Within a year Barak Obama’s campaign not only bounced in an upwardly direction it also had momentum that lasted far into the allocated election day of 5th November.
Obama is an outstanding orator. He appears calm and collective and all of these skills are valuable in developing an effective communication strategy. What was just as important was the choice of media, i.e: The electronic dimension and style of the campaign certainly helps to capture people’s imagination.
Hang on! What people are we talking about? Are we talking about ‘Natives’ – i.e.: those that grew up with technology and find it a natural interface to gather news / share opinions or views on line. Or, are we talking about the ‘Immigrants’ – Those described as technologies who have had to ‘port’ / migrate their skills from the mainframe / mini computer generation to Web 2.0 functions like social networking.
Interestingly, some of the Internet strategy was developed by a volunteer: Chris Hughes. Chris is a former founder of Facebook. Taking time off his work on an unpaid basis he took time for no money and volunteered to participate in the campaign.
Millions of Dollars were also raised online, i.e: Raising $200M online with an average donation size of $84.
The messaging adopted, to borrow a term from eLearning was ‘blended’, i.e.: using face-to-face and online communication of knowledge.
There is one more element that was in the mix. That was the use of traditional media, i.e.: Television and Radio.
From a channel outlet perspective, we should map this to the demographic: Young voters of all colours… Interestingly, advertising slots on MTV were purchased to get to the heart of a listening/ watching generation! It is also worth reviewing Barak’s mobile SMS approach – albeit that mobile computing in the European consumer base is developing at a faster rate.
With on line blogs associated discussion threads and an approach that attempted to put the owness on the reader to participate – the motivational mix of the consumer/ potential voter the strategy fuelled itself.
All of these strategies can be summarised for organisations by suggesting online proliferation of ideas, services and products can help with the right New media and supporting organisation to provide innovative ideas and content redeployment strategies.
