Campaign 2.0 - How the Obama campaign raised the bar

I don’t intend to become a political blogger, but with "the most important election in decades" around the corner, I wanted to share my thoughts on Barack Obama’s campaign as a marketing strategist. Bill Clinton said this while stumping for Barack Obama in Florida last week. "The four things that really matter in a president are number one, the philosophy; number two, the policies; number three, the ability to make a decision; and number four, the ability to execute that decision and make changes in people's lives." Bill should know; he was a president. 

Let's explore the four attributes that matter - 

  #1. Philosophy You can't win an argument on philosophy. Philosophy is what you inherently believe in and it cannot be right or wrong. A reasonable person should be able to respect a different point of view without agreeing with it. All presidents believed in their philosophy. Whether it was right for the country at that moment in time is a debate for historians. 

  #2. Policies Policies are often made to support the philosophy. If you agree with the philosophy, you are likely to agree with the policies. 

  #3. Ability to make decision Bill Clinton told the supporters in Florida that every presidential candidate gets to make one major decision during the campaign – the VP pick. And in this campaign we witnessed the candidates make two decisions, the second one came when the financial system collapsed in September. 

With all due respect to Bill, I disagree slightly. A presidential candidate makes numerous decisions throughout their campaign - picking their campaign theme, choosing their advisers, their speechwriters, recruiting the right people to run the campaign. While there may be questions regarding Obama's past associations, none of his decisions in the last 20 months has derailed the campaign in any way. In fact, Obama's judgment and his steady demeanor, during this time, have been quite remarkable. 

  #4. Ability to execute Critics of Barack Obama say that he has paper-thin resume with no executive experience. True, and yet he has managed to execute a multi-million dollar campaign over 20 months almost flawlessly. He started with the theme of “Change” and “Hope” and 20 months later, he is still running his campaign on the same theme. Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain struggled with setting a single theme for their campaign.

 Every marketer knows that branding is not easy. I am amazed that in such a short period of time, a relatively unknown senator was able to establish his brand that has become a symbol of Hope and Change. But the game-changing aspect of his campaign has been the grassroot movement and use of social media. The same people who mocked Obama for being a “community organizer” are struggling to match his campaign’s ground game. 

Obama didn’t wait for people to come to him but reached out to people where they already were – on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, their mobile phones, etc. He didn’t ask them to attend the $1000 a plate fundraiser, he asked them to donate $25 online. His campaign has been very successful in microtargeting communities. I got involved b’coz I attended a networking mixer organized by the “South Asians for Obama” group in Nov ’07. He connected with the new generation the way they wanted. He kept his followers engaged with the campaign by becoming part of their (online) life.

  Conclusion People often ask, when this is the perfect storm in favor of a Democrat candidate, why is Obama only a few points ahead in the polls? The way I see it - a black man, with a middle name “Hussein” at a time the country is fighting two wars in the Islamic world, fairly young, unknown, and with no political family backing - it is a surprise that Obama is even ahead!! 

On Tuesday night we will know whether his ability to execute a flawless campaign was good enough to take him to the White House. Regardless, his campaign has been a turning point and has set the bar high for all future political campaigns.

The case for HOPE

I have never voted my entire life and as a permanent resident but non-US citizen I can’t vote this November 4th. Even so, for the first time ever, I have contributed money to a political campaign. Everyone has their reasons for choosing the candidate they support for President. 

Here is my story. I support Obama because I admire and am inspired by his leadership, determination, eloquence, and passion. But there is more to it. For the first time, I feel I am being included and spoken to by a presidential candidate of a country I still struggle to call “home” after 14 years. For the first time, the vision for this country resonates with me and people like me in and outside America – Obama’s desire to use all tools of diplomacy first before military power, his admittance on the importance of alliances to tackle world issues, his ambition to make oil guzzling America energy independent and his promise to restore America's reputation as a role model for rest of the world. 

After hearing Obama speak for the last one year, it is also the first time and after 14 years, I have used the word “we” when referring to America while traveling abroad. Obama has inspired millions like me, who for the first time are paying attention to the political process in this country. It is truly remarkable to see young volunteers work so hard and with so much passion for his campaign. 

If elected, an Obama presidency will be a historic moment of great proportion, not just for the US, but for the entire world. It will be the first time in history, a non-white person will be elected by a white majority to lead a country. His presidency will not just bring hope for change in the United States, it also gives hope to every child born to immigrant parents in North America and Western Europe.

Jet Airways - the epitome of Customer Service

"Vegetarian or Non-Vegetarian?" I answered vegetarian, expecting my tray of airline food. But there was a follow up question - "South or North Indian?". After a brief thought I asked for south indian. I was handed a tray with a white cloth napkin, tied with nice blue rope, that held steel cutlery! Oh, did I mention I was flying coach? I was on a domestic route on Jet Airways from Mumbai to Delhi, a 2 hour flight!

Its not just in-flight meal and use of real cloth napkins and steel cutlery, even in coach, that sets this airline apart. Jet Airways has impressed me over and over again in the last 2 years with their customer service all through their value chain - right from the call center operator that takes your booking, to the check-in agents at the airport to in-flight attendants. Two years ago, I was flew into Mumbai International from SFO and had to make a connection to Hyderabad from Mumbai's domestic. The incoming flight was a bit late and by the time I took the shuttle to the Domestic airport, I had less than 30 min before my connecting flight took-off. I ran in with my 2 big bags and found a Jet Airways agent to tell him I was an international passenger and on the Hyd flight. He immediately took my bags and asked his peer to get it screened by security ( a process required pre-check in at indian airports), got me my boarding pass and asked me to run to the gate and promised me my bags meet me in Hyd. Sure enough, my bags landed in Hyd with me. Had it been any other airline (yes, even Singapore), I would have missed my connection.

It is not a surprise that Jet Airways profit is growing in triple digits when other airlines are struggling to even make one (they reported a profit of $7M in Q2 08). Other indian airlines too are trying to follow suit, but I found that the agents are not as well informed and cant seem to take charge and make decisions when presented with a new query or situation. There is something to be said about the quality of people Jet hires.

As I say on my Facebook status today, I've become a fan of Jet Airways. They have raised the bar for the airline industry and no other airline even comes close.

Women in technology

I am here in Portland at yet another tech conference, OSCON which happens to be the biggest conference for Open Source. By far, this is the geekiest conference I've been to. And it also happens to be the conference where the ratio is more skewed than ever...1-2% women as compared to the normal 10-15% women at other tech conferences. 

 Looking at the sea of white males at the Expo Hall, I noticed that it was the population of the white female that was conspicuously small. My guess is that if we separated out the minority races, mainly the Asians and Indians, the ratio of women in that crowd would be substantially higher. I thought for a minute and realized that all white women I know that work in the technology sector, are either in Sales or Marketing. In fact, I could not think of a single white woman, famous or otherwise, that was/is a developer/programmer or a pure IT junkie. 

 Is there a cultural difference between east and west? Is there a stigma that prevents white women in the US to enter the field of technology? Are they deterred by certain stereotypes in high school that is deemed uncool? Growing up in India, I surely didn't feel it. Sure the ratio of women in my Engineering college was about 25%, but none of my non-techie friends from high school sneered at me. If anything, they respected and even admired me. 

 I think we need a geek version of Hillary in the US to crack the glass wall that prevents white women from crossing the technological divide. While I may complain about how women in technology don't get much respect, I am certainly not helping their cause. Here's an embarrassing story from today: I asked this guy hovering near our booth, what the "PHP" ribbon stood for? His expression told me that it must be the dumbest question he has ever heard. He replied, "It's a language" (duh implied in his tone). 

Not to be outdone, I replied, "well, I have an 'exhibitor' ribbon and I know that's not a language." It did make him smile. And no, I didn't ask people with Perl or Ruby ribbons if they really liked jewelry.

The Web 2.0 Expo - They forgot about YOU!

You were the Time's person of the year in 2006. 

You wanted to contribute content, tell corporations what you wanted, express yourself, and connect and share with your friends and others. You helped propel this frenzy of making the Internet the platform. Yet, at the Web 2.0 conference in 2008, they forgot about you. 

 I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco all week and I was surprised to see that none of the sessions over the 4 days had a user's perspective. For Example - they had a panel of "community managers" sharing how they built successful communities, but no one from the community to share why they choose to become part of a community and what they expect from the community. They had people talk about different ways to monetize - through widgets, apps, and advertising. 

But no one was asking the users what they think of the Ads taking real estate on their page, or about all the silly apps being built for social networking sites. Maybe "none" is an overstatement. Two sessions stood out. O'Reilly in his keynote talked about using the Internet as a platform to make BIG changes, like making our governments more transparent to the people. Jonah Piretti, in his breakout session - the best one I attended - talked about there is no formula in making something viral. 

People (not particular persons) decide what interests them and what they want to forward and people are unpredictable. The success of viral events can be analyzed but not repeated. Of course, his presentation was engaging b'coz he himself was very funny and had very funny anecdotes to share. Google him and you will find some of his stories.

Facebook Apps - HOT or NOT?

It seems like in every conversation I have with friends these days, "Facebook" comes up a lot. Whether they like it or hate it, everyone seems to be on it. I have noticed though that the tone of negative comments is increasing, especially in the last 2 months. 

  Of course, the one thing that is annoying everyone is the Applications; being inundated with requests from others about things you really dont care to know. What bubblegum flavour are you? After knowing what kind of drug I am, what rainbow color I am, and which "Friends" character I am, do I really want to know the bubblegum flavour that matches my personality the most? 

 Most of these apps make you take the test and then ask you to forward it to 20 friends to know the result. I say, call their bluff. Don't forward it and go back to the application. You will know what color your heart is. Take the next quiz if you have to, do them all. Just this time no one else needs to know about it. Trust me, you would be doing yourself and your friends a big favour. I thought these applications were targeted to the hip and cool Gen Y or the Millennial Generation (seriously, do they know how much power they hold over making or breaking Web 2.0 companies). 

But at the Ad.Tech Conference in San Francisco this past week, I heard a panel of teens complain about all the silly apps on Facebook. They all had left MySpace for Facebook as MySpace has become over-saturated with advertisements and solicitations. And now the overflow of apps. While you want to keep an open platform so that anyone and everyone can build an app for Facebook, how do you do quality control so that it doesn't destroy your users' experience? 

Like Facebook, I would be struggling with this dilemma. There may be a switching cost, but it is not high enough to warrant annoyance. And if Flickr could find a way to share and interface with these social networking sites (I upload my photos on Flickr and they are available on Facebook (and other sites) so that I can tag my friends, etc), it would be golden! And that would lower the switching costs for Facebook significantly and put Flickr under the category "the web 2.0 site you could not live without".

The age of digital privacy

It seems like everyone is blogging these days. While some of these bloggers willingly share personal details of their lives with strangers, I am concerned about my Facebook profile, which I feel has too much information already. I

 feel torn about the status updates on Facebook. In a way, it's a good forum to express myself. But it's there for everyone, or rather every "friend" to read. There are some people who are my "friends" on Facebook who I wouldn't really call my friends. Should they really know about what I feel and think about every day? 

 This whole social networking thing has changed the definition of what a "friend" means and it certainly has changed what "stalking" means. Is it considered stalking if I follow a stranger's activities on a social media site, without them knowing? Unless they have changed their default privacy settings, I know which events they plan to attend, I know who their friends are, I know what movies they like and I know what they are talking about on the walls of their friends. Most of all, I can see all their photos. Is that stalking? 

Like it or not, this social networking phenomenon is here to stay. Welcome to the age of digital privacy, or lack thereof. For now, I am buying stocks of software security companies. While preference for Google or Yahoo, Facebook or MySpace may change, the need for secure information isnt going to go away.