The Obama & Clinton Campaigns Provide Great Learning for Social Marketing
I am continuing to be intrigued by the Democratic political campaigns which provide multiple opportunities for learning about social marketing. I believe Obama and Clinton are using social media very effectively to build communities and emotional connections.
In my opinion, they are doing the best jobs. For the video podcast I host called Marketing Voices, I recently interviewed Pete Blackshaw EVP of Nielsen Online, who just completed an analysis of the campaigns and how they use social media. He gave me good insight on what corporate marketers need to do to make their brands better.
One of the more interesting thoughts he had involves reaching out in numerous languages. That seems like a no brainer but so many times i believe marketers forget to translate their messages.
Just as a promo point, Peter Blackshaw also is releasing his new book in July 2008 called Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends; Angry Customers Tell Three Thousand. I am sure it will be a good read.
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Comments
You're right! Social Media Marketing is shown more through this campaign than ever! It's quite interesting to see both candidates reach out to younger voters via YouTube channels and more. It's pretty amazing the effect the social mediums can have on an entire campaign -- Obama truly was unknown until the online buzz really exploded about him.
You bring up a good point. Social marketing on and off line provides good opportunity for learning how to influence opinion and behavioral change through communities, while providing a branding platform. Clinton and Obama are great examples of how they are harnessing social media to augment their message and increase velocity and share of voice. I would also recommend looking at the more traditional practices of social marketing in the non-for profit world and health marketing. Their campaigns are based on community engagement, dialogue, and co-creation for message dissemination.
Also, I agree with Peter Blackshaw comment that companies should look at reaching audiences using different languages. To this I will recommend to look at the content and context of the message as opposed to doing a mere language translation from English to X language. We have seeing translation mistakes many times on traditional media, that has backfire for the brand and are examples of how marketers need to be careful with the message that they are sending. With the power of social media, the effects of a wrong word, context or content of a message will be magnified by 100 in a few hours if not minutes.
Obama was truly unknown until the online buzz went wild. His fundraising strategies online are also impressive.
Javier, how true about the poor effects of a wrong word being used when translating. As a marketer for a couple of decades, I have seen that happen quite a few times and it can be really tough to work it once the situation is set. I always try to get my clients to do the translation in context and not just verbatim.
Thank you for doing the interview. In one short podcast there are a lot of gems on the role of social media and how to influence opinion and effect behavioral change. Brands beware. I am going to share this podcast with my clients and marketing class.
I love this topic and actually have written about it a few times myself and have even been testing out the social media aspects of all three of the campaigns left running.
The interesting element that I have seen is the utter lack of dual-participation by the campaign and in many cases, such as mybarackobama.com there is very little interaction between supporters. Even the Twitter profiles for the campaigns are void of engagement.
Thus far I haven't been overly impressed with their ability to drive social support through social media...certainly they have driven financial support using these tools, but I don't see them using it to harness actual votes. At the end of the day that is still coming from traditional means.
Comments
You're right! Social Media Marketing is shown more through this campaign than ever! It's quite interesting to see both candidates reach out to younger voters via YouTube channels and more. It's pretty amazing the effect the social mediums can have on an entire campaign -- Obama truly was unknown until the online buzz really exploded about him.
Posted by: Search Engine Optimization Journal | 03.26.08
Jennifer,
You bring up a good point. Social marketing on and off line provides good opportunity for learning how to influence opinion and behavioral change through communities, while providing a branding platform. Clinton and Obama are great examples of how they are harnessing social media to augment their message and increase velocity and share of voice. I would also recommend looking at the more traditional practices of social marketing in the non-for profit world and health marketing. Their campaigns are based on community engagement, dialogue, and co-creation for message dissemination.
Also, I agree with Peter Blackshaw comment that companies should look at reaching audiences using different languages. To this I will recommend to look at the content and context of the message as opposed to doing a mere language translation from English to X language. We have seeing translation mistakes many times on traditional media, that has backfire for the brand and are examples of how marketers need to be careful with the message that they are sending. With the power of social media, the effects of a wrong word, context or content of a message will be magnified by 100 in a few hours if not minutes.
Posted by: Javier von Westphalen | 03.27.08
Obama was truly unknown until the online buzz went wild. His fundraising strategies online are also impressive.
Javier, how true about the poor effects of a wrong word being used when translating. As a marketer for a couple of decades, I have seen that happen quite a few times and it can be really tough to work it once the situation is set. I always try to get my clients to do the translation in context and not just verbatim.
Posted by: Jennifer jones | 03.28.08
Thank you for doing the interview. In one short podcast there are a lot of gems on the role of social media and how to influence opinion and effect behavioral change. Brands beware. I am going to share this podcast with my clients and marketing class.
Posted by: Tony Russell | 03.28.08
I love this topic and actually have written about it a few times myself and have even been testing out the social media aspects of all three of the campaigns left running.
The interesting element that I have seen is the utter lack of dual-participation by the campaign and in many cases, such as mybarackobama.com there is very little interaction between supporters. Even the Twitter profiles for the campaigns are void of engagement.
Thus far I haven't been overly impressed with their ability to drive social support through social media...certainly they have driven financial support using these tools, but I don't see them using it to harness actual votes. At the end of the day that is still coming from traditional means.
/kff
Posted by: Kyle | 03.28.08
Thank you! I enjoyed the podcast and truly feel these campaigns mark a new era in campaigning.
Posted by: Elizabeth Saunders | 04.01.08