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The Obama Web Campaign
I spent several hours reading about Obama's web success. I have decided to write a summary of my research here.
But before I do, I want to address something that struck me. There seems to be some myth that the Obama people created some sort of digital trojan horse that magically carried the candidate to victory on November 4. Omar Wasow wrote the following on theroot.com: "Like John F. Kennedy before him with his masterful exploitation of television, Barack Obama proved that a new medium can not merely impact, but completely transform presidential politics." Others describe Obama as the first 'open source' candidate.
Surely Obama was able to harnass the power of his supporters online, but there is no secret Web weapon to Obama's success. The folks from Blue State aren't eons better than the people at 3EDC. Obama and his brand clearly motivated more Americans to vote for him and that remarkable message also inspired millions of people to organize, collect, network, donate and proselytize for Obama on the Internet.
Here is my summary of the Obama campaign web efforts. If I've missed something, please comment?
1. Campaign Website:
The official Obama campaign website barackobama.com is essentially the same as the official McCain site johnmccain.com
2. Social Networking -
my.barackobama.com (MOB) was a secondary website, the Obama campaign's version of Facebook. Just like Facebook (and created/run by Facebook founder Chris Hughes), M.BO.com was the place to meet and find other Obama supporters. That was sort of the crux. But the big deal was the tools available to Obama supporters on MOB: registered members could create events, invite their friends/supporters to events/rallies, develop their own fundraising drives (with a reward system built in), and organize phoneathons (groups in MN called likely voters in NV etc). This "member center" was also particularly important to fight the obama rumors (muslims, friend of Osama, no pledge, etc), it armed the supporters with defensive materials. According to TechPresident.com, MOB boasted 35,000 local organizing groups and over 200,000 events.
Facebook: Obama had an official Facebook page, but so did Mccain. Obama finished with around 2.5 million facebook "friends" versus McCain's 625,000. Obama also gained 20% of that 2.5m in the final weeks before election day.
But Having a official profile is 1/10 of the power of Facebook. The power of Facebook is when millions of people use Facebook to prosletize to their Friends. I estimate about 1/2 of the Facebook friend-friend communications (status, wall posts, etc) was election related and a large majority was pro-Obama and/or anti-McCain. (On the eve of the election, I asked via Facebook 'status' why folks were voting for Obama. I received 15 replies in an hour and none in favor of McCain.)
3. Online video
Online video is probably where the most interesting developments happened.
The campaign paid for and organized videos and films that popped up on Youtube, Facebook and other web video outlets. Hollywood loves obama so there are plenty of talented people who could make videos and music that really resonated with the youngins. Sarah Silverman's video is a great example, but there were scores of videos and films made about/in favor of Obama.
Another example is the "nonvoter" video. This was a late campaign move via MoveOn.org. It was built to be passed on amongst supporters to undecideds. But it was so well produced that two McCain voters sent it to me the day before the election. This really wasn't anything new. That 'church sign generator' is about 7 years old. But the timing and production value was brilliant.
Ads: All of Obama's ads were uploaded to Youtubeand watched for 14.5 million hours, the equivalent of $47m on TV according to Joe Trippi. Also on Youtube, The Huffington Post's 'Off the Bus' group recorded everything that McCain and Palin had to say and uploaded to Youtube so that volunteers could fact check McCain and Palin later in the election.
Live, online video from every campaign event via ustream was a really nice touch. I'm actually surprised this wasn't/hasn't been used more.
The one thing Obama didn't do a lot of, but probably will, is create personal messages for supporters and distribute via Youtube, etc. Quick, simple, effective way to reach a crapload of people directly. Probably better to reach his own supporters than an ad or infomercial. (Obviously the youtube nation was mostly Obama supporters - to reach an alternative audience, TV ads and that infomercial were still necessary).
4. Mobile:
According to Bloomberg, Obama campaign spent several million on last minute text messages to mostly young folks.
But Twitter is probably where the campaign did the most mobile activities. A Twitter "account" was setup in late 2007 by the Obama campaign. The 'official' Obama twitter sent personal Obama messages and event info to supporters via Twitter text message or on Twitter.com. Each message was likely written by a staffer but felt as if it was coming straight from Obama.
But the real use of Twitter was the Twitter commmunity. Again, like Facebook - Twitter's power for Obama was individuals sending messages amongst themselves. I'd say that Twitter members were about 90% in favor of Obama and in an almost cultlike fashion. (I mentioned, once, that I wasn't going to vote for Obama and lost several 'followers' instantly. Twitter isn't a democracy.)
Supporters also wrote Twitter API enabled "bots" and websites in support of obama. Most interesting was votereport.us which tracked messages about Obama. During election day, people texted messages to VoteReport via Twitter in order to signal their vote for Obama. A nice animation of those messages appears here.
5. Online Ads:
Obama spent a record amount of online advertising - more than $8 million. Which is actually not very much if you compare what was spent by both campaigns on TV. But it's very telling where the campaign spent money online: Almost half with Google ($3.5m).
That means search advertising. It also suggests that other kinds of web advertising just don't work. Search advertising was likely purchased to ensure that people found the right website after a search in Google. I would assume that they did some pretty sophisticated search research so they knew what people were searching for and could redirect those people to the correct answers on Obama campaign websites. For example - "obama muslim" search would route to a myth area of Obama's site.
6. Houdini:
Newsweek first reported the existance of "Houdini", the Obama campaigns GOTV (get out the vote) tracker. Basically it's a web based tracking program that allows the campaign to see who has voted where and when.
A neat, personal description is here. In a nutshell: at each polling place, an Obama supporter watched the polls and checked off names in an mobile application (iphone). That application sent the information to a central database. And as people voted across the country, their names evaporated (like Houdini) off of the Obama GOTV list.
"Every time someone came in to vote, their names were entered into a computer system and their names disappeared or escaped, Houdini-like, from the call and walk lists."
The Houdini Project is likely just one of the campaign's internal applications. They likely had lots of internal applications and databases that they could tap to see how the campaign was evolving. Data mining is not new. But the ability to see live data and visualize large amounts of data is one of the most interesting developments for future campaigns.
7. Donations:
Like #1 above, Obama campaign didn't do anything really different than McCain/Palin in the donations area. Yet Obama shattered all records and raised $150 million in September alone. The average donation size was less than $100, according to campaign manager David Plouffe. (That likely misrepresents the numbers. There were probably plenty of $5 donations that offset plenty of $2300 donations.)
I haven't seen any data on this, but I would surmise that not only did Obama get more people to donate to his campaign, he probably received tons of repeat donors. I bet there were thousands of people who paid as much as they could every month.
Summary/Analysis
1. McCain/GOP demographics aren't web users. These people trend older and more rural. McCain could have had Google running his digital operations - wouldn't have mattered. The target audience doesn't conjugate online. Obama's core group however, is web savvy. Of the 5 people that contacted me about Obama before the primary and election, 4 were 30ish, stay-at-home moms.
2. Web creators lean left. The people who invent, design and create web applications are predominantly liberal.
3. Power of the People. Most of Obama's success isn't from whiz-bang new technology. It's the candidate's connection with voters that creates the opportunity for those people to build a network for the candidate. It's the same offline as online. McCain's story just didn't resonate. I like what Seth Godin wrote about this.
4. Power of the People part 2. The record donations weren't generated by some fancy new web trick. More people gave more often.
