SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY: HOW BARACK OBAMA CREATED A BRAND IN THE 2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

 This is a  continuation from the previous post. Social Media can create a strong effective brand for a company, but to do this a strategy is needed. What is that strategy?  President Obama's campaign of 2008 is a great case study in what that strategy should be and how to put it together.  Social Media is not snake oil.  It is only a tool, but it is an incredible tool. Social Media brings together enormous amounts of people to one spot---the scale of social media is incredible.  For social media to work, it  must be integrated with traditional marketing strategy.  The first thing to do in a social media branding campaign is to have a legitimate product---something there has to be there. That is given.  How do you create a brand for an unknown product? This is why the Obama campaign is a great case study. He had no name recognition---the American public did not know him. Barack tapped social media to brand himself.  If we study how he did it, it will give us insights in how marketers should create brands with this new medium.

Since my last blog I found two new sources which may shed more light on just Barack created a brand in 2008. In a column on 11/ 10/08, New York Times columnist David Carr tells us that Barack Obama observed two things about social media that are needed in creating a brand.  Social Media allows a candidate and a marketer tremendous communication, and database capabilities. These things were present in old media, but not on the scale that new media affords a brand, and not at the speed. Barack understood that social media could create for him a brand----overnight.  To do this, Barack also realized that a strategy had to be created.

Barack realized that to create a brand, he must create a clear objective, he had to have a goal from that objective, and the objective should give his team a plan of action.  As General Marshall said before the D-Day Invasion, generals create objectives, lieutenants make plans. Barack realized that his social media strategy had to begin with the selection of an OBJECTIVE.  Barack realized that social media can take you in many directions, a lot directions at once.  This is why it must be managed.  For social media to work there must be adult supervision.  This is important for a marketer to realize when they create social media campaigns.  YOU HAVE TO START OUT WITH A CLEAR OBJECTIVE for your campaign.

My next source that explains how to create a brand using social media is Blogging (all -in-one) for Dummies by Susan Gunelius.  Barack decided that his objective in his social media would be to create a brand---he had to stick out from the other candidates, and he had to get people to know him and be comfortable with him in a short amount of time. The objective allowed he and his staff to define their goals. The goals that his team decided upon, would be the same that a marketers would have in introducing a new product through social media:

• To build brand awareness
• To network with supporters, and in the case of a product, to network with customers
• To build relationships with voters and customers
• To get votes (to get people to buy the product that we're marketing)
• To communicate messages to our supporters and customers
• To manage the reputation of the candidate (and product), by debunking rumors and nudging conversations in the desired direction of our product-candidate
• To humanize and personalize ourselves in consumer's eyes rather than as an untouchable entity---to become a "friend"  Barack realized that people believe thier friends and not advertising. People believed Barack  in his campaign because he was their "friend". 

What this strategy did for Barack is the goal of a modern marketer in creating a brand through social media. The power of a relationship brand comes from creating branded experiences that allow consumers to self-select how they want to connect with the brand.  Brands are created when friends have conversations. In the case of Barack, his "friendship" with the American electorate allowed the electorate to self-select how they wanted to connect with the Obama brand.  This is analogous to how a marketer should create a modern brand using social media