WE'VE MOVED!

We are proud to announce our NEW community destination. Engage with resident experts and fellow entrepreneurs, and learn everything you need to start your business. Check out the new home of StartupNation Community at startupnation.mn.co

Obama Campaign - Reverse Engineering The Marketing Plan

Frank630Frank630 subscriber Posts: 2
edited November 2008 in Marketing
I have heard so many people in so many forums say that the Obama campaign was a masterpiece of the art social marketing. In looking at the demographics in exit polls, the demographics appeared to support the following (according to Associated Press):1. Minorities: Ninety-six percent of black voters supported Obama. He also drew the votes of two thirds of Hispanics2. Young people: Obama won the under-30 crowd by 34
percentage points. This bested Bill Clinton`s 19-point advantage over
Bob Dole among young voters in 1996.3. Women: Obama attracted 56 percent of female voters. Unmarried women also voted for Obama over McCain by 70 to 29 percent.4. White men: He had the support of 41 percent of
white men. Before Obama, no Democrat since Jimmy Carter had earned more
than 38 percent of the white male vote.5. Hillary Clinton fans: Obama won over 84 percent of Democrats who backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries.
In looking at You Tube alone, Obama, had an incredible 1,800+ videos loaded compared to around 300+ for McCain. Not accounting for quality of the videos, pure numbers would indicate strong effort in getting the video-engaged world bought into the Obama camp.
I am interested in putting together the other elements of the Obama campaign to be able to better understand the plan that the Obama campaign used to achieve success. If you have some specific tactics that you can support by fact used in that campaign, I would be interested in seeing your posting.
Frank
www.thestartupsource.com
www.zengarden.cribsense.com
www.christmasmovies.cribsense.com/

Comments

  • SandyPISandyPI subscriber Posts: 8
    I have no insides to BHO`s campaign but as a Republican stagiest, I believe Obama played the race card, thus the left wing media, to the fullest. That was his strategy. If it weren`t for that, he would have nothing. No doubt he is a great speaker and ran a masterful well funded campaign...sadly the American people bought in to it
  • LogoMotivesLogoMotives subscriber Posts: 15
    From a design standpoint Obama also won the presidential race.  With the design used throughout, the Obama campaign was subtly "selling" a graphic image of hope and his consistent brand played a major role in conveying a unifying message to potential voters.
    The Obama design - in all elements from logo to website - was fresh, innovative and inviting.  The McCain imagery was conservative, traditional and some-what boring from a design standpoint.  The vibrant Obama design - and Internet savvy campaign - surely attracted some to give a bit more attention to the message of the candidate. Obama`s marketing people did an incredible job.
    The Obama combined graphics effort was brilliant "packaging" of a political candidate - and I`m personally thrilled that voters "bought" the well-defined and refined product offered. 
  • RetiredMember5RetiredMember5 subscriber Posts: 0
    Obama ran a very strategic and effective campaign targeting certain demographics and business owners.  I look forward to more individuals becoming fellow entrepreneurs in the coming four years.
     
  • Frank630Frank630 subscriber Posts: 2
    For the benefit of us all, as marketing professionals, the way to make this work for us is to lay it out in a way that we can all make this actionable in our businesses. This relates strictly to the better use of social marketing on the internet as it relates to any campaign election or product or services.  I believe in marketing in the following way would be a good framework to start from:1. Research
    What did the U.S. people want to hear, in what media did they want to hear it, what is the tone.This stuff can all be listened to using at least the following tools:Twitter SearchTechnorati Blog SearchGoogle Blog Search
    All you need to do is use these tools to perform intelligent inquiries into media usage, one-by-one spills of election issues, attitudes. The output of the step is simply what are the keywords that would be used to be able to drill down to the specific media vehicles with the right issues. At this point, identifying peoples` pains are critical in being able to listen and talk intelligently2. TrafficUse Google Keyword tool, Twitter Search and other blogs that come about from the blog searches above to determine actually what  numerically are the big issues and where are they getting talked about the most. The campaign manager would take all of this information and drive the campaign from a top down in both on-line and off-line campaigns. In this way, the message is made uniform across all media. The Obama campaign made heavy usage of Twitter (as mentioned above that the Joe Biden assignment was announced on Twitter before general media). Technorati as of today has 2,184,113 posts for Obama versus 1,427,112 posts for McCain). Pure quantitative advantage. 3. Issue Assignments
    Assignments
    of personnel to each of the media to dominate the major vehicles (as
    you can plainly see) was the big job. It was a huge project
    management job to continue to track issues and get hands on keyboards
    to keep the major blogs aligned with the message of hope and change
    that was central to Obama`s campaign. If you have used Twitter, the
    messages come fast and furiously and so you need to have dedicated
    hands on the keyboard continuously to manage feedback and results as
    they come in. For those of us running a small business, we may not have the people to do this work. As a matter of fact, we may just have our own two hands. However, knowing specifically what tasks (number of comments on which blogs, how much time to spend on Twitter, etc) are involved with this will help know when you have "finished" for the day. For as those veterans amongst us know,  marketing never seems to be finished. Well, marketing needs to get finished and it is in this section that you decide just how much you will realistically get done.
    4. Tracking Results and Adjusting
    CampaignHow do you track such a thing? Comments
    on targeted blogs are the most credible feedback. Simple tallying of
    the negative versus positive would be a good coarse measure. When
    people get behind a keyboard (or finger board) they are quite honest!
    So, using their feedback to adjust campaign message, tone, and
    looking for new media for message.
    Obviously, I am also trying to piece
    this together, but the above would be the blueprint that I would
    start with in putting together campaigns that would help drive
    positive change – either for product, services or public officials.
    I hope this is useful to you and would be glad to hear any other
    contributions that can help drill down to a better understanding.
    Also take a look at  David Meerman Scott`s post on a similar subject.Thanks all.Frank63011/20/2008 3:44 PM
Sign In or Register to comment.