Ian Leslie, the man behind the influential political Marbury blog, and author of To Be President, Quest For The Whitehouse 2008, spoke at the IPA Chairman’s reception on Monday night. He drew some interesting conclusions about what brand marketers could learn from the Obama campaign.
A couple of strands really caught my imagination.
Firstly that Obama became more than a candidate, he was a cause. He and his team made their play for the presidency on the back of the insight that this wasn’t just another 4 yearly, mechanical replacement of the occupier of the Whitehouse. Satisfaction levels with the political process and America’s standing in the world were at alarming low points. The American electorate was ready for major change. They saw what the others didn’t. The data added weight to a strong gut feel for the mood of the nation. And this insight translated into a compelling “brand” vision.
Secondly that the celebrated and ground-breaking online marketing campaign was not an end in its own right. It was a means to the end of getting people to do useful stuff in “the real world”. Ian described in fascinating detail the sophisticated techniques used to harness the latent potential of the 13 million strong database that they created and turn it into millions of individual actions.
This perhaps was the biggest achievement of the Obama campaign. To convince a highly cynical, disillusioned electorate that collectively and individually they could be a force for change.
Clearly Obama was also an exceptional candidate in many ways. The piece of film embedded below shows the genius of the man as he develops the theme of how a single voice can make a big difference. Few people, if any, in the audience had seen this before and it is intensely moving even allowing for the OTT tendencies of our cousins across the water. It’s 8 minutes long but well worth the time. The one voice theme starts about 2 minutes in.
Tags: IanLeslie, linkedin, marbury, Obama, socialmedia, YouTube