The dust has started to settle on perhaps the most notable presidential election of our times. As the celebrations die down, the academics and pundits will no doubt start the task of dissecting the 2008 campaign, looking for lessons and pointers for politicians and campaign professionals in the future. Regardless of your political persuasion, it’s hard to deny that the Obama campaign has brought political campaigning firmly into the 21st century, and politicians on all ends of the spectrum, in all democracies, can learn something from it. His campaign has paid particular attention to online campaigning and communication, and this is one area where lessons can be learned.
One of Barack Obama’s smartest moves was to place e-campaigning at the centre of his electoral strategy, and do so very early on in the process. Obama’s online journey started just a few days before he officially launched his campaign, in February 2007, with the hiring of Washington-based Blue State Digital, a strategy and technology firm launched after the 2004 election by a handful of Howard Dean’s e-campaigner staffers and Wesley Clark’s internet adviser, Thomas Gensemer.
It’s clear that the internet revolution is well under way. In the developed world, broadband penetration rates are high and growth in new connections doesn’t appear to be slowing. Most people can now access the web from home, work or place of education. Younger people in particular are spending large amounts of time connected to the internet, be it from a laptop/home computer or, as emerging numbers show, through smart mobile devices such as iPhones and Blackberries. People are using the worldwide web to communicate with friends and family, get work done, learn, and even to purchase groceries and gifts. It makes sense then that political campaigns are starting to take e-campaigning more seriously, and with a high number of young people voting his way, Obama’s campaign has proven this in the best possible way.
For the purpose of sharing lessons and finding best practice pointers, let’s look at the Obama campaign’s approach to online campaigning. Although it would be ignorant to suggest that any politician should simply copy the Obama approach to e-campaigning, there are principles and examples to learn from which should help any e-campaign. The Labour community might benefit by applying some of these principles, and not just at election time; one thing that an American presidential candidate has that British politicians don’t is time, so as a party we must make a good online campaign more than just an add-on to a general election strategy.
So how did Barack Obama win the online battle in the 2008 presidential election?
By genuinely embracing the idea of an internet campaign
Politicians both in America and in other countries – including here in the UK, have used the internet before. If you look back as far as elections in 2000 you can see evidence of this. So naturally you might expect that the concept of an e-campaign would have evolved somewhat in the eight years since. The internet, and the way people are using it has changed considerably over eight years, but politicians everywhere are more often behind the curve when it comes to innovation.
The key principle which has led Barack Obama to success online is the acceptance that if you’re going to do e-campaigning, in this era at least, then you have to genuinely put it at the centre of your campaign strategy. Replace lip service and box ticking with strategically placed e-campaign officials high up the campaign organisation, earmark appropriate resources for technology, design and the staff required to make an e-campaign work, and don’t stifle online discussion with over-sensitive censorship of user-generated content.
By empowering a community of supporters with web-based campaigning tools
Except for the previous point, this is perhaps the key to the successful Obama e-campaigner. In fact you could argue that Obama’s online platform and tools for supporters is one of the reasons he won the election on 4 November. By technically ‘outsourcing’ a lot of canvassing work to passionate supporters who happily played their part at zero cost to the campaign, the Obama team was able to spread its message of hope deep across the United States at a very low, grassroots level. In theory, people are more open to hearing political messages from their friends, relatives and neighbours than from politicised news outlets.
One of the things that Blue State Digital brought to the campaign was its strength in developing online community platforms. Using its PartyBuilder software, the team created a Facebook/MySpace-like online community for Obama supporters. Supporters signed up by entering personal details and, particularly important, their zip codes which the system used to assign them to a specific geographic area in the country. Once enrolled on MyObama, supporters could then sign up to volunteer, attend local meetings, host a local meeting and access lists of telephone numbers in the local area and download scripts for canvassing phone calls.
The MyObama platform also provided tools for virtual training of volunteers, and live reporting tools for campaign officials. In real time, volunteers who had gone out on so-called ‘block walks’ could report back the results of their canvassing efforts, as well enter contact details of other potential volunteers and supporters in the area.
By building an integrated presence across a wide range of online platforms
The internet makes it easy to be everywhere, all the time, and to reach the widest audience possible it is important for any campaign to set up a presence across a wide range of channels. There is a multitude of platforms to choose from, some of which are high profile such as YouTube, Flickr & MySpace. The Obama online campaign had specific officially branded presences on no less than 16 websites and online communities, from LinkedIn and Twitter to Digg and Facebook.
The principle behind this point is that as a campaigning politician, your job is to get your message to as many potential voters as possible, and to explain yourself in a way which is accessible to your audience. Individual web platforms allow a campaign to tailor the message and image of a politician to a specific audience. Of course, the underlying messages are the same. As was the case with Obama’s multiple online presences, the level of quality should remain consistent and all channels should lead the user back to the main campaign website if he wants to find out more and/or get involved.
By embracing beautiful design
Across the whole of the Obama online campaign, good design was clearly important. Everybody has an opinion on what constitutes good design, but the creative use of specific colours, graphics, fonts and imagery contributed to the hopeful and forward-looking narrative of the wider campaign. Narrative or the creation of a story is what makes political campaigns work; without effectively painting a pleasing vision for the future, any candidate will find it hard to get elected. Good design is a part of this, and you can use creativity to emphasise the messages you want people to hear and understand.
As most people who use email know, it is refreshing when a nicely designed message arrives in your inbox. Designed well and it will grab your attention, and you will read it, don’t bother and it might end up in the spam folder. Obama’s campaign emails were as well designed as any other web page or poster, which is testament to the importance of consistency in design as well as message.
By making it easy to contribute a small amount of money to the campaign
Looking at the amounts of money raised by both candidates since election began, it is easy to see that the difference in financial positions between the two candidates might have had something to do with the final election result. In all, Obama’s presidential campaign raised $639m, $573m of which was spent, versus John McCain’s $360m raised and $293m spent. McCain raised 56 per cent of Obama’s total, and the number from the electoral college result isn’t much different: Obama won 364-163, meaning that McCain got the equivalent of 44 per cent of Obama’s total college votes. Obama vastly outspent the McCain campaign on television advertising, campaign staff practically across the entire US.
The internet was at the centre of Obama’s fundraising drive. By making it easy for individuals to give donations of less than $200 each online, the Obama campaign raised $254m, nearly five times more than McCain. There are other factors involved, but the key is to make giving a simple process. The money spent on developing a good online platform (according to some sources, Blue State Digital was paid between $1-1.5m for its services during the campaign) has been returned many times over.
By keeping them honest, quickly and online
One of the lessons learned early on in the Democratic primary season was that having a space online where opponents’ accusations could be answered quickly would be very useful. The Obama e-campaign strategists launched FightTheSmears.com, a specific website set up just to correct misrepresentations and false accusations. Once the site was launched it could be populated instantly with the smears that required answers by the official Obama campaign.
Misinformation about your political opponents is an underhand but hardly uncommon campaign tactic. It is a tactic which works in a world where media is slow and people don’t quickly hear the record set straight. In the future, campaigns will be kept more honest by the nature of the web. Going beyond smears, there have also been instances where an individual armed with a video camera could film a politician without the politician’s knowledge, and then publish a potentially incriminating video on platforms such as YouTube.
By wrapping it up properly
The sign of a genuine commitment to online campaigning is the official wrapping up of the online components of a campaign, either by the winner or loser. When John Edwards stepped out of the race to lead the Democratic party into the election, his web presence was effectively frozen in time. For weeks afterwards, the campaign website, Twitter feed and YouTube channel were left exactly as they were the day before the campaign was suspended, without so much as a farewell and thank you message. This sends a negative message to supporters.
A good example of a nice e-campaign wrap-up is the current barackobama.com website. It looks similar to the pre-election-day website, but there’s a big thank you message at the top in handwriting. You can also explore memorabilia from election night and the day after, such as a collection of newspaper front-pages from around the US.
All in all, the 2008 presidential election was an incredible journey. Emerging campaign methods are now mainstream, and the lessons are there to be learned in future political campaigns. With the changing media and demographic patterns, harnessing the power of the worldwide web to win elections will be vital in the foreseeable future. It’s easy enough to set up a YouTube or Twitter channel, but it takes real dedication and commitment to get the most out of this incredibly powerful medium.
Good overview, but I would take issue with ‘wrapping it up properly’ section. Don’t get me wrong, when a campaign ends unsuccessfully there should be ‘thank you and goodbye’ to supporters and the public even if it is only online. However, if all that Obama campaign does is say thank to his supporters and head of into the sunset to govern then he will be making a mistake.
Unlike in the UK, US campaigns are built for each campaign and disappear to be rebuilt again for the next campaign when it comes around. However I suspect that with all the hopes and personal investment supporters made in ‘Brand Obama’ campaign a simple ‘thanks and see you in 4 years’ won’t go down very well. Also Obama is going to need to explain perhaps more than other politicians why ‘change we can believe in’ is happening at the rate and in the messy way that it inevitably will. Having a direct route to explain, inform and engage that by-passes the mainstream media will be a big advantage for President Obama as it was for candidate Obama.
The challenge for him, and his team is to work out how to translate the movement they build for an election into a movement to support an administration. Perhaps http://www.change.gov/ shows how he is going to try and do just that.
Great article – we have all heard about how good the campaign was but this is the first indepth analysis of how it was achieved. Labour must embrace these lessons now particularly the point about putting the internet at the heart of the campaign. That would give a freshness to the messages that we will need to counter the need for change message Cameron will push on.
Thought this was a useful and interesting summary, but we also need to think about some fundamental differences in approach between here and the US.
The biggest difference is about open-ness; the tools being developed on the Labour party website at present are largely internally focussed and controlled; the Obama campaign strategy gave a huge amount of freedom to volunteers and activists to self-organjise, with attendant risks in terms of the issues they may raise.
Personally, I think that’s healthy. How viable is the current british model of political activity when party membership is small and unrepresentative? But changing to an open approach will be huge for parties (not just ours) who have a controlling culture.
Also, we must not miss the huge link between on-line and off-line campaigning – Obama’s e-campaign worked because it was fully intengrated with the traditional grassroots campaign – far from replacing traditional community campaigning, it reinvigorated it and made it more effective.
Obama’s ultra-successful e-campaign also showed us that both the content and format need to be in ordinary people’s language, from THEIR point of view, and addressing THEIR concerns in simple/direct terms. Whereas most of our Party websites still seem to be for the politicos.
But I felt Obama’s e-campaign nagged for $5 contribution much too frequently in a typically American high-pressure sales manner! Possibly we could do with a lesser money-grab?