A Historical Breakthrough in Social Media: The Obama Internet Campaign
Posted by KakieF on August 11, 2009
A while back I had the opportunity to hear Scott Thomas ( @simplescott ) at an event held by MIMA (The Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association.) Scott was the media design director for the Obama campaign and he worked with a talented team of innovators who made it work. The campaign was groundbreaking because it was the first time in history that a campaign was approached as a brand that tied in the marketing communications component as well.
The Obama website, was designed to be a consistent face of the campaign. They engaged people in registration and participation, sent out regular team emails for those who registered on the site. They made the user experience and bringing groups together easy. In the end there were more than 150,000 planned events by the public. The site had 1.5Million+ visitors and raised more than $6 Million U.S. dollars
Their approach shifted away from the traditional “about us, how can we make you love us“ campaign model and focused on “how does what we are doing going to influence lives?“ That is how the new face of advertising is supposed to work.
They learned how to listen to internet chatter and leveraged search engine optimization (SEO), bought pay-per-click advertising with sponsors. They participated in other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and more.
One perfect example that fascinated me, was being on Twitter during the debates while watching the live stream. I was blown away because I knew I was watching history in a way we had never seen before and it was happening right in front me. Every time McCain said a number or fact was wrong, within seconds I would see a fact check pop up and was amazed at how they were able respond so quickly. I was in awe.
I asked Scott Thomas about it and he described managing the changes in the campaign like “building an airplane while in flight.” Interesting illustration.
What did I learn? It seems they weren’t afraid to make changes when something didn’t work right. They learned from their mistakes and were given the freedom to be innovative. They were trusted for their business judgement. When it comes to social media, I think this is a message that the corporate world will eventually embrace. I believe they are starting to catch on, slowly and we are moving in the right direction. What do you think?
By Kakie Fitzsimmons
This entry was posted on August 11, 2009 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Business. Tagged: internet campaign, new media, Obama election, Obama internet campaign, politics, social media, Social media campaign, social media strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
