Tequila Sydney obviously need more work as they have had time to put together a Political Hot Air Balloon race :) Good to see agencies being proactive and having some fun on their own backs and not waiting for clients.

Here's Tequila's words on the project;

"Taking live feeds from Google news quotes service, the balloons rise and fall graphically showing who's generating the most virtual column inches each day. You also get the chance to stick a pin in the balloon of a candidate acting as a sort of opinion poll."

I would have liked to have seen it an actual race over the days. Not just rise and fall based on the most recent mentions in the news. They missed a big opportunity with some sexy data visualisation but they definitely got in at the right time for a "presidential viral" piece. I like the Google News mentions metric but it's hard to know if the news is positive or negative (which would be impossible to tell).

They were also responsible for the Slap the Candidate viral a few years back.

Another take on this is Avenue Fighter which takes Twitter mentions of either candidate checks whether they are positive or negative and then uses that to form an attack to either fighter.

Which viral will reign supreme? Both subscribe the to the "viral = ugly" doctrine of design but they are funny enough not to need much polish.