Politics 2.0: Barack Obama Goes Completely Social Media

Presidential candidate Barack Obama turned his site into a social network this weekend, hoping to create a venue for his supporters to connect. Obama is already leveraging social media using Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

Users may organize fundraising, create events, find Obama events near you, build a network of friends, send messages, join groups and write a blog about how you’re helping Obama, or how you feel about the Obama campaign. Groups are the way to connect to strangers on the network, since there doesn’t seem to be a browse feature (you can, however, search by name or zipcode). In many regards, it’s more like Facebook than MySpace or YouTube - simple, text-based and focused on connecting with people you know or those around you.



AKI COMMENT: And I like his logo, too! Beats that same shiesty wavy flag graphic (or worse) that politicians have been retreading for 30 years. A simple and refreshing icon harkens to a new day dawning in politics. Though the letter "O" is somewhat predictable (probably the client call), this is played in a rather clever and unexpected treatment. Obama gets my consideration just for adopting an intriguing design ethic that speaks more than "politics as usual". Funny how most politicians just don't consider graphic identity as a relevant and influential piece of the presentation and package. For all intents and purposes, the candidates graphic identity is the very start of the conversation between voter and candidate.


via Mashable.com

Taking It To The Streets: Obey Endorses Obama

Well known (and previously mentioned) street artist, Obey/Shepard Fairey, has made a recent endorsement of Barack Obama - and has done so in a quite intriguing way. He created 350 limited edition screen-printed posters (image above), to be sold to fund a larger street poster campaign. The profits are being used to produce stickers and large posters that will be sent to those who are willing to throw down for Obama in the streets. See communication from the Obey team below:

"Thanks for reaching out and wanting to get involved with OBEY's effort to support the OBAMA Campaign. Shepard made this image for the purpose of making pasters to be put on the street, with the money coming from prints sales to help fund the effort. For those interested, we will be sending out a care-package of the OBAMA Paster plus some OBEY stickers to be put up on the street. These pasters will be folded, not tubed, and are STRICTLY for street use. We do not expect to see them for sale on EBAY or anywhere else, so we ask that only the seriously dedicated get involved!"

There will also be non-partisan posters pushing everyone to vote:


Remember, Obey is the guy who over the past 10-15 years has decorated most major U.S. cities with the iconic Andre the Giant imagery:



Look familiar?

Honestly, I see this as a significant endorsement because street artists, in general, tend to be anti-helping-the-man. They are known for being anti-this and anti-that, but rarely, if ever do we see them promoting a politician, or a presidential candidate for that matter. Not to mention Obey has quite the following. Equally, if not more significant, is that the Obama camp appears to be embracing the endorsement.

Wonder if we will end up seeing any of these posters around?

Politics 2.0: OhBoyObama Think-tank

Oh Boy Obama is the unofficial campaign think-tank. Created by Obama supporters for the purpose of giving the Obama grassroots a platform to submit and vote on ideas to better the 2008 primary and general election campaign of Barack Obama. All supporters are welcome to contribute.

Hello from Iowa (part 2)

I am sure you have all seen the headlines – the big Democratic turn out, the big Obama win, the big Clinton loss, and the religious right’s single-handed miracle of a Huckabee win – but what happened in Iowa last night holds far more secrets about what is to come than those headlines.

I caucused with the Democrats so I will have to limit my comments to what I saw there, although from my understanding, the Republicans go, pledge, pray, vote, and go again -- home to watch the Orange Bowl (Kansas was playing after all). The Democratic caucus procedure is much more involved, but more on that later.

I felt as if I stepped into a time warp last night as I entered the church/precinct 1 voting center in Muscatine, Iowa, a smallish town on the Mississippi river. 261 democrats showed up to caucus, far more than they were expecting. The planning felt similar to the planning, I imagine, that goes into a Spears’ offspring, but I believe that was because of the sheer numbers. Although we were there to decide something with implications far beyond our small town, it had the feeling of caucusing over the gnawing decision of who should head up the PTA. We were in a large room with one microphone (which few people could hear), the majority of the time was spent attempting to count how many people were there to caucus. Once we managed that debacle, people were asked to separate into groups based on the candidate that they were supporting. Stickers were passed out by precinct leaders and more counting ensued, in order to be a “viable candidate” groups needed to have 15% of the attendants; this by the way was explained to us as “multiply by .15” (our family put our heads together and figured out it was 15%). Our precinct selected 5 delegates for Obama, 3 for Clinton, and 2 for Edwards.

The caucus could not have been more low-tech. It harkened to a time when town hall meetings were not orchestrated events with “don’t tase me, bro” security. The caucus was a decidedly local event. Yes, people here care about the war, but it seems they care more about the neighbor kid down the street that has been deployed in Iraq, than the details of the hows and whys of what got us there. Yes, Iowans care about national issues, but the reason I think Obama won last night, was because he understood the changes people want are not “wedge issues” but “make your life a little better” issues…

Politics 2.0: Attack on Obama Girl!

From the creators of Obama Girl (check here and here), Barely Political, peep the latest video release: blond triplets- The Romney Girls- and their vote for a Polygamous get together with Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney....

Just as I said about the Hot for Hill girl...Obama Girl is still hotter...

Politics 2.0: More Obama Girl

UPDATE: the full clip hot off the presses. Some real heated debate for you:



The hotly anticipated trailer to her new song...ahh, yeah! Servin' up politics b-boy style.

Avin dug up the info and tracked down more on Obama Girl here, and here. I'm seein' opportunity...live televised political debates between "Hot For Hill" and "Obama Girl". Bring it! "You 'bout ta git served, Hillary!"

New York Times' Interactive Graphs

On the day Barack Obama was elected President, the New York Times introduced an interactive poll they called the “Word Train.” It asked one simple question: What one word describes your current state of mind? Readers could enter an adjective or select from a menu of options. They could specify whether they supported McCain or Obama. The results appeared in six rows of adjectives, scrolling left to right, coded red or blue, and descending in font size. The larger the word, the more people felt that way. Throughout the entire day a river of emotions flowed through the chart. You could click from Obama to McCain and watch the letters shift gradually from blue to red, the mood change from energized, proud, and overwhelmed to horrified, ambivalent, disgusted, and numb.


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/04/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_WORDTRAIN.html?scp=1&sq=what%20one%20word%20describes&st=cse

Recently, the New York Times created another interactive feature that harvested all Twitter chatter surrounding the Super Bowl. By pressing play on this graph, the reader is able to watch the location and frequency of commonly used words during the Super Bowl. In all, there are six different categories to choose from including, “Talking about Ads.”


http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/sports/20090202_superbowl_twitter.html

These features have proven to pull readers closer through comments and interactivity, rendering the relationship between reporter and audience more intimate, immediate, and exposed. Of the massive 20 million unique visitors per month compared with the daily print edition’s readership of 2.8 million, the readers are flocking to these interactive features. As Jonathan Landman, deputy managing editor puts it, “We’re trying very hard to protect it [the interactive features], because that’s where the action is.”

For an advertising or marketing agency the implications for these interactive maps/graphs are big. The ability to get real-time answers about our products or services has existed for sometime now; think twitter, online forums, live chat…but not in this way. These interactive graphs create an entertainment value and coolness factor for the user while generating a visually appealing way to aggregate all their messages, emotions, or displeasure's about a brand, product, or service and communicate it back to the client in a simple way.

Here are links to some others:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/02/02/business/media/20090202-business-superbowlads.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/08/04/sports/olympics/20080804_MEDALCOUNT_MAP.html?scp=6&sq=interactive&st=cse

And the link to the article about the people who create these graphs:
http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53344/index1.html

Politics 2.0: Interview With Obama Girl

For all you undecided voters out there who have yet to join the Obama camp, here's some more of the inspiration you need.



Hate it or love it, it's still pretty amazing to me that something which started as a joke has managed to maintain attention for such a prolonged period of time.

And for those who missed it, peep the return of Obama Girl just before the Iowa Caucus (1.3 million hits on YouTube and counting), when she received a pep talk from none other than Truman Girl.

Politics 2.0: Babies for Obama Meme

1500 vids on YouTube for Obama Babies

Hello fromo Iowa (part three)

As the nation gears up to see what N.H. has in store for us, I couldn't help but try to pull some attention back to Iowa. Although I gave you a taste of what the caucus was like from my relatively juvenile point of view, I thought my parents would provide an interesting take on the caucus that often isn’t available in the blogosphere (my parents are decidedly not bloggers). Since they are semi-retired, I was able to rope them in. Their thoughts are below:

Thoughts from my dad:
"I’ve always been an independent—although most often voting Republican rather than Democrat—so spent a lot of time reading about and listening to the candidates from both parties. With growing concern about Iraq and Pakistan and many foreign/energy relations issues, I joined my wife and daughters in supporting the Democrats—making that decision in the last 1-2 weeks.

With so many candidates and platform topics, I observed more of a ‘go with the crowd’ mentality this year versus prior presidential election years. For that reason, to aide me in my ‘winnowing many down to few’ process, I consulted a ‘selection quiz’ on the internet developed by Minnesota Public Radio. By spending just a few minutes answering 14 questions on 14 different platform issues (Iraq, taxes, abortion, immigration, stem cell research, gay marriage, line item veto, energy, death penalty, gun control, education, social security, healthcare, and environment ), the quiz helped me more easily identify those candidates more in alignment with my views.

As to the caucus itself, because of the level of dissatisfaction with our current administration and the number of highly qualified candidates, turn-out was substantially greater than prior caucuses and more than the caucus leadership was ready & equipped to handle. With initial support for 6 of the democratic candidates, ‘politicking’ and arm twisting eventually narrowed the field to 4, with a few of the 1st time caucus going becoming disillusioned with not being able to stick with your original preference and leaving the caucus rather than switching support to another.

The caucus process is more intimidating than the normal ‘closed curtain’ voting process. This creates a more knowledgeable voting public because you want to know so you can influence and defend. Unfortunately this also means that many do not participate..."

Thoughts from my mom:
"In person I found Hillary Clinton to be a surprise. She was warm and very, very informed on every issue and questions brought to her. She treated the audience as intelligent and informed citizens. She was friendly and easy with the crowd as she walk around shaking hands

I also was impressed with Obama’s speech making. He too is smart and ready. However, I didn’t find his demeanor with the crowd afterwards as comfortable and he didn’t stop to talk as much as he may have earlier in his campaign. He appeals to a b ig crowd and does it so well. I saw him several times and always in a big room where some of the other candidates were comfortable at small restaurants, and the like. It is just style each finds comfortable for him/her.

Last night was the caucus and I went to find twice to three times more people there than what was expected. Due to numbers it was chaos at first. I started at Richardson’s table but had to move to a viable candidate for delegates. I just couldn’t figure out who I wanted to get behind liking them all. Finally, I went with Hillary Clinton because I want a woman to be taken seriously for the top job in this country when she is as prepared and capable as this candidate. Early in this campaign I still want the country to know that I woman is a real possibility for this job and I am not ready to concede that it won’t happen.

However, all this said, I am a fan of Barak Obama and think he has had the best people on his team imaginable. They called daily, canvassed our home, kept on top of things very professionally. They did a terrific job. They also have a very strong candidate to promote and I feel happy that he did so well last night. His speech following the win was so strong that how can he be denied."

Politics 2.0: "Vote Different/1984" Ad

San Francisco Chronicle says it "represents a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising."



This Pro-Obama/Anti-Hillary video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era."

So far - 3million views and counting on YouTube since its early March debut!

This user-created mashup has "changed the zone" between political campaigns, their followers and the Internet, says Simon Rosenberg, president of the Washington-based New Democrat Network, an influential party advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

With presidential campaigns now poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising that will blanket television before November 2008, this seemingly home-produced video -- created with software and a laptop, and likely without the benefit of a team of expensive political consultants -- opens a new window, Rosenberg said. It has dramatized a brave new world in which passionate activists outside the structure of traditional campaigns have the power to shape the message -- even for a presidential candidate.

The ad is proof that "anybody can do powerful emotional ads ... and the campaigns are no longer in control," Rosenberg said. "It will no longer be a top-down candidate message; that's a 20th century broadcast model."

It also dramatizes that today, political activists with the Internet as their ammunition have gone from being "just donors to the cause," he said, "to being partners in the fight. And they don't have to wait for permission."

via WSJ, SF Chronicle, NYTimes

Politics 2.0: Yes, We Can

Will I Am (and friends) recorded a song/video inspired by Barack Obama's "Yes, We Can" speech. Obama clearly inspires folks in a way that many candidates can't really match. This is an interesting phenomenon to watch.



...and well, from the profound to, uh, ObamaGirl is back with another hit at 1.9Million views already.

Politics 2.0: Barack 2.0, Again

Sen. Barack Obama is now on LinkedIn. And not with lame banner ads. Obama has been making the most of Web 2.0, launching his own social network, gaining a larger-than-life presence on MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter.

Politics 2.0: 21 More Months to Go...

Alexa has a blog and they've posted an analysis of the relative popularity of the three leading democrat(ic) candidates' web sites.

Let's start with the blue team. Hillary clearly has had the most visitors to her site of any candidate (blue line), particularly on the 21st of January, when she posted a video announcing her candidacy. She nearly doubled the number of visitors that had visited Barack Obama's site (for the same reason, in red) a week earlier, and more than quadrupled the visits to John Edward's site 3 weeks prior.


There are several other democratic candidates not listed because at this point their sites are not getting enough traffic to show up on the chart.

And how fares the red team? The Republican sites are just a tiny blip on the chart. Both have approximately 10% of the traffic of the third place democratic candidate, John Edwards.



Of couse, rabbits have been known to throw a race or two in the past. 21 months to go...

via Alexa Blog

Politics 2.0: MySpace Will Hold Presidential Primary

If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world.

So while it may be only be a marketing event for MySpace to say it’s holding a presidential primary next January, you can be sure the candidates will take it seriously.

The MySpace primary will be held on January 1 & 2, 2008, before any of the official state primaries. Every user will be asked to vote for their favorite candidate.

Most of the candidates already have MySpace pages.
Barack Obama 89947 friends
John Edwards 17071 friends
Hillary Clinton 7685 friends
John McCain 3697 friends
Rudy Guiliani (Private Profile-booo!)



via TechCrunch

Politics 2.0: YouTube YouChoose

YouTube has launched You Choose '08, where voters can find the official Web videos from Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Barack Obama et al., all listed on one page. You know, the ones that the candidates want you to see, as opposed to the unofficial videos that are some of the most watched on the site.

Savvier by the minute to the power of video sharing and social networking to reach potential voters, most of the presidential candidates had put their videos on the site on their own "channels." Now YouTube has pulled them all together, free of charge. On You Choose '08, viewers are encouraged to post text comments and video responses and rate candidate-created videos.

But Adam Paul, an online strategist at ID Society Inc., an interactive design and marketing agency, has a warning: "Candidates have to remember that the more content they put out there, the more content there is for people to change and try to control."




via Washington Post

Community 2.0: Juicy Campus

Is user anonymity the key threat to brands on the social web?

I missed this Juicy Campus furor (+, +, +) in recent months yet found this intriguing story on Current TV.

The predicament detailed here reminds me of what many of our clients fear - anonymous social terrorists undermining brands on the social web by unfairly calling the brand a slut - with no recourse available to the maligned brand! Is user anonymity a threat to brands on the social web?

Obviously there is no easy answer as the social web can hardly be "controlled". But brands seeking to conduct social web ideas may learn from the success of other social web communities (think eBay and Amazon). These communities foster user privacy and protection yet users can't just say and do any ol' thing and not be held accountable to the community. Maybe this makes an argument for why brands must initiatiate where they want to participate and on what terms - jump in first before you're forced to defend yourself in forums you don't want to be.

For example, Starbucks, a brand that everybody has "2-cents" commentary about took the step of activating a Twitter account and forums like MyStarbucksIdea so that the discussion is moderated fairly (and aggregated in a central place so that suggestions are actionable, not just complaint rants. And everyone may have a go at responding to both good and stupid ideas. Its been interesting to note even President Elect Obama recently opened up the "comments" channels on his weekly YouTube address...now of the thousands of comments I've only noticed a few idiot elements. Will be curious to see if this maintains but I think taking the forward step of opening the response channels (and fostering transparancy with accountability controls like "vote up/vote down") actually deter some of the social web brand bullies.

Politics 2.0: Post-Debate, Obama Has Work Cut Out For Him

Riding the tails of Sarah's post on the Democratic CNN/YouTube debates, an article in the Economist showed the Barack is trailing in some key markets where he should be performing strong. For example, in South Carolina, more than half of the states black primary electorate are actually pulling for Hillary over him.


The article goes on to say that this is not for lack of any star power, but his challenge is a difficult one: clearly communicating to black voters that he understands their concerns while also attracting white suburban voters.

This is really shaping up to be an interesting election, especially when compared with the last one where all we had was a choice between the lesser of two evils. Combine this with the fact that, according to CNN, the leading Republican candidate among Republican voters is none of the above, with nearly 25% unwilling to back the leading Rep candidates. And even better, none of them seemed to have gained any sort of clear advantage among the Christian right.

A last comment on the YouTube debates, I'll be very interested to see how the Republicans handle themselves when they get theirs in September.

Politics 2.0: "I Got a Crush On Obama"

Politics 2.0: We Are The Ones

In just the latest example of creatives having a crush on Obama, will.i.am has dropped another video in support of Barack (just under 200,000 hits on YouTube a day after posting).



To me, these videos show that the most powerful message in Barack's campaign may not be "change" or even "hope", but rather "WE". The power of community is what has propelled this campaign, and efforts like this show how devoted that community is and what it's willing to do to further the cause.

Will be curious to see if this one manages to sustain the kind of buzz and popularity that Yes We Can did. But either way, good PR to have just before the contests in Ohio and Texas next week.