Barack Obama Marketer of the Year

Advertising Age has named Barack Obama as Marketer of the Year for 2008, weeks before the Presidential Election. The honour is the result of a vote from marketers, agency heads and marketing services vendors attending the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference. Obama attracted 36.1% of the vote at the conference. Others on the shortlist, chosen by editorial staff at Ad Age, were Apple (27.3%), Zappos (14.1%), Nike (9.4 %), Coors (8.7 %) Apple and John McCain (4.5%).

Barack’s Social Network

Angus Macaulay, VP at Rodale marketing solutions, said, “I honestly look at [Obama’s] campaign and I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers. To see what he’s done, to be able to create a social network and do it in a way where it’s created the tools to let people get engaged very easily. It’s very easy for people to participate.”

One of the secrets to Barack Obama’s campaign has been the recognition of the talents of his supporters. A classic example is street artist and DJ Shepard Fairey, who unashamedly set out to inspire his generation to vote for Obama. The founder of the Obey Giant brand explains that the success of his campaign began with news sites and blogs spreading the word about his Hope and Progress posters. Two weeks after he created the posters he had a call from the Obama campaign office asking him to create a new image, featuring Barack Obama with the word “Change”, to be sold on the Obama campaign site.

Barack Obama Online

Jon Fine, marketing and media columnist for BusinessWeek, pointed to Mr. Obama’s facility with engaging voters in social-media channels. “It’s the f**kin’ Web 2.0 thing,” he said.

Obama’s online team have clearly been busy from the start, developing an interactive connection with the online community. Within minutes of connecting with Obama on MySpace, Facebook or Twitter, there’s a response back – accepting friendship or following right back on Twitter.

www.barackobama.com
Barack Obama on MySpace 725988 friends
Barack Obama on Facebook 2,171,199 supporters
Barack Obama on Friendster
Barack Obama on Flickr
Barack Obama on Twitter 100,951 followers, following 104,810.
Barack Obama’s YouTube Channel 1589 videos, 102543 subscribers.
Barack Obama on Wikipedia