One of the overlooked aspects of Obama’s victory over McCain was superior marketing. Ad Age magazine selected him as marketer of the year, beating out heavyweight marketers like Nike and Apple. How did he do it? Through a combination outspending McCain, use of cutting edge online platforms such as social networking, consistent branding and messaging across new and old marketing channels and a strong grass roots political organization.
Early on, the Obama campaign hired Chris Hughes, one of the founders of Facebook, who “…created an Obama-specific [social] network that took advantage of… the movement-like quality of the Obama campaign.” In addition, Obama’s web site was much more appealing than his opponent’s. “By contrast McCain’s site looks like a 1988 Sears circular,” according to branding expert Brian Collins in Ad Age.
These types of innovative online strategies enabled the Obama campaign to collect record contributions from millions of smaller donors online, which allowed it to skip federal financing and vastly outspend McCain in their marketing efforts.
Another key to his success was maintaining a consistent message of change across cutting edge marketing platforms, including iPhones, YouTube, text messaging, a 24 hour Obama channel on Dish network and an infomercial that ran simultaneously during primetime on major networks, such as CBS, NBC, FOX and Univision.
Obama was also able to tap into a network of celebrities and utilize their talent in unique ways. For example, the entertainer Will.i.am put together a music video with celebrities reading an Obama speech that was one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. Obama also motivated young and African American voters to actually show up at the polls, something he did better than any politician in recent history.
Both Obama and McCain spent money on TV media outlets such as national cable, network TV, the Olympics, soap operas and NFL games, which for the most part had not been utilized in previous presidential campaigns. However, Obama was able to spend more on national and local broadcast TV outlets, in both key swing states and in states like Virginia and Colorado, which had traditionally been “red” states. This forced McCain to use valuable resources to defend those states.
The race was actually very close until the economic meltdown started in September. When McCain said “the fundamentals of the economy are strong” just as the financial system began to implode, that marked the point where Obama began pulling away from McCain in the polls. McCain tried experimenting with a series of negative ads to gain traction with voters during the worst financial crisis since the Depression, while Obama again stuck with a consistent message that McCain would bring us more of the same failed economic policies of George Bush.
In the end, Obama reshaped the political map in a way no Democrat has since the election of 1964 and his superior marketing played a large role in his convincing victory.
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