A friend of mine is currently travelling in Bolivia, a country that's about to vote on a referendum which would give the country's controversial president - Evo Moralez - the option of seeking a second consecutive five year term (amongst other things).
As I understand it this is all the more contentious because, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Bolivia is quite a religious country and the church heavily opposes Mr. Moralez.
"..religion is playing a growing role in the latest chapter of Bolivia's sometimes bloody fight over a new constitution."
So why are we writing about this on an eMarketing blog? Knowing my area of interest, my intrepid explorer friend let me know that he spotted an interesting campaign tactic - there's an advert on Facebook encouraging the public to vote NO in the referendum on Sunday.
Is this a sign of President Obama's success influencing the (third) world? Perhaps the church decided that the Bolivian youth are the people they need to target - and Facebook, as anywhere else in the world, seems the best way to do this. I'd love to know what kind of conversion rate there is on a political ad giving such specific instructions. You can check out said friend's post here.
A travel companion of mine has posted an article that gives some background on the referendum on indymedia.org, it is in German right now but there should be an English translation by tomorrow afternoon. You can access it in German at de.indymedia.org/2009/01/240343.shtml . In the mean time you can either learn German or use Google translate. The Google translation is readable but stumbles on the more complicated parts, I suggest you wait for the translation which I will post a link to as soon as it is up.
Posted by James Saunders on 2009/01/25