CASE STUDY OF EFFECTIVENESS - THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN

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

“The Trialogue”
Consumers
Marketer
Interact and Listen? Yes I can!

powered by the web,
not advertised on it.

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

Why Do We Feel Connected To Obama

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

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

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

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!

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 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

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.

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.)

Obama vs McCain – 1st
debate

Obama vs McCain – 2nd
debate

Obama vs McCain – 3rd
debate

YouTube Weekly Address by President-Elect
Also available on AOL, Yahoo, and MSN.

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

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

• 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

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 activity
Green = 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)

Campaigns And Program
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
Product launch 1 Product launch 2 Product launch 3 Product launch 4

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
LET’S DRINK, LISTEN AND SHARE
CONNECT Paul van Veenendaal paul@socialmedia8.com
CONNECT Igor Beuker igor@lacomunidad.nl

CASE STUDY OF EFFECTIVENESS - THE BARACK OBAMA CAMPAIGN

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