Case Study: The Barack Obama Strategy

CASE STUDY OF EFFECTIVENESS THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN BRAND Barack Obama CAMPAIGN US Presidential 2008 LAUNCH January 2007 CATEGORY 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 & Details FUNDRAISING Show me the money UGC Examples Q&A Peer Learnings

advertising never started a movement 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

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

Obama’s Stairway To Brand Heaven

Identity Brands

Brand Interaction

Branding

Brand Interaction

Why Do We Feel Connected To Obama

The Decision Makers

The Target Audience

Grupo LaComunidad On A Mission

Brand Interaction Triple Play Proposition LaComunidad creative brand interaction agency ViralTracker video tracking power technology SocialMedia8 social media marketing agency Grupo LaComunidad is part of WPP’s global network per March 2008 About Grupo LaComunidad

Brand Interaction Strategies Social Communities Seeding Feeding Weblog Forum Quiz Participation, engagement and advocacy: peers and friends will spread the brand’s message Legend Free viral dynamics Post registration viral dinamics new future brand offerings Niche Community connected to campaign liking Rating Video Contest Sign up View Video Custom Video Webi Sodes Post Micro Site / iHub Tune-in Opt-in

Viral Video Tracking

Social Media Marketing Programs Influencer Identification Research & Outreach Brand Teams & Fan Programs Conversational & Buzz Tracking Natural Seeding & Social Media Optimization Strategic Social Media Planning & Buying Community Building & Product Peer Groups Social Channels & Viral Widgets Paid Seeding & Social Media Advertising

Triple Play Proposition VIRAL VIDEO SOCIAL MEDIA PLANNING NATURAL SEEDING REALLY VIRAL? REPORT PAID SEEDING NO YES

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

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

Democratic & Republican Candidates & Web 2.0 Comparing Candidates: Engagement and Participation Number of Opportunities to Engage and Participate on Web sites June 2007 Blogs on Candidate Web sites Grassroots activity by Candidate Presidential Candidates on MySpace

THE OBAMA STRATEGY

Presidential Marketing Campaigns Barack Obama John McCain Marketing messages “ Hope”, “Change we can believe in” “ Country first”, “The original maverick” Offline marketing channels TV, radio, print (including candidate’s books), direct mail TV, radio, print (including candidate’s books), direct mail Online marketing channels E-mail, display, organic and paid search, in-game advertising, mobile, social media E-mail, display, organic and paid search, social media Budget $150 million in Sept 2008 alone $ 84 million (public funds) Marketing strategies Energize young voters; spread optimism and hope; emphasize McCain’s similarities to Bush Energize the right wing; attack Obama’s weaknesses; emphasize experience and military service

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, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia
Stick with issue spots vs McCain’s attack spots Install confidence within the people Use attack spots only in states with very small margins
Focus on small donations

Obama’s 50 State Strategy (2) Campaign Expenditures Expenditures in Target States (in millions)

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

My. BarackObama.com – Activity index

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 online communities , including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for African Americans, 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 the following spring.
And Facebook users did vote: On Facebook's Election 2008 page, which listed an 800 number to call for voting problems, 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.

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
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 vs Obama on the web (2)
Engagement and Participation
Both candidate websites offer targeted information to people of different demographic groups.
Both websites offer RSS feeds and let users sign up to e-mail updates. Since the primary season,
Obama has added mobile phone text updates to his list of delivery options. Neither candidate offers podcasts of campaign information, something only a few candidates offered during the primary season.

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 media are 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 McCain Videos 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

Facebook

Facebook Statistics * 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 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

Flickr

MySpace Obama has more MySpace friends: nearly 6-to-1

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 nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phones among the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to join the program
Supporters on average received 5 to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the program was 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 in battleground states got at least 3 text messages

E-mail
Obama's opt-in e-mail database contains upwards of 13 million
addresses
Over the course of the campaign, aides sent more
than 7,000 different messages , many of them
targeted to specific donation levels (people who gave
less than $200, for example, or those who gave more
than $1,000).
In total, more than 1 billion e-mails landed in inboxes.
Four years ago, Sen. John F. Kerry had 3 million e-addresses on his list; former Vermont governor Howard Dean had 600,000 .)

iPhone Application

Brand Obama - Segmentation

DEBATES OBAMA vs McCAIN

Obama vs McCain – 1 st debate

Obama vs McCain – 2 nd debate

Obama vs McCain – 3 rd 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

Obama Mania: Quaker

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 Different http://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 SNL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jukzu_dMuPk

Paris Hilton For President Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad http://tinyurl.com/parishiltonadvert

Will.i.am - Yes We Can Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

Wassup 2008 Wassup 2008 http://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 Grey = one off activity Green = community building and ongoing eCRM (optional) Orange = ongoing activity (i.e. 4 to 6 reports per year) 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) 4. Full Year Conversational Tracking Program (track conversations, sentiment, insights on brands, products, services in target markets)

Campaigns And Program Product launch 1 Product launch 2 Product launch 3 Product launch 4 social media marketing campaign supports: product launch 1 social media marketing program supports: brand revitalization process social media marketing campaign supports: product launch 2 smm campaign supports: product launch 3 smm campaign supports: product launch 4 Time

The Impact Of SMM Programs

Change? If Obama Can…

You Can!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION LET’S DRINK, LISTEN AND SHARE CONNECT Paul van Veenendaal [email_address] CONNECT Igor Beuker igor@lacomunidad.nl

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