Social Ch@nge

What can we learn from the unstoppable Obama PR machine that just rolled over the country? Never mind the politics: the campaign was the smartest publicity siege that’s been seen in a long time. It’s particularly worth paying attention to how Obama and his crew of merry techsters paid attention to the net. On a strategic level, they went straight to the cutting edge.

Go, Obama, Go!

First, the campaign found some great talent and put it to work. They hired Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, and gave him the freedom to put a real social media strategy in place. Instead of using the net as a way for Obama HQ to tell people what to do, Mr. Hughes gave each supporter the power to organise meetings, raise money, spread the word - without waiting for permission from the head office. This flies in the face of most conventional “stay on message” campaiging, but it worked spectacularly well.

Similarly, the campaign took a chance on releasing video and audio clips of Obama into the wild, and encouraging supporters to mash them up. The Obama twitter feed was hugely well subscribed. Over the summer, they launched a mobile phone campaign, encouraging people to text Obama to find out his pick for VP. Then there was the iphone app that let Obama supporters find eachother in the real world.

But my favourite example of the Obama team’s willingness to experiment just finished up. About six weeks ago, Obama started showing up in video games. Back in October, the Obama campaign purchased about $45,000 of in-game advertising. That is, when you fired up your XBox 360 and rocketed around the track in “Burnout: Paradise”, you would speed by a virtual billboard with Obama’s grinning face on it. Advertising in video games isn’t new. But in the last year it’s been taken to a different level. Companies such as Electronic Arts and Massive Incorporated coordinate advertising placement in video games: essentially virtual billboard content that appears in the background. As players download updates and new content for their favourite games, the advertising in the background also changes.

Virtual billboard advertising isn’t what made the difference in this election. But I bet it grabbed a chunk of the adult male 18-35 demographic - a notoriously difficult group to reach. What does this have to do with you, besides being great party trivia? In-game advertising is going to be big. If OBama can make a statement / raise funds through video games, then so can you. Obama has helped to reshape the landscape of campaigning, both real and virtual.

UPDATE: Seth Godin has written a terrific piece on marketing lessons from the election campaign. It’s long, but worth reading all the way through. And maybe printing and posting next to your monitor - it’s good.

UPDATE 2:
Wired magazine has clearly been reading our blog, and followed our lead in reporting this obscure “Obama” thing. Good article here.