Today marks the end of what might well be the e-campaign of the decade: Barack Obama's race to the White House. In part I we took a look at fundraising, the Barack Obama website and data mining. In this part we'll focus on the use of social networks and mobile.
Social networks
The Obama team knew they needed their own social network. No existing network could ever give them the tools and freedom they needed to mobilize the masses. But that doesn't mean they didn't use the existing networks. Far from it. Those networks became the tentacles with which the campaign penetrated into all different parts of the population. The Obama team created profile pages on Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. But also on 'niche-networks' like Glee (gay community) and MiGente (latino community).
The content on each of these pages was precisely targeted: Obama's Glee.com profile included a post about national Coming Out Day, while his MyGente page touted the endorsement of his energy plan by former U.S. Secretary of Energy Federico Pena. In most cases, the campaign team would also contact the publishers to ensure no inappropriate ads would be shown.
The Obama team also gratefully embraced the YouTube platform to (re-)broadcast its messages. An equal amount of TV viewing hours would have cost them more than $46.000.000. And what's more: people where not forced to watch these, they chose to watch them.
Power to the masses
But social media is not all about what you say, it's mainly about what everyone else says. And the people have spoken. A lot. Online video (read: YouTube) shifted the candidates' fortunes more than once. And both parties got their share of the good and the bad.
The conversation did however not only take place on YouTube. Friends and enemies built Facebook pages, MySpace profiles, blogged and shared everything they found with the world. As a result, the candidates didn't only have to answer to their opponents, but had to be able to quickly pick in on messages gaining momentum online.
The third man
Next to the candidates and the public, there was a third party: the technology providers. They used the elections as a traffic builder to their websites by providing tools and content. Google showed what the candidates were reading and covered the news on the campaigns (as did Yahoo! and a zillion other websites), the candidates got tailored pages on most of the community platforms (allowing them e.g. to collect money), Facebook tested out its Facebook Connect platform to link MyBO users with their Facebook friends, ....
Micro-blogging service Twitter also jumped in the race by a.o. powering the Twitter Vote Report tool which can be used by anyone to report problems while voting (using Twitter, SMS, an iPhone application or a normal call).
Mobilizing the campaign
The Obama team excelled in the use of mobile as a real communication channel. There is the
Obama mobile website where everyone can download wallpapers and ringtones, can read the latest news and watch the 'Share the Hope' viral animation, can view videos, answer polls and opt-in for SMS alerts.
These SMS alerts could be the promotion of a new speech, the announcement of an important TV appearance or a major rally, if he's going to be campaigning nearby or even who his VP would be. Numbers were not only collected by offering content however. So did the team for instance also use SMS polls at the official nominee acceptance party where trivia were scrolling on a big screen asking for people's feedback ("How large would Senator Obama's tax credit for college students be? Text E4 to 62262 for $1000..."). Off course the whole texting program had a far larger purpose beyond giving the supporters an easy way to hook into the campaign: it gave the Obama team a database of cell numbers that could be used for last-minute messages on election day (according to the Wall Street Journal Obama netted 3 million cell phone numbers out of the VP announcement).
Of course all this information was also fed to the data mining machine. On the night of the Iowa caucuses for instance, Obama's team blasted thousands of text messages to the supporters. Younger voters were offered rides and precinct captains got turnout projections in real time.
McCain had no mobile website. Also, David All, a 29-year-old Republican strategist, last month lamented that the McCain team had never sent him a text message.
In the third and final part of this post, we'll take a look at email marketing and advertising.
> to part III
