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Archives for November 2008

FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube: How Barack Obama Cinched the U.S. Presidential Election

Social networks like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are used by people everywhere to share, connect, meet people, make personal and business contacts and bring attention to themselves.  While it’s not so unusual to find companies or individuals using the social sites to their advantage, what is unusual is finding political candidates using the sites to further their political message, targeting specific groups and being completely successful in doing so. Less than 24 hours ago, presidential hopeful Barack Obama took the election win as the president of the United States. He maximized his use of social networks, making connections and convincing folks to become an integral part of his campaign. But how much did these social sites play a part in that happening for the candidate?

Barack’s Facebook page

Some time ago – as a media relations experiment – I decided to see if there was any legitimacy to the claims of social sites “effectiveness” for politicians. I went to Twitter and found President-elect Obama’s twitter page and decided to connect to him and follow his tweets. Surprisingly (or maybe not), he connected to me within minutes and began following me and my twitter updates. Was I impressed? Well…

Barack’s Twitter page

The social sites that Obama has a presence on has done a lot to help him winning the presidency. Barack and his team learned early on, very early on, the importance and significance of connecting with those that can make a difference. He was able to connect with people  on a common, everyday level and win their trust and confidence in his objectives. The Obama team was able to use media platforms to further their mission, expound on their policies and keep their mantra, “Yes We Can”, in front of their audience at all times. The brilliance in the social media strategy is multi-faceted:

  • The Obama campaign was able to successfully enlist the support and garner the votes of many brand new 18-year olds. “Students For Barack Obama, cannot drink legally, and if they didn’t vote in 2004, it was likely because they were just shy of 18 years old.”  Full Story.
  • Barack also allowed his supporters to interact with his campaign by inviting them to participate in his forums and by offering tools for supporters to schedule meetings about the election. “Users could upload their photos and videos, of the meeting they had organized, on his blog for others to see. Allowing people to create their own content is the golden rule of social media. Barack Obama got more people to participate in his campaign because of this.”  Full Blog Post
  • Mr. Obama strategically used his website and blog to keep his supporters abreast of his thoughts, appearances and most of all to keep them motivated. There are links on his website to YouTube videos, audio speeches and photos of his rallies and debates. 

Barack’s MySpace page

Finally, what is impressive about the campaign’s effectiveness is that it has set a standard for the way future campaigns will be run. No doubt that the losing party and any future suitors are taking note of the way Barack maximized social media and caused it to work to his advantage. What will possibly happen in future elections is that candidates will aggressively seize opportunities to use social media sites to their ultimate advantage, engaging and pursuing candidates to participate with them in their objectives. The impact will be phenomenal and the competition fierce. It worked this time. It’s bound to work again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Economy Down, Bargain Brands’ Value Perception Up

As one might expect, when the economy takes a nosedive, consumers’ perceptions of bargain brands go up, and their perceptions of luxury brands go down. 

In a recent study of over 1 million U.S. consumers over the age of 18, conducted by YouGovPolimetrix, the power of consumer confidence was demonstrated as luxury brands took a value perception hit while bargain brands like Wal-Mart took a leap. [Read more…] about Economy Down, Bargain Brands’ Value Perception Up

Raising the Importance of Brand to Corporate Executives

In a recent study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Interbrand, 118 marketing officers and senior marketing executives were surveyed about brand value in their organizations.  The results are quite disappointing in that 55% of senior marketing executives do not have a quantitative understanding of brand value within their companies.  That’s a brand gap that needs to be closed!

Since executives don’t understand the importance of branding and don’t know how to quantify it, 64% of the surveyed marketers stated that brands have no influence over decision-making within their companies.  That’s a huge missed opportunity for these companies! [Read more…] about Raising the Importance of Brand to Corporate Executives

Embarrassing Media Moments: What We Can Learn From Sarah Palin’s Conversation with President Sarkozy

Business people have a lot of responsibilities to take care of on a day-to-day basis, but also in many cases have assistants to help them get everything accomplished. But even with so many things to do and always seemingly in a hurry to get them done, inevitably something will fall through the cracks and fail. Although it may sound and seem like a grandiose, self-inflating thing to do, it is a wise piece of advice for any person in business:

Always have your phone calls screened.

No matter what level of business or type of industry you’re in, it is a wise thing to always be careful and mindful of the things you say and the people to whom you say them. In this digital age that we live in, there is always the unfortunate chance that the things you say, email, post and vlog can come back to get you.

This past weekend was one such case of embarrassment, humiliation and regret having not properly screened a phone call or double-checked to make sure that the person is in fact who they said they were. The United States Vice-Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin (R-AK) received a “supposed” telephone call from the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, when in fact she was being pranked by two Canadian comedians. The phone call lasted for about six minutes, just long enough for Governor Palin to say and hear some embarrassing and regretful things about animal killing, Sarkozy’s sexy wife and a pornography tape made (without consent) about Palin. Governor Palin during the conversation never corrected or questioned President Sarkozy. She really thought that she was speaking to the French President himself.

Unfortunately, the phone call was six minutes of conversation that could potentially hurt the McCain campaign and further shed a despairingly negative light about the already controversial and questionable Sarah Palin. For instance, if in fact that had really been French President Sarkozy, would he have really been discussing his wife and their intimate bedroom life? Would he have in fact said “I can see Belgium from my house!”, or, “I love killing animals, mmmm.” These are things that make you take pause and wonder before you respond, or at least you should.

But in Governor Palin’s defense, I’m sure that she was 1.) absolutely flattered that a country’s president was calling her, 2.) again flattered that said president of a country was calling her this close to the election, perhaps to wish her well, 3.)  again, flattered that he called her on her cell phone, while she out on the campaign trail. In any event, Governor Palin I’m sure today is regretting that she ever took that call and remorseful about some of the things she said and discussed.

Often in business, we’re more than eager to satisfy the customer and give them what they want. Maybe we don’t want to offend anyone or come across as unfriendly or out of touch, so we laugh nervously at their jokes or if there is something said uncomfortably, we just ignore it or pretend we didn’t hear it.

Most of us in everyday business won’t have to necessarily worry about our words becoming publicly accessed and ridiculed, but we still all need to be mindful of what we say and to whom we say it. Aside from pranksters, the media is a powerful news outlet and has the strength to sway notions and opinions in the general population. While much blame can be assigned to the media in making this prank a matter of public ridicule, what can you do to avoid embarrassment for your company?

  1. Ensure that the proper personnel have sufficient knowledge and resources to protect the company’s reputation. Is everyone on a “need-to-know” status? Does any and everyone who asks to speak to you get through?
  2. Become familiar enough with the local and national media sources to see how they typically highlight business owners and deliver information. Learn (or make note of) names , positions and reporting styles within media outlets. This includes blogs, newspapers and radio.
  3. Be consistent in the information that you share with the media. Don’t say one thing to a blog writer and another thing to a reporter interviewer. Be assured that stories will get compared and differences will be magnified.

Is it really necessary to overthink everything that you do and say to the media or by way of conducting business? Probably not, but what is suggested is to be careful and focused on the things that you do choose to share that relate to your company. It may not be that your company ends up in the news in an embarrassing situation, but why take chances?