Blog entry #17 from www.mba-marketing.co.uk

There can be no doubt that web marketing has played a vital role in today’s election victory for President-Elect Obama. For the first time, proponents of ‘new’, digital’ or ‘web’ marketing have been vindicated on a massive scale. Consider these facts:

 Obama raised $600 million in campaign funds, 50% more than MCain – mainly because of his online network.
 Obama was able to engage and communicate with supporters in a variety of ways, including his own YouTube channel, and social networking sites like FaceBook, where he had more than 2.3 million ‘friends’.
 Blogs have made more information, news and opinions available, more quickly, to more people – and have become trusted sources for media and voters alike.
 YouTube has created a new way of accessing speeches and media interviews, very quickly – available in small, easily digestible, chunks.
 All this has meant less power for conventional media, and more for voters. And as soon as something happens, it’s available online.

And as soon as it became clear that Obama had won, 3 million supporters received a text message thanking them for their support.

So, has ‘new’ marketing replaced ‘old’ marketing? I have to conclude that it has complemented it, but not replaced it. First, where was nearly all of the money that was raised spent? That’s right, mainly on TV advertising! And why have the UK media given so much coverage to the US election over the past four weeks, almost to the exclusion of some massively important UK and European political and economic events? Because the traditionally highly professional all-powerful American political PR machines puts ‘news’ on a plate for any accredited journalist.

And finally, what lessons can businesses learn from all this? Not a lot, in my opinion, What was really new about the Obama campaign was not so much the tehniques used, but the fact that they worked. And they worked because of the high level of involvement of voters with the election and the candidate. It mattered, hugely – to an extent that very few businesses or brands can begin to match.

Now then, what’s Gordon Brown put on FaceBook today….