To make a modern brand a marketer should have a “conversation” among “friends ” ;.Okay, now just how does a marketer create those “friendships” to have those “conversations” to generate those strong, effective, brands? An instance study in how to get this done is the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008.
At the start of this information I want to state this misnomer. President Obama is really a lightning rod. Some people love him and some individuals hate him, but even his biggest detractors need to admit that his social media strategy was a classic. Marketers should study this campaign since it is really a tutorial on what modern products must certanly be branded. I really hope that the reader will concentrate on the marketing and not the politics.
Barack Obama is really a classic case in how a brand may be created in a New Media Age. To win the American presidency a candidate should have a great deal of money and a great deal of name recognition—a brand. If a candidate does not have a brandname, if voters do not know who you are, you are not likely to be elected. If a marketer cannot distinguish their product on the market place, that product won’t be bought. For this reason modern marketers should study the Obama campaign. Prior to the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama had no money and was unknown. By contrast, Hillary Clinton was a well-known senator from a big state. During 2006-2007, it absolutely was a foregone conclusion that Hilary would win the Democratic nomination She and her husband had created a vast political network to draw from, and she a lot of money—she had a solid brand. Barack had no brand; even in his own household. When Barack broached a potential candidacy to Michelle, her response was, “This is the craziest thing you ever said to me. Nobody will probably beat Hilary this year…Get over it, kid” ;.Barack and his team did have knowledge of social media and how exactly to put it to use in a campaign. This knowledge was his biggest asset.
The campaign of 2008 is analogous to the current market place. In times past, it absolutely was very hard, and too costly to create a new product and brand it. For this reason social media is this kind of important element in modern marketing. A cultural media campaign allows a new product to be created and branded on the market place quickly, at hardly any cost. The modern market place is better explained by author Shiv Singh. There is a change on the market place. No more are consumers thinking about engaging with large impersonal brands. Consumers do not trust brands any longer—they trust their friends. In a current survey conducted by The Economist half the respondents stated they don’t trust big business. They trust the recommendations of the friends. Leveraging the recommendations of friends is how you can create brands. This really is exactly why the utilization of social media is really critical to branding. Through social media, friends meet, conversations happen, and brands are created.
Which means that if a product will probably be selected, the brand must develop into a “friend” to its consumer. This is exactly what the Obama Campaign did and the way in which that he did this will be studied by marketers since it is really a case study in how to generate modern brands using social media. By combining social media that produces micro-targeting, force multipliers are created which are needed to generate world-class brands.
The data of the current market place allowed Barack and his team to quickly produce a strong brand and overcome the Clinton campaign. At this point, I would like to clear up an error that I manufactured in a previous article. Recently, I wrote an article entitled, “The Perfect Storm: Why Companies Should Adopt Social Media Marketing while the Center of Their Marketing” ;.In this information, I identified David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager as an original person in the Facebook management team. This was an error. The Obama staff member that I was thinking of was Chris Hughes, who served while the Obama Campaign Director of Online Organizing. Mr. Hughes had a good influence on the campaign social media strategy.
The Obama campaign wasn’t the very first campaign to utilize social media. These were the first ever to co-ordinate social media by having an entire campaign. These were the first ever to organize the utilization of social media. For social media to work, it needs to be organized. John McCain and Howard Dean used the medium before Obama, but Obama and his staff surely could integrate and organize social media into every area of the campaign in a smooth way. Because of this Barak surely could create “conversations” that engaged. He created enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm his sight created was smart enthusiasm. He used social media sights in a way that targeted supporters and voters. This targeting allowed him to comprehend the important metrics that he needed to know to be able to win his campaign. He surely could target and concentrate on his true supporters.
The strength of Obama’s social media branding approach is so it was constructed to make and develop “friendships” ;.This really is very important to marketers to realize. Whenever you meet someone there’s a veil between you and that person. As you get to know one another better, the veil comes down. As your relationship develops, trust develops, and deeper conversations begin. These conversations bring about deeper relationships on a human level. On an advertising level, these relationships become strong brands.
The Obama campaign knew so it had to interact people, but that engagement must be predicated on trust. The Obama engaged people in what it called “the ladder” ;.You engage one step at any given time, build the relationship deeper, and each step is really a higher level of commitment—a ladder. The steps of the ladder are based on the level of comfort of the average person with regards to the campaign. A marketer would call these steps creating touch points.
The initial touch point could be Personal. This is the point at which a marketer and customer first enter into contact and “friend” one another on a platform like Facebook. In the Obama case, it absolutely was as of this stage when folks are getting to know one another. smm panel A person signs ups for messages and emails. Another touch point is Social. It’s this touch point that folks start making posts or comments to a friend’s profile about your product. Only at that touch point, a buddy explains for their friend why a product is a good thing. In the Obama campaign, these profiles integrated with their web site. At the Website, a supporter may create an account. In the marketing area, an organization would integrate with a Facebook or Twitter. At this point, an individual may feel comfortable enough with a brandname to join a “group” or produce a “group” ;.
In the Obama campaign, the next stage would be to become an Advocate. To operate a vehicle interest, pictures might be posted, blogs written, or perhaps a video might be created and posted to You Tube, for instance. There are analogies in the advocate stage for a marketer trying to converse about the merchandise with a “friend” (a customer) and vice versa. It’s in the advocate stage a supporter may have now feel committed enough to Obama to host an event, ask friends to donate money, or to register to vote. In the Advocate stage, in an advertising situation, an individual might speak to a buddy and recommend a product, creating a brand.
Another stage is the Empowering stage. This stage is for serious supporters of Obama. Here a supporter gets heavily involved. The campaign tracked volunteers and could target its most reliable supporters.
These committed people could create social and fundraising groups on MyBO Web site. The Obama campaign could now organize their own networks of supporters that gave supporters usage of the Obama database, that they may pull telephone numbers for doing phone banking from their living rooms. In reading this information, a marketer has to make an example in what the Obama campaign did to what each marketer may do with their own brand to increase engagement with their customers. Perhaps some organizations could offer discounts for their customers if they introduce their friends to the marketers and solidify the brand. Here a marketer may be flexible in their own situation to increase their brand.
Exactly why social media platforms are very popular is that friends are in possession of the means to share video, blogs, pictures, and posts with their friends. This is a god-send for marketers as they fight to generate and expand their brand. Ford Motor Company just did this in a successful campaign to introduce their new car, the Fiesta. Ford called this the Fiesta Project. In exactly the same way that Ford extended brand awareness for the Fiesta, the Obama campaign provided source material for user-generated content. Here is where scale comes into play. Exactly why Ford’s and Obama’s campaign was so effective was since they both had the scale for “friends” to “converse” to generate the brand. For this reason the planning stage is really important in creating a brand. As Napolean said, “Every army has an agenda until the first shot is fired” ;.An advertising campaign is chaotic. Things happen. A marketer needs to be flexible. The reason why Ford’s and Obama ‘s social media campaign was so successful was because there was planning and enough scale was intended to engage “friends” ;.
