Democratic Convention Opens Tonight!
Win or lose come November, Sen. Barack Obama has forever changed America’s political landscape Campaigning will never be the same as the rules are being rewritten daily. Courting notoriously apathetic youth voters is no easy task but the Democratic nominee strategically employed social networking (Facebook, Twitter, MyBo), online videos (YouTube), email campaigns and text messaging (GOBAMA!!! LOL) to create hype and perpetuate “cool.” These tactics now being ramped up even more to best the surprisingly potent Sen. John McCain.
New-age tools have also been the backbone to his immensely successful grassroots fundraising drive. Altering a page from Karl Rove’s playbook, Obama’s team has assembled two disparate masses: the party faithful and the black vote. One hundred dollars at a time, his new communications tactics appear to be weaving a less corporate, more cohesive political web.
While exciting, this revolution also poses some serious questions for PR practitioners. Is this new way actually going to prove successful at the ballot boxes? How much of the youth vote will actually live up to its promise and turn out. Political scientists will be analyzing this for decades to come. Is the voting public, particularly the older demographic, ready for the shift? Is it too soon for a Web 2.0 election platform? November’s election will provide many of these answers, but the following analogy may prove insightful for now.
Imagine a luxury car manufacturer believing that his company must be relevant and launching a sleek new Web 2.0 campaign, replete with various social networking applications. As always, it is necessary to identify the underlying audience for the company: buyers and potential buyers. In reality, this group is far removed from early-adopting, bandwagon-riding young people who would be most likely to experience the campaign. It is important to keep this contrast in mind when looking at the utility of Obama’s strategies…
This parallel proves that no matter one’s desire to change, the fundamental marketing realities still remain integral to success. Obama thus needs his Democratic base, lobby support, older swing voters, veterans, single mothers and older women, precisely and other groups (along with Latinos) on the Web 2.0 periphery. Premising a campaign on the ‘new way’ may very well disenfranchise the population needed for its success.
This is a communications paradox indeed.
Politics, like some areas of business, is still a staunchly entrenched environment. Web 2.0 should therefore augment a solid campaign, bringing into the fold otherwise inaccessible groups. Losing sight of who the actual voters are might see a great deal of creativity go to naught.
Given John McCain’s technological ineptitude, we can only hope not.
Tags: Blogs, Obama, PR, Web 2.0
November 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 am
Such a great post on such a relevant topic. Obama’s use of Web 2.0 saw the number of youth voters who cast their ballot on November 4th increase by 2.2 million from 2004. Even I couldn’t help but be drawn in by Obama’s social marketing tactics. It seemed like everywhere you looked, there he was… the star of a new YouTube video, or the subject of a popular Facebook group. Millions of people now follow him on Twitter, so even after he secured the presidency, his marketing team is still using these tools to reach out to supporters.
Raising a groundbreaking $750 million dollars, Obama’s campaign used social media as one way of reaching out to voters. Like you said, while millions of people do utilize these online communication forums regularly, many do not. As such, social media can only be used to augment, in this case, an election campaign. It obviously worked because Senator McCain is certainly not sitting in the Oval Office.
It will certainly be interesting to see what role Web 2.0 plays in future election campaigns. The bottom line is that social media is just one more way to communicate with voters. Obama certainly used it to his advantage. GOBAMA!!!