How Klaus Iohannis passed Coca-Cola and McDonald’s in less than 6 months

This year’s presidential elections in Romania were everything else but ordinary. Although the clear favorite was Victor Ponta (the president of the Social Democratic Party), Klaus Iohannis (the liberal underdog) won the race by a comfortable margin and wrote history by surpassing all expectations.

There are several factors that influenced this year’s elections, including the huge support of romanians living abroad, but without social media this comeback would not have been possible.

From 0 to hero

In just 6 months Klaus Iohannis’ Facebook page has gone from 0 to +900k likes, topping with an astonishing 180k likes on election day. He now has more followers than giants like Coca-Cola’s romanian page and will surpass McDonald’s Romania until the end of the day. The 1 million likes milestone is also really close, an all-time first for any politician from Europe. That’s more than Angela Merkel! (insights from Facebrands.ro).

There’s a lot to say and to be learned from the past days, but one thing is for sure:

The Facebook generation is more powerful than everyone thought and we CAN make a change.

If you’re into social media you should definitely take a look at a more in-depth analysis of the happenings, here’s a really good article on this topic: How social media won the 2014 romanian presidential elections for Klaus Iohannis

• Klaus Iohannis got another 15k likes in less than an hour after we wrote the article and already passed McDonald’s Romania.
• 1 million likes milestone was reached easily, the Facebook page is spreading like fire

Originally published at blog.hipwerk.com on November 17, 2014.