Harvard Business Publishing

Couldn't have said it better. As a McCain supporter myself it was obvious that the stars were aligned for a Democrat in 2008. This was especially true after the recent financial crisis. However, Obama developed and implemented a brilliant strategy... one that will be a template for all future elections, both in the U.S. and abroad.

There is an increasing trend to credit the faltering-economy, The-Need-For-CHange, the suave-marketing pitch, the Sales-Stragegy behind his historic win. It actually goes much deeper than this. What they saw in Obama was an actual guy-next-door who could relate to the common man in the US. All others have proved themselves to be super rich, disconnected presidential hopefuls, who are there to make their own kind richer by the day.

The entire world is wary of Bush's neocon policies and McCain was riding the same boat. Its difficult to fool people as they can see through it, silently and disapprovingly. They have actually elected a better man in....

Good Luck Obama..

Arif Jameel

Very gracious Landon. Let's hope that the days of Atwater, Rove politics are over. Obama proved you do not have to stoop to win, that you can win without resorting to dirty politics.

This is great.. I love the breakdown.

Thanks!
W

Obama did really well to win this election. I remember reading: "Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising." The product/brand Obama is now ready for use. The people will soon know whether he was worth the price they paid (with their attention, votes, hopes and expectations). I wish him the best.

Yeah, he did great work. I hope it continues. He got my vote and I'm very picky.

Not mentioned is that Obama promised the American people (as well as McCain) that he would rely on public funding to maintain the integrity of his campaign. Breaking that promise came easily to Obama. Obama will be blamed for a lot of things that are out of his control just as President Bush has. We will see how well he handles dropping approval ratings as he finds that he can not keep his campaign promises and he has to make unpopular decisions based upon information that is not available to the general public. Remember that President Bush had an approval rating of 90% at one time. Obama needs adoration - can he handle the reality of the White House?

The marketing of Obama was superior. What will be very interesting to watch (hopefully not painful to the country) is what has already been mentioned...will the expectation of "brand Obama" meet, exceed or disappoint. The bar has been set very high! I do hope that he builds a team around of him of people with fresh ideas and approaches. At this early stage, that does not seem to be the case.....

Some great points, and makes me wonder what's next!

I wonder how the Obama administration will tap into the Groundswell when it comes time to govern. How will we be involved? How will we involve ourselves? What if you got an email or a Tweet or a text message from the President explaining why he needs your support for Project A? Telling you where to find more information, and asking you to act. To call, email, fax, and write to your Senators and Representatives. To go out canvasing, knocking on doors. Think about what that would do to the traditional seats of power in our nation– in the world! Asymetrical competition at its finest.

Why no mention of fighting dirty? Obama went into the sealed divorce records of his opponents to dig up dirt.

That's a lesson marketers should learn as well.

Obama also had a very, very favorable and dare I say sympthetic media that spent far more time digging up dirt on the republican VP candidate than reporting on the substantive flaws in Obama's policy positions and also his political upbringing. I am not going to deny his appeal to those people who were easily inspired by slogans and appeals to their feelings because his campaign was brilliant in that regard.

However, he knows that there is no money to implement his further expansions of government, he is going to have to cut spending in sacred democratic programs and he will have to back off on his tax cuts for people who don't pay any income taxes to begin with. Add that to the foreign policy issues facing him where he has zero experience either and we are going to see a failure to achieve.

He will have no defense for not keeping his promises with those swayed by the spin. His republican opponents are going to hammer him as well as they should. The backlash is going to be severe and no amount of blaming Bush and the republicans is going to save him. Democrats were more than willing to go along on expanding government over the past 8 years and anyone with a shred of objectivity knows that their meddling in the housing market and refusal to allow tightening of regs on Fannie and Freddie set the stage for the financial crisis.

I think Seth is asking the right questions. Obama has an advantage right now in connecting with and mobilizing a large enough constituency to accomplish his objectives. If his opponents don't close this gap, and certainly McCain flopped in this regard, it won't be politics as usual during his administration.

Excellent article, thanks.

As it happens, I wrote a blog post of my own yesterday on Obama as a marketer, and my list is fairly different (there is some overlap)--on Principled Profit: The Good Business Blog

Shel Horowitz, author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First

0bama's election was a 'massive movement'. (Read Eric Hoffer's 'True Believers'..) Perfectly executed during a 'perfect storm'. We still don't know who Barack Hussein Obama is. Today the MSM wonders what his 'world view' is.
This isn't just an overnight success. The ground work has been in play for over 30 years.

The amazing thing is that President Obama's campaign team wasted very little time after election. They had all the post-election tasks pre-planned. They immediately put together http://www.change.gov/ . Very impressive.

Great read.

Phenominal new product development and launching. As you correctly state, the brand trust is there at the moment but will the brand values remain consistent over the expected product life cycle (read presidential terms)?,i guess we've just read the preface of Obama Marketing Story,will it be a classic?

Good thoughts, John.

To support your third point, I've found out that the Obama campaign was using Conversion Rate Optimization testing to maximize their donations on their website. Take a look at this:
http://www.widerfunnel.com/case-study/obama-used-conversion-rate-optimization-to-win

Very smart.

Chris

Superbly analyzed and expounded. John is at the head of the class.

Excellent overview of how Obama and his team reinvented the political marketing template.
I did a guest article that focussed more closely on the digital strategy and tactics for India's leading marketing magazine.
You'll find it here. http://www.afaqs.com/main1.html "10 lessos for marketers from Barack Obama' It's in the Digital section.(no permalink, unfortunately)

Its interesting and funny both . . . I guess a successful leader would have to demonstrate the qualities Obama did . . oratory and dynamic, influencial and intelligent. Arent these qualities of the "Leader" who is ethical and honest. He did represent those qualities well.......I guess exactly the same way as "Gandhi" did to get freedom in India......

But sure it worked.

Regards,
Anshil

I congratulate John Quelch for bringing out such a thoughful article. I may however, remind him as well as the readers that Obama's election did not constitute merely the marketing aspect, but it was a right mix of Situational Leadership, Project Management and Marketing management. Merely marketing would not have fetched him the marvellous results which he has now been able to get.

Your breakdown of components that fueled the Obama campaign's success, John, are certainly to the point. However, they are far from complete if you're going to herald this as a model for marketing insight.

Make no mistake it was a well-oiled, multi-dimensional effort. Obama's campaign fully embraced the channels and cross-media methods that drive credibility, community and action these days. That is not a breakthrough. That is simply recognizing the new rules of audience engagement in a 2.0+ arena.

I find it curious that you characterize this as 'a case study in marketing excellence' without a single mention or comparison of marketing budgets. Obama's campaign outspent the competition by no less than four to one, and has easily shattered all records for total sunk cost in a presidential election.

Since the polls have closed, it has become very common for marketing consultants to wrap themselves in the flag of this campaign and start drawing analogies for advertisers. (A Google search of "Obama" and "marketing" at last count yields some 15,800,000 entries.) But let's be a little more real-world about all this.

How many brands - much less an up-and-comer - have the ability to jump in a category and begin outspending their competition by 400%? Marketing excellence across today's landscape is best measured by the methods and metrics that allow smaller brands to gain larger results for less investment. And, by the way, when was the last time any new product had the luxury of going up against a category leader with a consumer approval rating in the low 20 percentile?

I suggest we all applaud David Axelrod for a brilliantly directed political bout. But let's then turn our marketing salutes to the brands and products in the marketplace that are achieving unprecedented results with much less resources than their competitors. That is, in fact, the type of change we should all believe in and fully embrace from this day forward.

Great post! Outstanding marketing and campaign, no surprise he won. Now the "proof" will be in the "pudding" as they say, let's hope he's as successful at executing as he is at selling.

I find it curious that you characterize this as 'a case study in marketing excellence' without a single mention or comparison of media budgets. Obama's campaign, though obviously very well orchestrated, did outspend the competition by no less than four to one.

How many brands - much less an up-and-comer - have the ability to jump in the marketplace and begin outspending their competition by 400%? How many products have the luxury of leveraging against a category leader with approval ratings of less than 30%?

Marketing excellence across today's landscape is best measured by the methods, strategies and metrics that allow advertisers to gain larger results for smaller investments. That is the type of change we all should believe in - and applaud.

This article is bang on. I think the biggest factor that played into Obama's hand was the rallying of the youth vote. For the first time in my lifetime (I'm 21), I was excited by the prospect of being involved in the political process. His charisma and non-traditional campaign played to my peers...and we ate it up.
I just finished reading Don Tapscott's new book "Grown Up Digital". Mr Tapscott called the result of this election months ago...even before the "stars had aligned" for the democrats (see: Sarah Palin; Financial Apocalypse). He believed in the power of the youth vote when many people were still unconvinced that my generation would step up on the political stage and make our voices heard.
I recommend you grab copy of this book. Whether you are young or old(er), we can all learn from Mr. Tapscott opinions and research.

B

The professor was right. However, this seems to be fairly common knowledge. Which part of this was meant to make an original contribution?

This is a truly insightful analysis of Mr Obama's win. I love the last point the most. After all, Mr Obama hired one of the co-founders of Facebook to run his online marketing strategies - how smart is that!

Inspired by this brilliant post, I applied the lessons from Mr Obama to the airline industry, and I wrote a post on my blog about what airlines can learn from the Obama marketing machine. It's an industry desperately in need of some brand discipline.

The election success of Barack Obama is not just a result of marketing mix resource optimization but also of a highly targeted direct marketing campaign aided by the effective use of internet marketing analytics.

Prof. Quelch's points on the critical success factors for Mr. Obama's campaign are all valid. Yet, over and above these, there are catalysts that lent themselves to the propensity of scaling up the campaign effectiveness. Some of these, we should recall, were outside of the campaign influence:

One such: Most change related inflection points, political or personal are prefaced by events or happenstances that cause seismic negative shifts in the public minds waiting for that one person / leader to alleviate it through a rapid action plan.

In this case, the geo political trends and economy downturn provided the ecosystem vacuum for Mr. Obama to be perceived as the change agent. This is over and above the brilliant campaign plan that was executed by him and his team.

My understanding is the voting stats didn't change very much.The economy seems the main thing to me.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the marketing tactics used by the Obama campaign were wonderfully executed, we should keep in mind that none of it would have mattered if the campaign did not have a great "product".

Look at Dean vs. Obama. Dean was the test tube, but didn't have the right product. The marketing plan for brand Obama wouldn't have mattered a bit unless the consumer (or voter) felt they were getting a great value.

I believe the message was as strong as the marketing. Obama seemingly had the whole world dancing because he somehow spoke to the species, the animal in us, the reptilian. Imprinted in all of us is the will to survive as a species and instinctively we know that survival is only accomplished if we "come together" because division is "guaranteed failure."

The problems we face as a species are now commanding our attention more than ever before; and along comes a leader with the message of working together, personal responsibility, saving the earth, diplomacy, solutions before ideology, listening instead of bluster, butter versus guns. . .aren't these the areas where all of our DNA is connected.

This is the message that we've all been waiting for and again, we're instinctively ready to pitch in. Welcome to the beginning of . . .!

One of the other articles featured in today's HBS Working Knowledge is entitled, "Decoding the Artful Sidestep." That is clearly evident in this piece. Positioned as a study in marketing, the author simply does a recap of his opinion of the success factors of Obama's campaign. From the comments registered on this board, it seems most readers were successfully misled.

It is fine that the author admires Obama and the campaign he ran, but it is a mischaracterization to claim this piece is a study in marketing. Because he was elected, he certainly did some things right, but how did marketing contribute?

As an example, the author's second point is that Obama's charisma enabled him to raise a lot of money. Is the lesson for brand managers everywhere that in order to launch a successful product launch they need to be slick and polished and schmooze superiors in order to get larger budgets? That’s troubling.

The author also states that Obama made more use of new channels like his website and blogosphere. Fine, but how successful were those efforts? How many voters developed their purchase (voting) intent through those channels? Given the predisposition of someone visiting these sites, how many incremental votes did these channels actually generate? Was the investment the most cost-effective use of funds? Where is the real analysis we would expect from a member of the faculty at HBS?

Obama won, but it is incorrect to conclude, therefore, that everything he did was brilliant or worked at all. If a shaman performs a ritual to bring about rain, and it rains, should the shaman get credit?

The author's opinions may be widely-held and true, but this belongs on an op-ed page, not in an academic forum.

I agree with you. I sent an non-political e-mail to our sales force about a year ago using the Obama's internet campaign as "best practices" for selling to our clients. I get 2-3 e-mails per day which provided new information ("product news") and a reason to donate more money ("selling"). This extended to facebook and so on. It also allowed to import all your contacts to send them pre-written messages to support the campaign. Finally, all donors and volunteers received a thank you note prior to his Grant Park speech which ended "But I want to be clear about one thing .. All this happened because of you. Thank you, Barack" His campaign should a case study on how to manage an successful enterprise (leadership, strategy, management, marketing, sales, and Finance.

I agree with comments on the amount spent by the Obama campaign. Given that this process will be repeated in four years (actually start much sooner than that)it worries me that anyone will be able to compete in this environment.

I also wonder how someone can raise $630+M in $30 - $50 increments? That is astounding!

It is a shame that our presidential elections have reduced themselves to ad campaigns, no matter how great.

Interesting article.

However, I don't think this level of analyzation is necessary. McCain was ahead 45 days before the election and the momentum was clearly turning in his favor even in the face of these eight genius marketing moves.

Obama won this election because of the financial crisis on Wall Street. Overlay the time line with the poll numbers, and it's obvious what happened.

While Professor Quelch regaled us with his reasons for President Obama's success, he omitted any academic discussion of what Marketing principles he used and why his implementation was successful.

What part did the media play in ignoring his opponent’s message and promoting Mr. Obama?

“Like any great brand, Obama has built up a bond of trust with the American people.” To what bond of trust are you referring? Is this professor of my alma mater suggesting that trust is something you can acquire with no basis other than hope the person is trustworthy? The last time I looked about 47,000,000 did not trust him for the office of the President.

This write-up is nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking from a supporter.

The use of marketing techniques, from social proof and social networking to web optimization and media manipulation, was impressive. The spend was ridiculous, not very clever at all, but apparently necessary. The false claims? We shall see in time.

Like many top marketing campaigns, I veiw Obama's effort as a high-class deception latched onto by many decent folk awfully quick to part with their money (or votes). And since the election, I've not yet seen the much anticipated signs of "hope and change" in consumer confidence, retail sales or stock valuations, leaving me more than dubious of the Great Marketer being any more than that.

It is all about leadership.It doesn't matter from which race you are comming from,it is all about picking the right strategy to energize general mass showing future prospective landscape in a meaningful way.Obama did that very well.You may relate with very good marketing strategy.Big question - Do markateers need to be a great leader? Very true may be...

Thanks John.

I would have like to have seen a more analytical critique of marketing activities in Obama's campaign. The piece is a nice highlight of things the President-elect did right but I don't think it qualifies as a complete analysis of how better marketing elected Barack Obama.

If anything, Obama epitomizes the change in direction and approach he espouses. He gets top marks for authenticity of message and messenger. That's a key marketing take-away for me.

Kudos to Seth - how will Obama use Internet tools to pursue policy? Organizing hyper-efficient "write your congressman" campaigns? Will he communicate directly with the Russian and Chinese citizenry?

Very interesting article...

President Elect Obama's marketing team executed the strategy perfectly. Here are some the numbers:

- 3 million online donors
- 6.5 million online donations adding up to more than $500 million.
- Of the 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in amounts of $100 or less.
- Upwards of 13 million addresses were captured
- More than 1 billion e-mails sent during the campaign
- Approximately 1 million mobile phone numbers collected
- 2 million profiles created on the MyBarackObama.com social network
- 5 million supporters on other social networking and multimedia sharing sites.

Over the last several months of watching the campaign build it was apparent that the Obama execution team understood the synergy of multimedia and social media. We have been tracking the campaign from the beginning and have extracted many of the business/marketing lessons. The summary case study can be found @ www.Barack20.com

Again great article. And I am glad to see that analysis as to what was done and how it worked has begun.

Good article and case study. Mr. Obama: assembled and led a better President elect strategic and operations management planning team, had better positive and negative competitive comment response timing, had better advice connections, made better use of Internet communication tools for his support staff and the voters, had better persuasion and team building skills, and had better luck and good fortune to enable Mr. Obama and his team to develop and implement better marketing strategies and tactics.

Leon C. Farbes III
Burke, VA

I believe that not only was Obama's marketing strategy excellent, he was able to show good leadership by assembling a good team that was able to execute. You can have a good marketing strategy, but poor execution can hinder a brand.

This case will probably go in the history of global marketing and communications. And someone will have to do a much simpler job than this. Probably, what we learned in B school, simple is the most effective, Obama's team proved this to us.

You left out the 8th reason - every major TV network (except Fox -Fair and Balance) was in the tank for Obama. That came at NO expense to his campaign. Anyone with that kind of media support can fool the general public. Anyone. Why? Because most of the public believe what they see.

I forgot reason #9 - George W. Bush

Everyone is surprised by the value "Brand Obama" has generated within a very short span. Definately we should admire strategy which made Obama such a great brand. It's now Obama's responsibility to adhere to value ("Change") which was projected in the campgain.

If the President is supposed to be the captain of our ship then let best person win. All elections are based upon what the person running has the POTENTIAL to do, never their past record. Obama's excellently run campaign gave all of us a glympse of the tight ship he is capable of running and for that alone he would have gotten my vote. Forget personalities and party affiliation...its the question of how and if you can get the job done.

Hopefully the way he ran his campaign is a predictor of how he will run the country.

John, thanks for your astute comments. For your consideration, here's a #9 which the tipping point that made #2, #3 and #4 so potent:

I think the campaign's use of social media is an inflection point for marketing in general; it is changing the rules by digitizing word of mouth, the most pervasive and heretofore invisible marketing channel ever.

The Obama campaign provided people the tools and messages to rapidly scale its size and energy. Mybarackobama was designed to digitize grassroots. It created more supporters out of "normal" people, and it armed them with low-transaction-cost tools that were designed to enable more supporters to contribute in small chunks more often. It supported key business processes during the election.

The campaign was forced to do this because Clinton had most the traditional legacy resources locked up.

So it was a P2P (peer to peer) effort that also utilized best-in-class marketing techniques; however, an unprecedented portion of implementation was people and supporters, as the campaign spent a bit less than 50% on TV advertising and far more in the field. It used data mining to laser focus resources. It mashed up old and new.

It also went to the people by providing tools and engagement in key branded social media venues.

Thanks again and all the best- Chris

p.s. I just published a Web 2.0 case study on the Obama campaign's use of social media and how it contributed to overall results: http://tinyurl.com/9ntonk

I think, after those elections all America should close the question about racism. it's enough with all these debates, opra's themes - all the world understood that you won this war with racism.

This is the usual movement of the candidates on the election. But the best shall prevail. People are wiser now in choosing the leader they wanted. President elect Obama is hoping that getting us all a little extra cash on payday will help things to turn around so you won't need a payday loan. He's trying to get out a tax cut and a tax credit called the Make Work Pay credit. The future is impossible to tell - but it seems that the measures enacted by the current administration aren't helping and the need for a payday loan is increasing. The mortgage collapse and subsequent credit crunch have slowed the economy to an almost stand still. However, economic measures usually take some time to start working, but it doesn't take the sting out, in the meantime. Obama is hoping that bigger checks on payday will restore consumer confidence and you won't need to take out a payday loan just to get by.

Nice post. Obama is such a global brand in his own right that others are jumping on the band wagon .Another great blog on the Brands of Obama is http://www.nexusdp.co.uk/design-agency-blog/?p=243

It's no surprise that brands want to associate with him as he probably the most famous man on earth right now.

Very comprehensive and insightful Obama and team really are good marketing case studies. 2009 is going to be full of marketing eyes attempting to answer how they did it. Thanks John.

I am certainly glad we have a new president named Obama. The personnel at our firm believe he possess exceptional communication skills which for a spokesperson is an essential part of any marketing program. We are sure he will do well with all of his endeavors.

here is a brilliant post on Obama brand building! grab a look! you'll love it : >xoxo

http://evidently.com/?p=2691