Some Thoughts on Barack Obama and new media

Barack Obama scored many firsts in becoming the 44th president of the United States. Those milestones have been well covered in many outlets.

What I want to talk about is how Obama became the first social media president. And, the failings of the pollsters - with one exception - to understand just how big the president-elect's victory was going to be.

Of course, it wasn't Barack Obama and his people who first realized the power of the Internet and social media. That first belongs to 2004 Democratic candidate Howard Dean. It was Dean's campaign who first used the Net to get their message out. Ultimately Dean failed in his attempt to win the nomination, but he showed the way for a more savvy campaign.

Then in 2006, the junior senator from Illinois decided he wanted to be president. At the time, no one gave him a chance. After all, wasn't this Hillary Clinton's time? 

Very early on though, the Obama campaign realized they had to do things differently. In February, 2007, Robin Hamman noted in his blog cybersoc. com that Obama's campaign "has pulled all the stops to embrace social software. From the main index, visitors can join the site and create a profile which they can use to network, find or plan events, or write a blog. Obama's site calls their suite of social networking features 'My Barack Obama.'"

That was simply brilliant. Why? Because Obama was reaching people who have never before been touched by conventional campaigns. 

How do most conventional campaigns reach people? There are four ways:

• Mailings. Here in Wisconsin, I think more trees died for the 2008 campaign than any campaign ever. Everyday when I came home, my doorstep was covered with literature and my mailbox was stuffed. What happened to all of that slickly produced information - it got recycled without being read.
• Word-of-mouth. Joe Smith tells neighbor Jill Jones about candidate Paul Politician. Jones gets excited. The problem with that is the country is so polarized right now, with a few exceptions, no one is going to cross over to help someone of the other party.
• Advertising. Yeah, like anyone believe a political ad anymore - if they ever did.
• Telephone calls. That was the biggest failure of all. Forget robocalls, as annoying as they are. Look at a simple fact: According to IT Facts, in 2007 14 percent of Americans had only a cell phone. That means approximately 44 million Americans did not have a land line. The number is probably even higher now. No land line means no listing in a directory of any kind, so there is no way for campaigns or pollsters to reach those people.
  

That last bullet is especially important. Most of those 44 million people are under 30-years-old. They voted for Obama in huge numbers. But no pollster ever found them. I suspect this is  why the McCain people were saying right before the election that things appeared to be trending their way. They never saw the change  coming because they had no way to see them.

The same thing happened to a lot of polls. They just didn't talk to the people who were under 30 because they had no way to reach them. The one web site that got it right was fivethirtyeight.com. Smart people there. Of course, they also run the Baseball Prospectus, where being right really counts.

However, the Obama people knew where those under 30-year-olds spend their time. They are on the web using applications such as Twitter and Facebook. That's where Obama's campaign went looking for voters and that's where they found them.

Of course, Obama's people did not turn their backs on conventional media. They knew they need to do that too to also reach supporters. In other words, they had a two pronged attack.

What's the lesson for those involved in marketing and public relations? Well, just substitute a client's name for Barack Obama. You want to reach your client's potential customers - make sure you don't leave social media out.

What do you think? Let me know.