Obama’s Victory Is Good News For Digital PR
November 7th, 2008 by Mark Hanson
Stay with me on this!
I’ve spent the last two years advising brands, public sector, NGOs and individual politicians about social media strategy, web 2.0, e-pr, whatever you want to call it. Everybody has heard how powerful it is but there’s sometimes confusion about how and why to do it. ROI is an issue. How many people will see it? Should we be sending our press releases to these people?
The only way to make the case is to try a bit and get comfortable or to see case studies that you can relate to. The benefit of the Obama coverage-fest that we’ve had for the last few months, which is still at fever pitch, (PS how many people have the beeb had out there?!) is that there’s such detailed analysis of how he used new media to connect people, talk to them in their language and motivate them. There’s endless media case studies and experts stepping forward on mainstream media to talk about it.
Social media helped win the biggest competition in the World. Social media has grown up.
And the best bit is that this story keeps going. I posted last week about how Obama could take this into a whole new way of running the country. Within hours of his victory he’d launched this site. A clear indicator that social media will play some part in running the most powerful country on the globe.
Tags: lessons for PR, obama web campaign
November 8th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Such a simple idea, it makes one wonder why politicians haven’t made a go of this before.
I suppose Tony Blair’s “Big Conversation” was an offline attempt at really connecting with the populace, but it looked like a rather hollow New Labour gimmick in practice.
Perhaps politicians have lulled themselves into thinking that it’s in their interest to make Government as arcane as possible, hence keeping the electorate ignorant enough to accept the status quo (and I don’t mean “Rockin’ All Over the World”).
In keeping with what we’ve seen up to now, Obama looks set to change the rules. Either that or he’s pulled off the world’s greatest con trick.