Lessons Learned From the Obama Campaign
Work begins today for the newly elected 44th president of the United States. But it was his campaign's work with leveraging social media that helped land him in the Oval Office.
By combining social media, analytics, and targeted messaging, Obama's campaign set an example of how business strategists need to think about how their companies should change the way they communicate and interact with customers. Innovative businesses can learn from the campaign and understand how to stay relevant.
The campaign's Houdini database, for example, identified, tracked and monitored voters all the way to the polls and played a key role in Obama's win. Through predictive analytics which segmented the data in granular details, Obama's team determined the best channel and communication for all voters.
But it was the campaign's use of these channels and social media that played a significant role in the campaign. With 13 million constituents on the email list, five million friends on social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace, 8.5 million monthly visitors to www.mybarakobama.com, and more than 400,000 user-generated Obama-related videos on YouTube, the campaign turned supporters into advocates by giving them myriad choices in which to participate.
By leveraging these platforms and the super users of each of these platforms, Obama's team ran the most successful presidential campaign in history. By continuously engaging online influencers, Obama turned what had been a traditional process into a revolutionary strategy.
Certainly this is a lesson from which businesses can learn and grow.
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You're right Graham. Those are definitely the real lessons learned. But customer engagement and targeted marketing layered on top of those tenets surely helped to build the brand and power the Groundswell.
Hi Mila
I agree that Obama's campaign was a step forward in political marketing, but I doubt very much if all the lessons learned can be simpleytranslated as-is to business.
These are the real lessons of Obama's amazing campaign, not the marketing tactics he used. The tactics only worked because of of these three things, not independent of them.
So next time you think you can simply translate the lessons from Obama's campaign to your 'vin ordinaire' product, think again.
Graham Hill
Customer-driven Innovator
Must say a marvelous post which states it all....Obama has indeed revolutionized the concept of Personal Branding through the internet. I just read an article that talks about how he went about using the most widely used media - the Internet, to "market" himself in the most innovative manner. I guess the use of the social sites was the best of all as he could reach out to most of his target audiences without physically being present. Have a look at the article that I was talking about: http://www.socialpeel.com/2009/01/21/3-mindblowing-online-tactics-that-took-obama-to-the-white-house/
This was a terrific post - and Mila is right in saying that businesses can learn from the stratgies employed by the campaign. Another lesson that is emerging is the manner in which the Obama administration is using their database and analytics capabilities now. The Obama team is continuing to engage their supporters to push forward the legislative agenda - encouraging folks to contact their Congressman in support of Obama programs. The message for businesses is that customer data never stops being a hugely valuable asset. You need to find more and more innovative ways to use it.