Le Marketing de Barack Obama

Case Study : Barack Obama

What innovations drove the success of Obama’s campaign ?

The election of Barack Obama is obviously not a coincidence. Obama owes his election to his innovative and efficient campaign strategy.

• Firstly, Barack changed his way of thinking by refusing to follow in the example of his competitors. Clinton based herself on ‘experience’ before changing her focal point towards ‘change’ and then ‘solutions for america’, voters blamed her for following in the path of other senators and for not finding her own two feet during her campaign. McCain also followed on ‘experience’ but then decided to put his ‘country first’ idea forward to regroup voters but had little effect due its patriotic nature. Obama remained consistent and unwavering on his perception of ‘change’ which solidified his image of reassurance in the eyes of american voters. The success of the Obama branding campaign can be attributed to its consistency, and the appropriation: voters become actors of change.

• Furthermore, his segmentation process and fundamentals, differed from the norm. Rather than targeting a single base like we usually have in politics, Obama grouped a combination of variables, creating hybrid segmentation, focusing on young and minority voters, blacks, latinos and asians. Targeting demographic and psychographic groups was essential because these would favor a president who could deliver forward and fresh thinking into the country. Obama's campaign selected an important target market, and for recruitment, the objectives are simple. "Go where the people are » and reach them via the media they prefer (social media and mobile).

• Lastly, his way of targeting important demographic and psychographic segments was brilliantly exploited by using a mix of traditional media and modern technologies such as blogging with the use of his own social networking website MyBO and merging the world of politics and public opinion through the use of Twitter, Facebook and such. This allowed for a sense of closeness and intimacy within support groups, be it online or offline, and with Barack himself. His approach to the online world, had a huge impact on real-world movement, mobilizing thousands of support groups all supporting different hundreds of thousands of organized events. Obama's use of e-marketing is a great example for businesses and demonstrates the internet's changing landscape.

What innovates today do you foresee or can consult for politicians and the next campaign ?

• Pre-announcing your campaign

• Announcing the prospect of campaigning before an electoral period as such to gain an upper-hand against competitors, coming up with tactics as such to gain strategic advantage.

• Conduct a digital campaign

• The challenges of digital campaign are the same as for the country as a whole. Ie convince voters, fundraising and finally change his mind to some voters. This allow a sense of closeness and intimacy within support groups. This outreach campaign is also proposed to encourage young to participate politically.

• Collaborating with voters

• Interactive meeting : Electoral candidates answer directly to questions asked online by users.

• Letting them interact with campaigns, encouraging voters to pick your location, date and time for electoral rallies and speeches in order to bring them closer, creating transparency.

• Individual complex profiling (Microtargeting)

• Personalization and customization : Gather as much information as possible in order to obtain individual characteristic information on voters, which is useful for door-to-door post, email and sms.

3 citations : What is innovation ?

• « In politics, innovation always lead to betrayal. » Jean Orieux,  french novelist

• « Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. » Steve Jobs

• « Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things. » Theodore Levitt, American economist and  a Marketing professor at Harvard

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