Cherryflava

How Obama became the superbrand of 2008

Posted on 05. Nov, 2008 by Jonathan Cherry in Technology

Barack Obama is more than just the next president of the United States, he’s become a cult hero – a super brand of proportions rivalling that of David Beckham and Coca Cola. But how from relatively unknown just a year and half ago to popculture deity today was the brand built.

Right from the beginning he recruited the co-founder of Facebook Chris Hughes to help create the first ever socially-networked presidential campaign and encouraged 3.1 million people to donate as little as $5 to have a vested interest in a positive outcome.
Overall he managed to raise nearly US$650 million in funding [of which $240 million was spend
on advertising] as opposed to John McCain’s budget of just $358 million.
The marketing attack was so comprehensive, on so many media channels and so socially connected with American youth culture – that it was almost impossible for him to lose.

The Obama campaign even bought a channel on the Dish Network to screen Obama ads 24/7.
Yes we can…take a lot, marketing wise, out of how they did it.

Here’s what we had to say about it on Cape Talk 567 this morning. [hit the latest podcast button for this morning's audio]

More:

Barack Obama on Facebook [with nearly 2.5 million supporters]
Barack Obama on YouTube
Barack Obama surfs the web to the White House – AFP
The ’08 Campaign: Sea Change for Politics as We Know It – NYTimes
Obama vs McCain Online – BNet [thanks Rhett]