Why Obama Won

This post was going to be titled, “Why Obama’s Going to Win.” But, alas, it’s been a crazy week and I never had a chance to flush this out like I wanted. Since the election is over and I’m dying, the post is going to stay half-assed. Deal with it.

First, let’s make it really clear: I’m not pro any candidate. As a marketer, I’ve loved watching each campaign’s advertising efforts. For the non-political people out there (and I’m sure there’s a lot), their votes were based off of the advertising campaigns or friends’ opinions vs. taking the time to read the facts. So, whomever had the better advertising campaign was gonna win. Let’s check ’em out…

Keep in mind this is all based on the advertising I’ve seen. Yep, totally biased post.

When 46% of Americans are using the internet, email or cell phone to get news about the campaign, whether you want to or not, it’s a place you have to be. I really applaud both candidates efforts in social media / next gen advertising, although I think Obama did a more well rounded job. Here’s a couple:

• – Obama has Facebook targeted ads. McCain? Nope. At least none targeted to me. PS- Remember when Facebook let everyone change their name to include “Obama”? Yea, that wasn’t against their Terms and Conditions or anything.
• – Obama had in-gaming ads.
• – Both had twitter streams. Although McCain’s, for the most part, is a bot. One that constantly sends out a crazy amount of links at one time and then is quiet for a few days. Not to mention it’s only following 21 people. Obama’s twitter stream has a much better pace and follows everyone back.
• – Obama used text messaging- text ‘Vote’ to 62262. The original message I received was lame. But, damnit, now they had my phone number. The message I received on Election Day: “People who love their country can change it! Make sure everyone you know votes for Barack today. For voting info call…”

Reality check: ALL social media is still niche. While I don’t advocate TV commercials for my employer, they’re definitely necessary for things like an Election. At the end of the day, this is the way to reach the masses.

• – 99% of the McCain TV commercials I saw were attack ads against Obama. They had a negative connotation. They didn’t allow Americans to empathize with McCain. And they continuously repeated Obama’s name.
• – 95% of the Obama TV commercials focus on Obama. They were not attack ads. They had a positive connotation. The majority of them featured a family and/or a blue-collar worker. Basically, An All American, Apple Pie persona. Americans empathized with these ads. There’s an emotional tie. Based on these ads, Obama seems like a nice guy.

I wish I could find the psych study that compared people’s conscious and unconscious reactions to these ads. Basically, the participants consciously had negative feelings about Obama after seeing McCain’s attack ads. But, subconsciously they had greater negative feelings about McCain. Classic example of the ego vs. the id. We all know “who” typically wins those fights.

Last but not least, there’s branding. While it may be lame, Obama did a fantastic job branding everything with that red, white and blue pepsi-like “logo“. McCain’s logo? Ummm, a general star? Whatever you want to call it, Obama’s freaking logo was EVERYWHERE. The logo was even on posters that didn’t advertise Obama directly, just that people should “Go Vote.” That’s a strong unconscious message that apparently worked. According to Google Insights, the chatter about Obama far outweighed the chatter about Biden, McCain and Palin.

Maybe four years from now people will make educated votes instead of following the masses. Until then, start ramping up those ad campaigns.