Change as a movement, and a marketing lesson

Anyone who has visited this site, or knows me personally, knows that I was an ardent supporter of Senator Barack Obama's presidential bid. To date, the impact of his victory has been discussed extensively, so I will spare you further discussion of that here. As a marketer / advertiser / brand manager, I feel the lessons from the Obama campaign will be picked apart for a long time to come.

So, I make this entry only to share a few tidbits.

First, for anyone who missed it, Ad Age chose the Obama campaign as the "Marketer of the Year" for 2008. You can read the story here.

From a more personal perspective, I'd like to share some of the personal lessons I learned as a donor, volunteer and "close follower" of the campaign.

I think that you would be hard-pressed to argue the effectiveness of the campaign's use of grass-roots support. As organized as the campaign was, and as much purchasing power as it had, it struck me every time I visited an office of how much supporters were encouraged to add their own imprimateur on the campaign.

Take the "O" logo, for example. Every office or rally was covered in the "O" logo, many of those logos made or recreated by hand. The logo became the mark for supporters, and supporters embraced it wholeheartedly. Not just because it was well-designed, but because it became the symbol of their tribe. (FYI: Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes, takes up the Obama campaign as a great example of marketing leadership.) And the best part? The Obama campaign embraced any and all attempts to recreate the logo.

Would you ever do that? Could you ever see yourself letting your audience remake your logo? Could you keep yourself from feeling the need to correct / fix it?

Second, the campaign was ingenious at finding new ways to market fundraising. Can you imagine the difference in the campaign's power without tapping interesting resources like artist Shep Fairey? Or, did you know that the campaign had a section on its website called "Runway to Change", where you could buy campaign-themed attire designed by such big names as Vera Wang, Diane von Furstenberg and Juicy Couture? How about the text messaging database that was turned into a powerful fundraising tool by encouraging donations every month?

Lastly, I think we could all afford to pick apart the campaign's tactics to learn lessons about mobilizing your audience.

Going back to texting: Just about every station uses text messaging in some way now; either to push out news and information, send the occassional sponsor coupon, for on-air feedback and voting, etc. I wonder, though, what we could put into motion if we used texting as a way to communicate - really communicate - with our audience.

On Election Day, I received messages to my phone almost on an hourly basis. Messages with simple reminders about going to vote. Messages about being nice to other people in line, especially to McCain supporters. Messages encouraging me to wait in line to vote, if necessary. Messages to remind me where my local Obama office was, just in case I could give an hour or two to help get out the vote.

Now, even after the election has been won, comes word that barackobama.com will live on to keep the lines of communication open to supporters. I invite you to check the comments on the site responding to this news; they are uniformally positive.

Imagine what we could make happen with our audiences if we took some of these tactics apart and learned from them. However you voted, or however you feel about Obama, his campaign has lessons to impart. I look forward to what we all learn from this campaign in the coming months and years. I feel very strongly it will make us all better marketers, and, there, at least, President-Elect Obama will bring us results.

Update 11/13/08:
Umair Haque of the Harvard Business Review offers some interesting management and innovation lessons to be culled from the Obama campaign in this article.