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
Barack Obama The New School Marketer

advertising never
started a
movement
How can I become one of them?
 Interact and Listen? Yes I can!

Marketer

“The Trialogue”

Consumers
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
Brand Interaction
Brand Interaction
Branding
Brand Interaction
Brand Interaction
Brand Interaction
Why Do We Feel Connected To Obama
The Decision Makers
The Target Audience
Grupo LaComunidad On A Mission
About Grupo LaComunidad

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

Brand Interaction Strategies

Social
Communities
Rating Sign
Contest
Video up

Seeding Micro Site / iHub Tune-in

Feeding
Opt-in
Post

View Webi Custom

Video Sodes Video

Niche Community connected

to campaign liking
Legend
Free viral
dynamics
Weblog Forum Quiz Post registration
viral dinamics

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

new future brand offerings

Viral Video Tracking
 Social Media Marketing Programs

Influencer Brand Teams Community

Conversational Identification & Building &
& Research & Fan Product Peer
Buzz Tracking Outreach Programs Groups

Strategic Social Media Natural Seeding & Paid Seeding & Social Social Channels
Planning & Buying Social Media Media Advertising &
Optimization Viral Widgets
Triple Play Proposition

YES

SOCIAL REALLY
VIRAL NATURAL
MEDIA VIRAL? REPORT
VIDEO PLANNING SEEDING

NO

PAID
SEEDING
Road To Democratic Nomination
The Republican Candidates

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 Democratic Candidates

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

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
Democratic Polls: Obama vs Clinton
Democratic & Republican Candidates & Web 2.0

Blogs on Candidate Web sites Presidential Candidates on

MySpace
June 2007

Grassroots activity by Candidate

Comparing Candidates: Engagement and Participation

Number of Opportunities to Engage and Participate on Web sites
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 TV, radio, print (including candidate’s TV, radio, print (including candidate’s
channels books), direct mail books), direct mail

Online marketing E-mail, display, organic and paid E-mail, display, organic and paid
channels search, in-game advertising, mobile, search, social media
social media

Budget $150 million in Sept 2008 alone $ 84 million (public funds)

Marketing strategies Energize young voters; spread Energize the right wing; attack
optimism and hope; emphasize Obama’s weaknesses; emphasize
McCain’s similarities to Bush 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 – Dashboard

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 – 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
Innovations – Widgets

Geared toward getting out the vote

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
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
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 Contribute to campaign via Find events; host events

YouTube page Google Checkout; link to
YouTube page on
barackobama.com
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

Official Obama McCain

Members/Supporters 5,066,446* 583.518*

in largest group

Number of Wall posts 572,383 none

Special features of Videos, find out none

profile page** where to vote,
register to vote

* 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
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
Brand Obama - Segmentation
DEBATES OBAMA vs McCAIN
Obama vs McCain – 1st debate
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
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

(source: OpenSecrets.org)

Average Spent per Vote

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

(source: Wikipedia)
Fundraising John McCain

(source: OpenSecrets.org)

Average Spent per Vote

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

(source: Wikipedia)
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
What can Brands learn from Obama?

• 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”)

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)

2. Outreach to
Social Influencers
1. Identification of Social (invite them to participate in online
Influencers community)

(identify right people

on the right topics) 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)

Grey = one off activity

Green = community building and ongoing eCRM (optional)
Orange= ongoing activity (i.e. 4 to 6 reports per year)
Campaigns And Program

Product launch 1 Product launch 2 Product launch 3 Product launch 4

smm campaign supports:

product launch 4
smm campaign supports: product
launch 3
social media marketing campaign supports:
product launch 2
social media marketing campaign supports:
product launch 1

social media marketing program supports: brand

revitalization process
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 paul@socialmedia8.com

CONNECT Igor Beuker igor@lacomunidad.nl