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.