Brand Rants

Obamicon yourself!

 HOW TO USE USER-GENERATED CONTENT TO PROMOTE YOUR BRAND

You know Obama's social media campaign is working when third parties start chipping in. Case in point Paste Magazine’s Obamicon UGC campaign site which was launched on January 7th.

An ingenious idea inspired by the iconic poster art of Shepard Fairey, the site allows visitors to upload photos then turn them into a Fairey-esque poster.

You can use one of the slogans from the election campaign or create your own.  And after you have done all this why stop there? Go to the Obamicon store and order your T-Shirt or coffee mug with your own (or someone else’s) Obamicon.

At the bottom of the Obamicon page is an invitation to learn more about Paste Magazine and an trial offer. I had never heard of Paste Magazine before Janury 7th. But after visiting the site I felt positive about their brand and checked them out.  If I was into entertainment news I would have surely taken them up on their trial offer.  I imagine many have.

 The campaign has helped the Paste brand but it is probably doing even more for brand Obama. Every day thousands of people visit the Paste site to interact with the Obama brand for 20 minutes or so in a very personal way. That is any brand managers dream. I bet this will be just the beginning of the brand Obama spinoffs and tributes. I hear that a new musical entitled "Obama On My Mind" will premiere March 21 at the Hen and Chickens Theatre in north London. (I read that in Paste).

Check out Obamacon.me. Its a lot of fun. A few of my favorites are below. You can see my complete list of Obamacon favorites HERE

Obama online: Now what?

OBAMA'S INTERNET PRESENCE WILL CONTINUE TO PLAY STRONG ROLE IN HIS PRESIDENCY

If there is anyone out there who still doubts the power of the internet to shape public opinion and forge alliances; who still questions the power of social media; who still wonders if the web tactics used to help Barak Obama win the election will further be used to help him govern; today is your answer. Because today president-elect Obama launched his next web site CHANGE.gov.

Wasting no time, Obama has launched his new transition site to replace his campaign site. The new site lacks a few of the Web 2.0 bells and whistles of his campaign site, but demonstrates his commitment to continue using social media as a way to not only communicate with his constituency, but to engage, align and activate them. 

“Change.gov provides resources to better understand the transition process and the decisions being made as part of it. It also offers an opportunity to be heard about the challenges our country faces and your ideas for tackling them.”  (source: change.gov)

As mentioned in my previous post Obama has a massive web presence. Throughout the campaign he made regular use of his mailing list of supporters that has been estimated to include as many as 7 million Americans. Now that the dust is settling, his presence on the web is being cited as one of the decisive  factors in his victory. Just as John Kennedy was credited as the first TV President I have a feeling we are going to see Barack Obama enter the White House as our first internet president.

Marketers would be wise to study the way he used social media in his bid for office. Even more exciting will be to seeing how he finds new uses of the internet to govern and lead America.

Brand Obama vs. Brand McCain: Special election-day rantathon

CANDIDATES USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO RE-ENERGIZE US POLITICS

Could this be the dawn of a new political era of citizen involvement in politics? I blogged earlier about the role of social media in this election, specifically the way that Obama has so masterfully used social media to both connect and rally voters. Now as campaign 2008 draws to a close, we can see that social media has played a significant and expanded role in deciding the presidency.

Nearly half of all Americans (46%) have used the internet, email, or cell-phone text messaging to get news about the presidential campaign, share their views, or mobilize others, according to a new survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

The role of social media seems to have increased two-fold since the last election. The proportion of Americans going online on a typical day at the tail end of the primary season to get political news or information more than doubled compared with a comparable point in the 2004 race - from 8% of all adults in Spring 2004 to 17% in Spring 2008.

Moreover, 28% of wired Americans say the internet makes them feel more personally connected to the campaign and 22% say that they would not be as involved in the campaign if not for the internet. This is a positive development which can perhaps account in some part for the greater turnouts expected today.

“22% say that they would not be as involved in the campaign if not for the internet”

Democracy is all about grassroots activation and the internet has been a catalyst in that respect. Online activism using social media has shown significant growth over the course of this election.

• 11% of Americans have contributed to the political conversation by forwarding or posting someone else's commentary about the race.
• 5% have posted their own original commentary or analysis.
• 6% have gone online to donate money to a candidate or campaign.
• Young voters are helping to define the online political debate; 12% of online 18-29 year old's have posted their own political commentary or writing to an online newsgroup, website or blog.

Younger voters and Democrats make more use of online media to consume and share political information, the study also found. It's important to note, however, that those “young voters” will be 4 years older next election followed by a new generation of voters who will be even more socially wired.

Among the findings from Pew’s telephone survey of internet users and non-users:

• 40% of all Americans have gotten news and information about this year’s campaign from the internet.
• 19% of Americans go online once a week or more to do something related to the campaign, and 6% go online daily to engage politically.
• 23% say once a week or more they receive emails that urge them to support a candidate or discuss the campaign.
• 10% use email once a week or more to contribute to the political debate.
• 4% have exchanged political views via text messaging.

So how did the candidates stack up in their use of Social Media? Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester Research, for providing these stats:

Internet Usage in the United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain. Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

While is seems clear that Obama outperformed McCain online, McCain must be given credit for participating in social media, albeit not as effectively as his opponent. In any case, the numbers would indicate that even in its early days, social media will have played a role in the outcome of this campaign.

For me the most exciting part is that social media seems to have enabled millions to play a more active role in the campaign. In a country where voter apathy has been a chronic problem for decades, social media seems to have engaged people in politics in a way I have never witnessed before. I think in many cases it reaffirmed people's belief that every voice counts, and that's good news for any democracy.

Redskin loss decides US election before polls open

STATISTICALLY OBAMA ALREADY WON THE ELECTION MONDAY NIGHT

When you work in marketing, you’re bombarded with statistics. I’ve long maintained that inside big companies statistics are often used as a political football (misrepresented in order for one party to get its way). One of the most common abuses is to declare cause and effect based on a sole statistic. Next time you see this happening remind your colleagues of the Redskin Rule.

Since 1940 when the American football team the Redskins moved to Washington DC, they have determined the presidency of the United States. It’s true - statistically.

“It's called the Redskins Rule, and it has an accuracy rate of either 94 or 100 percent depending on how it's applied. Every time the Redskins win their final home game before a presidential election, the candidate representing the incumbent party remains in office. Every time they lose, the incumbent party's candidate loses as well.” (Washington Post)

The only possible exceptions were the Bush Jr. victories, starting in 2000 when Bush won a controversial victory over Al Gore who actually won the popular vote. This seems to have thrown the system off-kilter, because later in 2004 the Redskins predicted Kerry as the winner. At that time the inventor of the rule, ESPN’s Steve Hirdt, amended the Redskins Rule to have it refer to the previous winner of the popular vote, not the electoral vote, thus restoring its 100% accuracy rate.

So forget watching the polls and pundits today. The election was already decided yesterday on Monday Night Football.

Barack Obama spotted in Burnout Paradise.

ARE WE WITNESSING THE BEST SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN EVER?

Politics aside, I have to hand it to brand Obama. It’s no secret that the Obama camp has vastly out gunned McCain with regard to web presence and use of social media — no so much in terms of spend, but in terms of smarts. From the start, his team has used social media so deftly its as if presidential campaigns had always been run this way. With every new development of the campaign I find myself muttering "I wish I had thought of that". Again, I found myself muttering it today.

According to AdAge “an Xbox Live gamer, Dragunov765, posted screenshots while playing EA's race game "Burnout Paradise." The screenshots feature a Barack Obama billboard that says early voting has begun and references voteforchange.com, a site paid for by Obama for America, which points voters to early voting locations in states where the practice is permitted.”

Its not that any of the individual tactics are unique, its is more the way they have been choreographed into a seamless campaign that is most impressive. Kudos to Barack and his agencies GMMB and SS&K for blazing new trails in social media marketing and showing us how elegantly such campaigns can be executed. I would like to see a deconstruction of how the Obama social media campaign was put together and coordinated with the traditional media. If anyone comes across one, please pass it on.