The Marketing of Barack Obama
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Themes: Marketing
Pub Date : 2009
Countries : US
Industry : General Business
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Case Code : MCS0016
Case Length : 7 Pages
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in any of the top four search engines will have the presidential campaign website of Barack Obama
first in the list. Obama and his team also made use of the sponsored listings when they purchased
advertising based on his name and other keywords. Most keywords related to the presidential election
campaign were captured by the Obama campaign.40
Blogging is yet another tool of online marketing
that was effectively exploited by the Obama campaign. The official blog was beautifully integrated
with the website and the Obama team included active bloggers who continuously posted articles that
promoted Obama. Supporters also tirelessly submitted positive news about Obama to social news
sites such as Digg and Reddit.41
Obama believed that there is no more powerful tool for grass-roots organising than the Internet.42
He entrusted the task of organising an online community to Christopher Hughes, the co-founder of
Facebook. Hughes saw what was possible before anyone else and built a virtual mechanism for
scaling and supporting community action.43
His key tool was My.BarackObama.com or MyBO for
short.
MyBO is an interesting and easy to use social networking website that allowed Obama supporters
to create groups, plan events, sign up for updates, set up personal fund-raising pages, download tools,
and connect with one another. MyBO gave supporters a voice on Obama's website and let the
campaign reach its most passionate supporters economically and effectively. What made MyBO
unique is not the technology itself, but the people who used the online tools to coordinate offline
action.44
The online tools were used to make real-world connections between people who were
hungry for ‘change'. This social networking initiative gave Obama the biggest ever volunteer group
- mind you, majority of them young - working tirelessly for his campaign.45
Over a period of 21
months, millions of Americans used MyBO to organise local communities on behalf of Barack Obama
and even made calls to neighbors about this campaign.46
By the time the campaign was over, volunteers
had created more than 2 million profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000
groups, posted 400,000 blogs, and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages.47
Obama
had changed politics and marketing forever.
Harvard Business School professor John Quelch feels that ‘like any great brand, Obama has built
up a bond of trust with the American people. His election has also given the US the opportunity to
reestablish its moral leadership around the world. But like any brand, he has to deliver now on his
promises, both actual and perceived. In the current economy, that will not be easy.48
40]
“Barack Obama's Ultimate Guide to Marketing: How he Used Internet and Social Media to Become President-Elect”, op.cit.
The Marketing of Barack Obama
41]
Ibid.
42] Stelter Brian, “The Facebooker Who Friended Obama”, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/technology/07hughes.html,
July 7th 2008.
43] McGirt Ellen, “How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign”, http://www.fastcompany.com/
magazine/134/boy-wonder.html, March 17th 2009.
44]
Hughes Chris, “Moving Forward on My.BarackObama”, http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/
chrishughesatthecampaign/gGxZvh, November 7th 2008.
45]
“Obama the greatest marketer of them all!”, op.cit.
46]
“Moving Forward on My.BarackObama”, op.cit.
47]
“How Chris Hughes Helped Launch Facebook and the Barack Obama Campaign”, op.cit.
48]
“The Marketing of a President”, op.cit.