Obama's hi-tech marketing campaign

What were the firsts? What did Obama do differently? What were the results? Who were the masterminds and whiz-kids behind his primary and presidential campaign? I asked Ilana Bryant my colleague and StrawberryFrog global head of strategy, and who spent many nights working with the campaign from New York.

FIRSTS

What was Barack Obama the first one to do in terms of using the Internet for his campaign purposes?

First to use online social networking tools as a mainstream campaigning and canvassing tool - the founder of Facebook created a social networking website for him for this purpose. (MyBarackObama.com or MyBo as it became known in the campaign). First to allow individual campaigners to create their own personalized social networking 'page' like MySpace and Facebookand directly link up to their friends on the page. First to encourage and create easy personalized social network fundraising widgets to create easy fundraising campaigns withing people's social networks.

First to create the largest national virtual call center by creating web tools that turned anyone with a phone into a call center - everyone in the campaign was encouraged to log onto the call center database, make calls in their spare time to other voters. All of these were connected to the vast Obama database so that people could micro-target their calls at the click of a button (eg women could call women voters in swing states, spanish voters could call hispanic voters) and every call was logged into the giant Obama database at HQ which knew exactly how many callers were called and canvassed and exactly what their voting decisions stood. (This backfired a little towards the end in swing states because Obama zealots were sometimes calling voters 6 times in a week - but hey, they got to the polls)

First to use texting as a mainstream communication and canvassing tool - encouraged all his supporters to submit their cell numbers so they could be texted with the VP announcement, the objective to register as many cells as possible so that these voters could be texted with reminders to vote.

First to set up an online store and use e-tailing like Amazon. The Obama store was a giant fundraising + branding center for the campaign - selling everything from mugs, to posters to sweaters and every penny went to the campaign.

First to use Mapquest style technologies to identify all the Obama activities and HQ across the country so anyone on the web could quickly find an event

First to use TV as branded content - instead of buying 30 second airtime and making short hard sell TV ads, Obama bought an hour of programming on national television and filmed a TV documentary, creating a TV event which he advertised as TV programming in mainstream media

First to use You Tube as a mainstream media channel - delivered his speeches and important events directly to his user base and virally to the public via the user base - he didn't need the press to reach them

First to include internet reputation management as a key part of the campaign - he created an easy 'watchdog' email address where anyone in the campaign could send flag negative viral emails, blogs and websites for the legal and PR teams to respond to.

2/3 - This will take too long to respond to now, but I can follow up later

RESULTS

What tangible results -- apart from winning the election, of course -- can be directly attributed to Baracks Obama's use of the Internet in his campaign/s?

The fact that he was able to build a HUGE national on the ground grassroots canvassing effort from nothing which was able to battle and defeat the established Democratic machine and Hillary's formidable national democratic network. His internet efforts helped him to create and co-ordinate this.

The fact that he was able to raise more money than any presidential candidate in history and the majority of his whopping fundraising efforts came from internet efforts and from small time donors on the net (particularly in the primaries when he needed it).

The fact that he was able to get Gen Y to vote

The fact that he got tens of millions of hits of awareness from his online marketing and viral efforts without spending a penny for it in media money

Then two more direct questions:

WHO

Who do you consider the tech "mastermind/s" behind Barack Obama's Internet campaign?

Best person overall is Meaghan Burdick – she was the director of marketing – and did a lot of our on line fundraising as well as our store, marketing etc. She's now part of the Obama administration in Washington but I think you can still reach her at [email protected]

Another mastermind is John Del Cecato. John is the "D" in AKPD Media, David Axelrod's outfit

Failing that I'd reach out to Blue State Digital - these are the guys who started pioneering the internet marketing for Howard Dean's campaign and masterminded a lot of the digital media usage.

Also - Chris Hughes - the co-founder of Facebook who developed MyBarackObama.com. He's a real mastermind of the social networking tools. I don't know where he is now