Obama's YOUTUBE domination in 08

Among all the mediums that the Obama campaign seemed to dominate, YOUTUBE is one of the newer media outlets that the Obama campaign successfully capitalized on. This election has made a huge impact on the political world by using interactive Web 2.0 tools which changed the way politicians organize supporters, advertise to voters, defend against attacks and communicate with constituents (Miller, 1). YOUTUBE was a major advertising tool for Obama. The Obama videos offered on YOUTUBE were more effective than TV ads because viewers who watched the YOUTUBE ads were doing so by choice, not because their television program was interrupted by a commercial. At the conclusion of the Obama campaign, an estimated 14.5 million hours of "Obama youtube" had been watched. This amount of hours equates to a whopping $47 million of broadcast TV. Obama's 37 minute "Race Speech," has been viewed over 6.7 million times (Miller, 2).
Youtube is just another example of the Obama campaigns effort to target generation y. Between all the Youtubes, facebooking, tweeting, texting, and emailing, election 08 had it sites set on generation y to lock in votes from the biggest states. Clearly this tactic worked since Obama, who happened to be the candidate dominating the social media, leading up to and during the elction, successfully one the votes of most major states, Florida and California for example.

Miller, C. C. (n.d.). How Obama’s Internet Campaign Changed Politics - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com. Retrieved October 30, 2009, from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/

Campaign 08 texting and internet

According to Barko Germany, deputy director at George Washington University's Institute for Politics" Texting is not as cheap as email and it's not as easy to use as email...but the upside of this is if you really want to motivate your hard-core supporters, then you're using a tool that's with them all the time. The 2008 election capitalized on several forms of viral marketing, one of the newest being text messaging. Candidates like Hilary Clinton, John Mccain, and Obama asked their supporters to register for text-based campaign updates (Lennartz). One of the greatest attractions about texts and emails is the personal connection to the candidate that the supporter might feel from a personalized email or text.

With all the junk out there on the internet, info is easily lost and looked over when there is nothing eye catching about it. When texts and emails are personally addressed to an individual it gives them a feeling that their support and essentially their vote, truly counts. Email and texts for marketing in the 2008 campaign are known as "ground breaking" tactics. Chris Lennartz, Vice President of Product Marketing reports, "Working Assets found that text message reminders to new voters increased an individual’s likelihood of voting by close to 5 percentage points. This is an increase similar to ‘quality phone call’ reminders. but at a fraction of the cost." Clearly utilizing texting and email marketing is one of the ways Obama won the 2008 election.

Lennartz, C. (2008, November 3). Mobile's Big Moment -- Election 2008. Market Wire, 1.

Success in 2008 elections with Social Network Marketing

Now that the presidential election is all said and done, it is no surprise Obama was elected. Election 2008, also known as “election 2.0” is notorious for its use of social networking sites says CNN. Sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Linkedln were used to inform voters of candidate platforms and encourage individuals to use their right to vote. Statistics show that Obama has significantly more followers than McCain on different social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter. With more and more people of all ages joining the digital world of communication every day, it is no wonder Obama may have reached more people than MCcain. According to Owyang at Marketing VOX,” Obama showed total dominance in social media for one of two reasons; it may be because the Obama campaign moved more quickly to social networking and social media; or because the internet social networking tendencies were more prevalent in Obama’s voter demographics.
Whatever the reason for Obama winning is, his capitalization on internet community marketing was definitely a success. I am a registered republican since the 2008 election and that is only because I kept seeing Obama’s “Register Now” advertisements pop up on my Facebook page. From here on out, campaigning for any elections will definitely benefit from social network marketing, Obama has clearly proved that with his success.


Resources:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/12/technology/candidates_socialnets/index.htm

http://www.paulallen.net/social_media_and_elections/

http://www.marketingvox.com/election-2008-the-social-networking-roundup-041821/