many more contradictions found in the article :

ejercito is very much swimming in contradictions in that article that it almost made us dizzy. at first we thought maybe the dizziness was caused by a poorly written news article. that has happened before. but after reading the article at least three times, we thought the dizziness was not being caused by poor newspaper article writing, it was ejercito himself that was causing it with the contradictions he was dishing out in rapid succession.

this is bad news for ejercito from a marketing and advertising standpoint – an identity crisis is always not  a good thing to have in winning election campaigns. before consumers or in this case voters make a choice, they need to first know who the candidate is. ejercito seem to be using two sets of names, estrada and ejercito in different occasions and media which may put voters confused and unable to pin down who exactly is ejercito.

this identity crisis on its own is bad news but pair that with swimming in contradictions and it can be well, drowning to death. ejercito is obviously unable to adequately explain or give a good reason for the change in name.

half of ejercito thinks the name change is a good thing while the other half thinks its a bad thing, hence he goes to one end to the other like a pendulum gone crazy. ejercito seems to have one of his foot step on the other in every explanation he gives. we find it strange that senatoriable ejercito gives both good and bad things in the change of his name in the same interview.

we think poor or weak brand identification is one of the key reasons why UNA senatoriables suffered dramatic losses in rank and rating in the last SWS senatoriables poll.

(read here : dramatic drops for UNA & dramatic increases for Team PNoy in february SWS sentatoriables survey)

is jv ejercito following in the footsteps of UNA?

(note : jv ejercito is one of the top losers in rank and rating in the last SWS senatoriables poll)

(note : knowing PDI editors, we think the contradictory headline was intentionally written by them.)

read in full here : http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/371355/estradas-son-jv-wants-to-be-his-own-man

this controversial poster has taken a lot of flak many. we agree with some of them, one is the church has transformed itself into a political party by endorsing certain candidates and not endorsing others.

this is no longer about religion or teachings about the church, this is about getting certain specific names of candidates not getting elected and elected. it does not talk about church teachings, all it talks about is names of candidates.

the COMELEC has asked the church to change this poster to which the church replied by challenging the COMELEC ruling in the supreme court.

but in the past days, activists in bacolod have fought by releasing their own list through text messages. this list is called the “Team Tatay” (Team Daddy) that has the names of priests and bishops who have fathered children.

read here :     ‘Team Tatay’ lists 5 Negros priests as fathers; Ay, ‘patay’! http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/370979/team-tatay-lists-5-negros-priests-as-fathers-ay-patay#ixzz2N7a3K8uH 

we think the term “Team Tatay” is an excellent case study in Messaging 101. it is a brilliant name that turns the Bacolod church’s terms of Team Buhay and Team Patay into a boomerang.

“Team Tatay” goes straight to the heart of the issue the activists are bringing up where priests have lost the moral high ground on the issue as they themselves have committed “grave sins” by fathering children themselves. aside from that, the line is brilliant as it uses essentially the same words used by the bacolod church. it even rhymes with “Team Buhay” “Team Patay”, is  very easy to remember and very creative.

on strategy, clarity, on message and memorability are the key components of a brilliant messaging.

on twitter we had these questions:

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the “Team Buhay” and “Team Patay” posters at the Bacolod church

read : Bacolod diocese: No to these 6 Senate bets –> http://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections-2013/22321-bacolod-diocese-no-to-these-6-senate-bets

this is the statement by cynthia villar from that video that got pinoy nurses, apparently from all over the world, very angry at her.

“Ang sinasabi namin sa kanila na ‘actually, hindi naman kailangan ng nurse na matapos ang BSN (BS Nursing). Kasi itong mga nurses, gusto lang nilang maging room nurse,” Villar said, as she responded to a question posed by Winnie Monsod.

“(Kasi) sa Amerika or sa other countries, ano lang sila parang mag-aalaga… Hindi naman kailangan silang maging ganong kagaling,” she told Pagsubok sa mga Kandidato aired over GMA News TV.

source : http://ph.news.yahoo.com/villar-draws-nurses–ire-with-controversial-statement-043702029.html

pinoy social media was abuzz for two days now about it.

for us, the crucial question was – what did she mean by “room nurse”? is there such a classification or job as “room nurse”? we had tweeted the question to cynthia villar but we have had no answer from her yet.

we are not a nurse nor from the medical field, so we do not know anything about nurses and nursing. how is a “room nurse” different from the other nurses? we know of emergency room nurses, operating room nurses and pediatric nurses but we have not heard of the “room nurse”.

we assume the nurses who go to our hospital rooms are fully trained and experienced on medicine and science, not just fixing bed sheets. they do give us medicine, injections and IVs so we think that demands medical training.

villar seem to regard the “room nurse’ as similar to a hotel’s chambermaid whose job function is to clean and keep the hotel room in order from linens and everything else in the room. with that thinking, villar seem to be saying “room nurse” students will not need “technical” training or schooling on medicine and science.

to us the role of the “room nurse” who go to our hospital rooms is as important as the doctors who see us in keeping us healthy. in fact the nurse is on duty 24/7 while the doctor visits their patients at most twice a day for a few minutes to half an hour at the most on each visit. the nurse who is available 24/7 will need to make judgement calls when something happens to the patient, so we think her knowledge and skills go beyond bed sheets.

both cannot make mistakes and both need to be good at their jobs. they perform different jobs but their success or failure have the same impact on the patients they take care of. we also think both need training although not in the same degree on medicine and science.

but we are guessing that is what villar meant. the question goes back to what we said – is there a real job category such as a “room nurse” in the context that villar meant?

this was the explanation of villar after her statement became viral in social media.

Villar issued a statement after her answer went viral on social networking sites.

“The issue was really beyond me. I just interceded as chairperson of the House Committee on Higher and Technical Education. I have no power neither over CHED nor the nursing schools. As I said, my conciliatory efforts were overtaken by events—the charges filed by the schools against CHED officials,” she said

. “The 30-second limit for me to answer the question posed on the news program was too short to give the complete details surrounding the issue. I hope that this statement will clarify the issue. I am sorry if it has created confusion. Thank you,” Villar added.

source : http://ph.news.yahoo.com/villar-draws-nurses–ire-with-controversial-statement-043702029.html

we do not think her statement actually answered anything, specially the things that got many pinoy nurses  angry about or got insulted from. some are even wondering whether villar thought  ”RN” meant “room nurse” instead of “registered nurse”. the answer is way off and did not seem to have an understanding of what the issues are and what were insulting in her statement. she seemed to have explained and apologized for the wrong thing.

this is an unfortunate statement from cynthia villar specially that she has positioned herself as the “job creation” senator. in fact, her advertising calls her as “mrs. hanepbuhay”. she is so serious on it that she even went through the trouble of asking the COMELEC to agree to include “hanepbuhay” as her “alias” on the official ballots we will be using for the election. we will be reading that alias beside her name.

this episode though shows a huge disconnect (same word winnie monsod used in that interview) in that a senatoriable who positions herself as the “job creation” senator is unable to appreciate the job and profession called “nursing” and laborers called “nurses”.

this was the facial reaction that winnie monsod showed while senatoriable cynthia villar mentioned her “room nurse” statement

————

we wanted to get to the bottom of what a “room nurse” is. we think the used of that term is the crux of the matter. thanks to @alvindakis. here is what we got:

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this morning, march 4, 2013, @cynthia_villar issued this apology:

source : http://www.sws.org.ph/

based on this SWS 2013 Senatorables survey – 47% of voters cannot complete all 12 senatoriables while an equal number, 47% can complete all 12. (balance 6% are undecided or made invalid markings).  on average, all voters will just be able to write down 9 names for the 12 senatoriable slots.

we think 47% unable to complete all 12 is a huge number. what that may are the following :

• there is not enough 12 “good men” among the 33 senatoriables running for office. most are unworthy of being elected
• not enough information about the candidates are reaching voters for them to complete the 12. this is just the start of the campaign period, let us hope this will change soon.

although still on the early stages of the campaign, at this point in time, these are the candidates who are benefiting from this situation and are getting better chances at getting elected :

• dynasty candidates – children, siblings or spouses of elected officials who are running for senator
• incumbent senators running for reelection  

based on the survey, of the top 12, 6 are candidates for reelection – legarda, escudero, cayetano, pimentel, trillanes and zubiri. we consider zubiri for reelection since he did serve a term in the senate. a large number in the top 12 are dynasty candidates –   villar, binay, ejercito aquino and angara. only 1 senatoriable, poe does not belong to any one of these groups.

the results of this survey would be so different if the 47% who did not complete the 12 spots would complete their list.

dynasty candidates are running on the basis of having the same family name as elected officials, that gives them a built-in advantage of being remembered more easily and have better chances of getting elected. not completing your list of 12 makes that advantage work for them for real.

completing the list of 12, say with names who are not re-electionists or dynasty candidates will have the effect of pushing down the dynasty candidates from the top 12.  

this survey results are grim and bad news for many UNA senatoriables and for the whole party and great news for  Team PNoy and  specific senatoriables.

this is how bad it is for the UNA senatoriables :

• 9 out of the top 12 senatoriables belong to the admin PNoy coalition with the UNA opposition getting only 3
• 3 UNA senatoriables dropped out of the top 12 while 2 from  Team PNoy barged into the top 12
• 6 out 12 Team PNoy senatoriables gained in rank (aquino, poe, villar, madrigal, trillanes and angara), 6 stayed the same (cayetano, escudero, hontiveros, legarda, magsaysay r, pimentel)
• 6 out of 9 UNA senatoriables declined in rank (honasan, ejercito, enrile, gordon, maceda, zubiri), only 2 gained (binay, magsaysay)  while 1 stayed the same (cojuangco)

• 5 in 12 of the Team PNoy senatoriables gained in ratings (aquino, madrigal, poe, trillanes, villar), 4 stayed (angara, escudero, hontiveros, pimentel) while only 3 lost cayetano, legarda, magsaysay r). these three losses were minimal with 2 losing only 1 percentage point while the 3rd lost 2 percentage points
• on the other hand, 7 out of 9 senatoriables of UNA lost ratings (cojuangco, ejercito, enrile, gordon, honasan, maceda, zubiri), 1 the same (magsaysay m)  and only 1 gained (binay).
• most of the dramatic loses in rankings and/or ratings were suffered by the UNA senatoriables – jv ejercito, migz zubiri, jack enrile, gringo honasan and ernie maceda
• consequently, most of the dramatic gains in ranking and ratings were gained by Team PNoy senatoriables – grace poe, bam aquino, jamby madrigal and cynthia villar
• no changes occurred for UNA bottom dweller mitos magsaysay, tingting cojuangco and ernie maceda

what can explain the dramatic loses by the UNA senatoriables?

we think its a brand positioning blunder by UNA. we read it first from statements from mitos magsaysay where she said UNA wanted “aquino to succeed” and that their role is to give “constructive criticism”. (read here: malacanang delivers THE BOMB on senatoriable mitos magsaysay)

a few days after that, jv ejercito basically said the same thing, plus the UNA spokesman. some of them even said UNA was not necessarily an opposition party. instead of saying they are an opposition party, they were saying things like they will be “fiscalizers”. why then would voters favor UNA when the president himself has his own set of senatoriables?

these were very confusing statements by the UNA senatoriables and the UNA party. people must have wondered  if UNA was not the opposition party, what are they then? that can mean they are part of the administration. if they are part of the administration, why do they have competing senatoriables to that of the admin party?

this was a very basic and fundamental blunder by UNA. instead of differentiating  themselves against Team PNoy, they were actually making themselves similar to their opponents. two of the key elements of brand building is uniqueness and differentiation versus competition. instead of achieving those, they were actually making themselves similar. the result is UNA’s brand positioning became invisible in the eyes of the voters. being invisible allows the voters to only see Team PNoy.

Team PNoy released their TV ads soon after. statements by jv ejercito and the UNA party in reaction to the TV ad did not help the party either and made it worst for them.

Ejercito explained where UNA stands when it comes to the Aquino administration. They support his platform of good governance but they want to keep the Senate as an independent institution to keep the administration in check.

“We admit that the President is very popular. We have supported the President on his thrust for good governance. But sometimes when you are too popular, you do not know anymore the pulse of the people,” he said.

http://www.rappler.com/nation/21139-jv-ejercito-to-team-pnoy-why-the-impostor-tag

ejercito’s words explain the problem UNA created for  themselves. he did say the party supports aquino in his platform of good governance. aquino was elected by a landslide vote and continue to be the country’s most popular president on the basis of a good governance election promise and actions during his term. ejercito simply acknowledged aquino is doing well which we think to many voters would mean they should favor the senators aquino is supporting.

UNA was not defining themselves in the mind of the voters. what they were doing instead was propping up even more an already popular president and this president has his own list of senatoriables.

in marketing and advertising, you never talk about your competition, you talk about yourself and how good you are and what you can do that competition cannot. if you talk about competition, you do so only to show their weakness or failure. in this case UNA was not even mentioning any failure or weakness of aquino or Team PNoy. ejercito even praised the achievements and strengths of aquino.

UNA’s blunder is not just very bad brand positioning, we think its really a detrimental strategic blunder. we are guessing that they did research and found out that noynoy aquino is a very popular president and that noynoy aquino is the strongest endorser in philippine politics bar none.

UNA was unable to figure what they can do to counter this high popularity of noynoy aquino. we think their biggest error is thinking that since aquino is very popular, they should not go against him. and that thinking is very much like giving up on the election even before it started.

 this kind of results in the surveys with the kind of competition and smarts or lack of smarts by UNA is not surprising. Team PNoy must be very pleased with the way UNA is handling their campaign.

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source of SWS survey :    http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=&title=Team-PNoy-takes-the-lead-in-latest-SWS-BW-poll&id=66397#

Team PNoy takes the lead in latest SWS-BW poll

the list only has the major senatoriables running for the 2013 election. the list is short of the 30+ official candidates for senators. the pictures of the senatoriables with different sizes and shapes were hardly chosen as they were picked up from whatever our friend Google Image gave us.

this is an unscientific poll given that no random sampling has been done and there was no vetting of respondents. anyone with an internet connection can cast their vote in this poll. obviously only those with an internet connection are the respondents in this poll which is hardly reflective of the actual voting population.

but candidates and supporters can use the results for bragging rights.

they can also use the poll results as a gauge of the size of the support candidates are getting out of netizens. respondents who vote here are social media users and they can be harnessed to promote the candidacy of senatoriables. as it has been shown in the most recent months, Philippine netizens who are in social media is a very potent force who can influence national life and behavior or attitudes of national leaders. a candidate who gets higher votes than others here can say they have bigger netizen support. the question then is how can this candidate harness the netizen support for more support in the internet and how to make this spill over to traditional media and real world voting by election time.

make your vote count! you will be given only 12 votes in this list. come back here from time to time and find out who is being chosen by readers of this blog.

thank you all and good luck, senatoriables.

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please read comments for updates in this poll.

VOTE HERE

notes :

• the software will allow you to vote for a maximum of only 12 candidates.
• after you cast your vote, you can click “view results” if you are not taken to the results portion
• poll opened on february 16, 2013
• poll will close on day before election day
• follow us on twitter -> @wawam

note that the pictures here are arranged in alphabetical order based on their first name. that is nearly scientific.

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if you have a twitter account, please use these hash tags:

Palace to Mitos: Thanks, but no thanks

mitos magsaysay (picture by PDI)

MANILA – Malacañang doubts that United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) senatorial candidate Mitos Magsaysay wants President Aquino to “succeed,” disputing her statement that UNA senatorial candidates give constructive criticisms to help the administration “to be the best that it could be.”

“Thank you Rep. Mitos but the President and his Cabinet do not need a US Army slogan to excel. The President has been doing good governance for the past three years, much admired by both the local and international communities, notwithstanding your ‘friendly’ help,” presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said in a text message.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte described Magsaysay’s statement as a “turnaround” from the critical statements that Magsaysay has issued about President Aquino.

Valte pointed out the Magsaysay has called Aquino several names.

Magsaysay once described Aquino as “the most amateur, stubborn, laid back, lazy, immature, and least knowledgeable president we ever had.”

“That is certainly a turnaround from the two-and-a-half years worth of statements that Representative Magsaysay has been issuing against the President. Very early on, she had already let loose of several names about the President… With friends like that, who needs enemies?” Valte said.

“She’s not in the slate of the President. That speaks volumes for itself,” Valte added.

Lacierda earlier said that UNA senatorial candidates are confusing the public by wanting to be associated with President Aquino to increase their chances of winning but have been very critical of the administration.

source : http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/02/01/13/palace-mitos-thanks-no-thanks

mitos magsaysay since noynoy aquino became president had nothing but criticism and disdain on aquino on every any topic, with or without an issue. for some reason, mitos is always interviewed by media and for some reason she has given some comment, or the other on anything aquino does. and more than always, she would give a negative comment.

this reaction on malacanang to mitos is understandable and certainly deserving of mitos magsaysay.

nitos is on the 21-22nd spot in the latest SWS senatoriables, a long way off from making it to the top 12.