At the start of this article I wish to state this misnomer. President Obama is really a lightning rod. Some individuals love him and some people hate him, but even his biggest detractors need certainly to admit that his social networking strategy was a classic. Marketers should study this campaign because it is really a tutorial how modern products must certanly be branded. I am hoping that the reader will give attention to the marketing and not the politics.
Barack Obama is really a classic case in how a brand may be created in a New Media Age. To win the American presidency a candidate must have a great deal of money and a great deal of name recognition—a brand. If a candidate does not have a brandname, if voters don’t know who you’re, you’re not likely to be elected. If a marketer cannot distinguish their product on the market place, that product will not be bought. This is why modern marketers should study the Obama campaign. Prior to the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama had no money and was unknown.
In comparison, Hillary Clinton was a well-known senator from a large state. During 2006-2007, it had been a foregone conclusion that Hilary would win the Democratic nomination She and her husband had created a vast political network to draw from, and she plenty of money—Youtube Reseller Panel she had a powerful brand. Barack had no brand; even yet in his own household. When Barack broached a potential candidacy to Michelle, her response was, “This is the craziest thing you ever said to me. Nobody will beat Hilary this year…Get over it, kid” ;.Barack and his team did have knowledge of social networking and how exactly to put it to use in a campaign. This knowledge was his biggest asset.
The campaign of 2008 is analogous to the present day market place. In times past, it had been quite difficult, and too costly to make a new service and brand it. This is why social networking is this kind of important element in modern marketing. A cultural media campaign allows a new service to be created and branded on the market place quickly, at hardly any cost. The current market place is best explained by author Shiv Singh. There is a change on the market place. No more are consumers enthusiastic about engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers don’t trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a recent survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated which they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of their friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is the way to create brands. That is exactly why the utilization of social networking is really critical to branding. Through social networking, friends meet, conversations happen, and brands are created.
Which means if a product will be selected, the brand must become a “friend” to its consumer. It’s this that the Obama Campaign did and the way in which he did this will be studied by marketers because it is really a case study in how to generate modern brands using social media. By combining social networking that produces micro-targeting, force multipliers are manufactured that are needed to generate world-class brands.
The data of the present day market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly develop a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. At this point, I wish to get rid of one that I produced in a prior article. Recently, I wrote a write-up entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing while the Center of Their Marketing” ;.In this article, I identified David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager as an authentic person in the Facebook management team. This is an error. The Obama staff member that I was thinking about was Chris Hughes, who served while the Obama Campaign Director of Online Organizing. Mr. Hughes had a great influence on the campaign social networking strategy.
The Obama campaign was not the initial campaign to use social media. They certainly were the first to ever co-ordinate social networking with an entire campaign. They certainly were the first to ever organize the utilization of social media. For social networking to work, it needs to be organized. John McCain and Howard Dean used the medium before Obama, but Obama and his staff surely could integrate and organize social networking into every area of the campaign in a smooth way. Due to this Barak surely could create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, however the enthusiasm his sight created was smart enthusiasm. He used social networking sights in a way that targeted supporters and voters. This targeting allowed him to comprehend the important metrics he needed to understand to be able to win his campaign. He surely could target and give attention to his true supporters.
The potency of Obama’s social networking branding approach is that it was constructed to produce and develop “friendships” ;.That is very important to marketers to realize. Once you meet someone there’s a veil between you and that person. As you’re able to know each other better, the veil comes down. As your relationship develops, trust develops, and deeper conversations begin. These conversations bring about deeper relationships on a human level. On a marketing level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew that it had to interact people, but that engagement needed to be based on trust. The Obama engaged people in what it called “the ladder” ;.You engage one step at the same time, build the connection deeper, and each step is really a higher degree of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are based on the level of comfort of the patient in relation to the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The first touch point will be Personal. This is the point where a marketer and customer first enter into contact and “friend” each other on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it had been at this stage when people are getting to know one another. An individual signs ups for messages and emails. Another touch point is Social. It’s this touch point that individuals start making posts or comments to a friend’s profile about your product. Only at that touch point, a buddy explains for their friend why a product is an excellent thing. In the Obama campaign, these profiles integrated making use of their web site. At the Website, a supporter may create an account. In the marketing area, an organization would integrate with a Facebook or Twitter. At this point, an individual may feel comfortable enough with a brandname to join a “group” or produce a “group” ;.
In the Obama campaign, another stage should be to become an Advocate. To operate a vehicle interest, pictures may be posted, blogs written, or even a video may be created and posted to You Tube, for instance. You can find analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer wanting to converse about the item with a “friend” (a customer) and vice versa. It’s in the advocate stage a supporter might have now feel committed enough to Obama to host an event, ask friends to donate money, or to register to vote. In the Advocate stage, in a marketing situation, a person might speak with a buddy and recommend a product, making a brand.
Another stage is the Empowering stage. This stage is for serious supporters of Obama. Here a supporter gets heavily involved. The campaign tracked volunteers and could target its most reliable supporters.
These committed people could create social and fundraising groups on MyBO Web site. The Obama campaign could now organize their particular networks of supporters that gave supporters usage of the Obama database, that they might pull telephone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this article, a marketer has to produce an analogy using what the Obama campaign did from what each marketer can do with their particular brand to improve engagement making use of their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts for their customers if they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer may be flexible in their particular situation to extend their brand.
Exactly why social networking platforms are so popular is that friends are in possession of the methods to share video, blogs, pictures, and posts making use of their friends. This can be a god-send for marketers as they fight to generate and expand their brand. Ford Motor Company just did this in a fruitful campaign to introduce their new car, the Fiesta. Ford called this the Fiesta Project. In the exact same way that Ford extended brand awareness for the Fiesta, the Obama campaign provided source material for user-generated content. Here’s where scale makes play. Exactly why Ford’s and Obama’s campaign was so effective was because they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to generate the brand. This is why the planning stage is really important in making a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has an idea before the first shot is fired” ;.An advertising campaign is chaotic. Things happen. A marketer needs to be flexible. The reason why Ford’s and Obama ‘s social networking campaign was so successful was because there clearly was planning and enough scale was created to engage “friends” ;.
In the event of the Obama campaign, its site, MyBO contained videos, speeches, photos and how-to guides that gave people the raw materials they needed to generate their particular compelling content to get Obama. In exchange, supporters created significantly more than 400,000 pro-Obama videos and posted them to YouTube. Additionally they wrote significantly more than 400,000 blog posts on the MyBO Web site. A modern marketer has to interact their customers to generate compelling content for the organization that produces brand awareness. This is why social networking is important in creating modern brands. A company will have a hard time in carrying this out, left for their own devices and moreover, finances. In the event of Ford, Ford did not spend anything on their Fiesta launch. Fiesta had a great presence on social networking sights, however the presence was developed by private individuals. Once the Fiesta was launched, 38% of the mark market was aware of the car.