CASE STUDY OF EFFECTIVENESS THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN

BRAND Barack Obama CAMPAIGN US Presidential 2008LAUNCH January 2007CATEGORY Politics

RESEARCH Paul van Veenendaal, SMM Wizard & Author ViralBlog.com STORY Igor Beuker, Founder Grupo LaComunidad & Author ViralBlog.com

CREDITS All credits go to Barack Obama and his campaign team DATE 29 January 2009

TODAY’S PROGRAM IT’S A NEW DAY

OBAMA New School Marketer ARCHITECTURE Brand Interaction LACOMUNIDAD Why We Love Obama CAMPAIGN Insights & DetailsFUNDRAISING Show me the money UGC Examples Q&A Peer Learnings

advertising neverstarted a movement

Barack Obama The New School Marketer

Barack Obama The New School Marketer

How can I become one of them?

“The Trialogue”

Consumers

Marketer

Interact and Listen? Yes I can!

powered by the web, not advertised on it.

Obama’s Campaign Team

Obama’s Campaign Team

The Brand Engagement Architect

Chris Hughes (24) a co-founder of Facebook, left the company to develop Senator Barack Obama’s online & social media marketing architecture

1 4

The Brand Engagement Architect

The Brand Engagement Architect

Obama’s Stairway To Brand Heaven

Obama’s Stairway To Brand Heaven

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction d Interaction

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction

Brand Interaction

Why Do We Feel Connected To Obama

The Decision Makers

The Target Audience

Grupo LaComunidad On A Mission

Brand Interaction Strategies

Social

Communities

Seeding

Feeding

Weblog Forum Carnivals

Participation, engagement and advocacy: peers and friends will spread the brand’s message

new future brand offerings

Niche Community connected

to campaign liking

RatingVideo

ContestSignup

ViewVideo

CustomVideo

WebiSodes

Post

YOUR BLOG Tune-in

Opt-in

Ex. Twitter

Brand Interaction Strategies

WOMMAWord of Mouth Marketing Association -- WOMMA -

Ethical Blogger ..

US-based organization for the viral, buzz, and word of mouth marketing industry. Events, newsletters, blogs and knowledge about word of mouth.

Road To Democratic Nomination

Road To Democratic Nomination

Duncan Hunter , Mike Huckabee, Jim Gilmore, Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Tommy Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain

Not in picture: Alan Keyes, Fred Thompson

The Republican Candidates

The Republican Candidates

Mike Gravel, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton

The Democratic Candidates

The Democratic Candidates

Road to Democratic Nomination (1)

To become the Democratic nominee for president, a candidate needs to capture 2,026 delegate votes.

• In the fall of 2007, the DNC said it would not count Florida and Michigan’s pledged delegates because the states violated party rules by scheduling their primaries prior to February 5

• The Democrats had 26 debates, nearly all more than one hour long, and all but one of them with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

• December 2007, Oprah endorses Barack Obama

• January 3, 2008: Iowa caucus – Obama wins• Biden & Dodd drops out on January 3, 2008: get less than 1%• January 8: New Hampshire Primary – Clinton cries & wins• Richardson drops out on January 10, 2008 after lackluster showings in the first primary

and caucus contests• January 15 & 19: Clinton wins Michigan Primary & Nevada Caucus • Kucinich drops out on Thursday, January 24, 2008• January 26: South Carolina – Obama wins• January 30: John Edwards drops out

Road to Democratic Nomination (1)

Road to Democratic Nomination (1)

Road to Democratic Nomination (2)

To become the Democratic nominee for president, a candidate needs to capture 2,026 delegate votes.

• Obama receives endorsement of Caroline Kennedy and Ted Kennedy

• Wil.i.am releases “Yes We Can Song” on February 2, 2008; viewed 50+ million times by election time!

• Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008. Obama wins 13 of 22 states: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and Utah.

• Obama wins 11 states in a row! Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington State, Virgin Islands, Maine, District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, Hawaii & Vermont.

• Clinton’s 3 AM commercial backfires – girl in ad is Obama supporter

• March 2008, Mike Gravel drops out

• Clintons wins Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island; Obama wins Wyoming and Mississippi• Obama disavows Reverend Wright – “A More Perfect Union” in Philadelphia (viewed 7M on

YouTube)

• CBS Broadcasting caught Hillary lying about her trip to Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996.

• Obama wins Guam, North Carolina, Oregon & Montana & Edwards’ delegates & Superdelegates

• June 5, 2008, Obama wins Democratic nomination 2229.5 vs 1896.5 delegates

Democratic Polls: Obama vs Clinton

Comparing Candidates: Engagement and ParticipationNumber of Opportunities to Engage and Participate on Web sites

June 2007

Blogs on Candidate Web sites

Grassroots activity by Candidate

Presidential Candidates on MySpace

Democratic & Republican Candidates & Web 2.0

THE OBAMA STRATEGY

The Presidential Election ‘08

• The most expensive in US history!

• More voters than ever before

• Largest age gap between Democratic and Republican candidate ever

• Strewn with controversy

• Internet and video become major factors

Obama’s 50 State Strategy (1)

• A fifty state strategy is a political strategy which aims for progress in all states of the United States of America, rather than conceding certain states as "unwinnable".

• Obtain 270 Electoral votes

• Soldify wins in Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico and Florida

• Keep every state won by Kerry in the 2004 election

• Top priorities in battleground states- Voter Registration- Helping elect Democrats down the ballot- Build grassroots organization in every state

• Going up in television early in Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Montana,Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, NorthCarolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,Virginia

• Stick with issue spots vs McCain’s attack spotsInstall confidence within the peopleUse attack spots only in states with very small margins

• Focus on small donations

BarackObama.com

Main body of text is like a blog

My.BarackObama.com = Do-It-Yourself Citizenship

My.BarackObama.com deconstructed

My.barackobama.com allows users to join groups, connect with other users, plan events, raise money, write own blogs and volunteer. Basic tools for grassroots organizing at your fingertips!

My. BarackObama.com – Dashboard

1. Always play the role of a good friend

2. Interact with good reasons

3. Ask for more feedback-even in comments

4. Encourage free expression

5. Join Social Networks

6. Take Advantage of your Blog Roll

7. Tag your Images

8. Contests

9. Post Regularly

10.Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts

11.Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival.

My. BarackObama.com – Activity index

The Lemonade Stand Award

My. BarackObama.com – Personal Fundraising

My. BarackObama.com – Event finder

My. BarackObama.com – Neighbor to Neighbor

My. BarackObama.com – Voter Script

My. BarackObama.com – Phone Banking tool

Geared toward getting out the vote

Innovations – Widgets

Innovations – Fight The Smears

Innovations – In-game advertising

For weeks Obama ran in-game ads in 18 games such as Burnout Paradise for the Xbox 360 across 10 battleground states. The Obama campaign paid Massive Incorporated $44,465.78 for online advertising in early October.

Obama Everywhere

• Obama has gained 5 million supporters in other social networks.

• Obama maintained a profile in more than 15 onlinecommunities, including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for AfricanAmericans, and Eons, a Facebook for baby boomers.

• On Facebook, where about 3.2 million (during the campaign)signed up as his supporters, a group called Students for Barack Obama was created in July 2007.

• It was so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign thefollowing spring.

• And Facebook users did vote: On Facebook's Election 2008 page, which listed an 800 number to call for votingproblems, more than 5.4 million users clicked on an "I Voted" button to let their Facebook friends know that they made it to the polls.

LESSON:CROSS PLATFORM YOUR BLOG:

My.BarackObama.com Statistics

• On MyBarackObama.com, Obama's own social network, 2 million profiles were created

• In addition, 200,000 offline events were planned

• About 400,000 blog posts were written

• And more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created - at least 1,000 of them on Feb. 10, 2007, the day Obama announced his candidacy

McCain vs Obama on the web (1)

Engagement and Participation

• During the primary-election examination, the Obama Web site focused heavily —more than that of any other candidate from either party—on engaging supporters and motivating them to turn their enthusiasm into on-the-ground, grassroots activities

• Both campaign websites offer two ways of facilitating user engagement —allowing people to communicate with the campaign, personalize their own pages, and sign up to receive information updates:OPT-IN DATABASE

• For most of the summer, however, many of these features on the McCain site were not yet operational. They are now up and running.

• The McCain website offers customization tools through “McCainSpace,” a feature advertised as early as 2007 but not fully functioning until August of 2008. As late as August 1, the only option was to create a personal page—and even that was still not really working. That page displayed only a generic note that the page was “under construction” and they would notify us when it went live.

• As that page went live, McCainSpace also launched additional customization features. Users can now post McCain videos, pictures and blogs to their home pages, and with a few clicks send any of that material out to users of 25 different social networking sites.

McCain’s missteps: astroturfing

Asking supporters to cut and paste talking points into blog comment threads in exchange for prizes? Its bribing, not authentic and undermines what social mediaare all about. See www.womma.org for Word Of Mouth Marketing Code of Conduct!

Hope. Change. Action

Obama YouTube Channel

McCain YouTube Channel

YouTube

Obama McCainVideos 1,827 330

Views 120,479,084 25,995,773

Subscribers 149,258 28,343

Special features of YouTube page

Contribute to campaign via Google Checkout; link to YouTube page on barackobama.com

Find events; host events

Politicians on YouTube

YouTube Politicians Top 10: 4,496 videos generate 189,011,052 clip views!

Presidential Race Online Video Summary

• Barack Obama attracted more female viewers than John McCain

• Barack Obama is pulling in more younger viewers while McCain is pulling in a slightly older bunch which is to be expected.

• Barack Obama has over 300 Millions more clip views than McCain

OBAMA’S TOP VIDEO PLATFORMS:•YouTube•MySpace TV•MetaCafe•ElectionTV•Veoh

Facebook

What’s Your Social Media Strategy?

Facebook Statistics

Official Obama McCain

Members/Supporters in largest group

5,066,446* 583.518*

Number of Wall posts 572,383 none

Special features of profile page**

Videos, find out where to vote, register to vote

none

* Unofficial group ‘One Million for McCain/Palin’ has 200,251 members Unofficial group ‘One Million Strong for Barack’ has 986,470 members ** Beyond basics like Posted Items, Events, Discussion, Wall posts

Data from February 4, 2009

LinkedIn:a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003[2] mainly used for professional networking.

Flickr

Twitter <3 Obama

• With 109,892 followers, Obama is the #1 Twitterholic• McCain with 4,402 followers doesn’t break the top 100

Online Advertising Obama

Search• The Obama campaign spent $3.5 million on Google search in October 2008 alone.• Yahoo collected $673,000 during the same month.

Social Networks• The campaign spent $467,000 on Facebook in 2008, including $370,000 in September

2008. • $61,000 went to Black Planet. • Only $11,000 went to MySpace spending in 2008.

Media• $138,000 went to BET.com• Time Warner spending totaled $337,000 before October.• Politico, $145,000• WashingtonPost, $100,0000.• NBA.com, $21,000 in September 2008• Weather Channel, $108,000 all year.• Through ad network Centro, the campaign spent $630,000 on local TV and newspaper

Web sites before October. Another $100,000 went through Cox.

Ad networks:• The campaign spent $600,000 in 2008 on Advertising.com, Collective Media,

Undertone Networks, Burst Media, Quigo, DrivePM, Pulse360, Specific Media, and online video networks Broadband Enterprises and Tremor Media.

30 minute TV Commercial

Text Messaging & Mobile

• A million people signed up for Obama's text-messaging program

• On the night Obama accepted the Democratic nominationat Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phonesamong the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to jointhe program

• Supporters on average received 5 to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the programwas divided by states, regions, zip codes and colleges – and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.

• On Election Day, every voter who'd signed up for alerts inbattleground states got at least 3 text messages

iPhone Application

Brand Obama - Segmentation

He addressed many “niche” groups personal and relevant!

Brand Obama - Segmentation

DEBATES OBAMA vs McCAIN

Obama vs McCain – 1st debate

A tag cloud or word cloud: is a visual depiction of user-generated tags, or simply the word content of a site, used typically to describe the content of web sites.

Obama vs McCain – 2nd debate

Obama vs McCain – 3rd debate

DID OBAMA’S STRATEGY WORK?

Yes! Obama makes History!

AFTER THE ELECTION

Change.gov

YouTube Weekly Address by President-Elect

Also available on AOL, Yahoo, and MSN.

Whitehouse.gov

Obama Mania: IKEA

FUNDRAISING

How Obama Reinvented Campaign Finance

3.0 million contributors 6.5 million online donations 93% less than $100 $80 Average online donation $500 million raised online

Fundraising over Time: Obama vs McCain

Fundraising Barack Obama

Average Spent per Vote

Raised $532,946,511 Spent $513,557,218 69,447,084 = $7.39 per vote

(source: Wikipedia)

(source: OpenSecrets.org)

Fundraising John McCain

Average Spent per Vote

Raised $379,006,485 Spent $346,666,422 59,925,610 = $5.78 per vote

(source: Wikipedia)

(source: OpenSecrets.org)

Media Breakdown Obama vs McCain

VOTER GENERATED CONTENT

Hillary 1984

Vote Differenthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo

Obama Girl

"I Got a Crush...On Obama" By Obama Girl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

Tina Fey

Sarah Palin aka Tina Fey on SNLhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jukzu_dMuPk

Paris Hilton For President

Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Adhttp://tinyurl.com/parishiltonadvert

Will.i.am - Yes We Can

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

Wassup 2008

Wassup 2008http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8Uc5BFogE

Obama vs McCain Dance Off

Obama and McCain - Dance Off!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzyT9-9lUyE

YouBama.com

1,542 Obama Flickr Groups!

Hope Poster by Shepard Fairey

Obamacon Me

• Have a clear goal, organise and plan ahead

• Be positive and optimistic

• Project success before you’ve made it

• Be proud of where you’ve come from

• Embrace new technology, go to where people are and on their terms

• Be inclusive & unifying and create a sense of shared involvement

• Create advocates & empower them to spread the word

• Don’t be afraid to ask for commitment

• Obsess about the detail & use it to have an honest dialogue

• Be relevant and local

• Speak your mind and assert what you believe

• …and keep it simple (“Yes We Can” vs “Just Do It”)

What can Brands learn from Obama?

10 Reasons Obama is The Man!

• He looks cool on T-shirts

• He inhaled and we quote “That was the point”

• Opposed invading Iraq before it became fashionable

• He can BALL

• What’s the alternative? McCain? I love my Grandpa too, but seriously, President Grandpa?

• Michelle Obama is smarter than the last President & VP combined (and cuter)Princeton University, Harvard Law School, Assistant to the Mayor in Chicago, VP of U of Chicago Hospitals

• He can spell D-I-P-L-O-M-A-C-Y (that’s a start)

• His campaign is financed by THE PEOPLE – 3,000,000 individuals contributed and that ain’t bad (most ever)

• He can remember the difference between Shiites and Sunnis

• CHANGE – it’s been a long time coming

Brands That Have Embraced The Obama Way

Starbucks

A Social Media Marketing Program

0. Brand Assessment within the Social Space(track conversations about brand, products, services, competitor)

1. Identification of Social Influencers

(identify right people on the right topics)

2. Outreach to Social Influencers

(invite them to participate in online community)

3. Turn Influencers into Brand Advocates

(build online community and engage influencers)

Grey = one off activityGreen = community building and ongoing eCRM (optional)Orange= ongoing activity (i.e. 4 to 6 reports per year)

4. Full Year Conversational Tracking Program(track conversations, sentiment, insights on brands, products, services in

target markets)

The Impact Of SMM Programs

Change? If Obama Can…

You Can!

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