A few Chameleons went over to see Damon Jones, director of comms for Obama’s Democratic Convention this morning. He was in town to share lessons that he learned from Obama’s campaign trail. I’ve summarised his ten key learnings below, but before we jump into them, here are two things we found most interesting:

-           the use of online community tools. Obama actually hired one of the co-founders of Facebook to build a community website to empower democratic supporters to reach out, engage and donate. Check out http://my.barackobama.com for a shining example of a very good online community site.

-          the willingness to let people run with their own messaging. They basically gave people the tools to build their own comms (video clips to ‘mash-up’, key messaging which people were free to tailor, logos to play around with and personalise etc..). In Damon’s words, these ‘made millions of people feel like they had a stake in the campaign’.

 So here are Damon’s lessons:

1.)      Begin with the end in mind – start by recruiting supports and get them to buy into the brand promise. After you’ve developed a relationship with them, motivate action (donations, campaigning etc.)

2.)      People adapt messaging to what works for them – the Democrats they gave every state tools to adapt campaign messaging to make it more relevant to their own situation

3.)      From information to empowerment – they created the tools so that people could become their own brand ambassadors. These were available on my.barackobama.com. After registering, others from the new joiner’s ZIP code were alerted. These people were encouraged to email the new joiner and start a dialogue. People engaged with people, not systems or brands.

4.)      The internet is one big glass house – total transparency. You can’t hide from critics – sites like factcheck.com and politifact.com will pick you up on any inaccuracies. These need to be monitored all of the time and people need to be empowered to engage with them (more below)

5.)      The web of influence – a) Bloggers are incredibly influential. At the Democratic conference, bloggers were given the same access as the likes of Fox News and CNN. B) If you want to get news out there quickly, a press release doesn’t cut it, a blog post does.

6.)      Entertainment matters – no matter who you are, entertainment media is very influential e.g. Sarah Palin parodies

7.)      You are the company you keep – be transparent with all of your dealings and prepare for the worst

8.)      Everything is an opportunity – they created a website called fightthesmears.com which gave people information to fight the opposition’s smear campaign. They gave people the facts and encouraged them to fight with them – on forums, in bars etc…

9.)      Time is not a luxury – the days of a the structured news-cycle are over. The media needs to be monitored constantly and a rapid response team needs to be in place to react and capitalise on developments

10.)   Execution, execution, execution – ensure staff have clear responsibilities and ensure they understand their place in making the campaign work

One final point to make - what makes Damon’s work even more impressive is that he worked for free, as a volunteer. He took six months off from his job as director of external affairs with P&G for this role on Obama’s campaign. How did he justify this?.. Damon left us with some parting words that made us wonder what we’d like to achieve in our lives ‘Some people dream worthy accomplishments while others stay awake and make them happnen’.

Thanks to the PRCA for putting this on.

Check out this interview from Robert Scoble on ScobleizerTV with Kevin Barenblat, founder of Context Optional, talking about how his Facebook widget is driving 60,000 users a day to a client’s website. A great example of how big brands should choose the right social network and develop an approach that encourages the members to interact with one another and then the brand.

Update: You will need to click on the “shows” tab on the video window above and choose the frame that has Facebook logo appearing top left to choose the correct video

I attended Gartner’s ITXpo in Cannes last week (and no its wasn’t sunny, it rained solidly).

In amongst the many sessions on enterprise technology categories was one that was especially interesting and thought provoking. It was called A day in your life, 2028.

Three Gartner analysts, Betsy Burton, Jan-Martin Lowendahl and Monica Basso posed as time travellers from 20 years in the future , who came back to tell us about a very different life, where technology was central but largely invisible to us.

We heard about a world where technology is invisible to CIOs (and the rest of us for that matter), social networks are the basis of our career progression, and, for some, atleast, life is lived more through avatars than through ourselves.

I thought this was a brave and somewhat humorous attempt to paint a picture of IT in the future. I also sat there thinking “is this really what my children will be like in 20 years.”

From a communications industry point of view it brought home to me how much we need to embrace social networks and online today as it really will be the future.

In his session on social networks, Gartner’s Ed Thompson highlighted the five best practices that organisations need to follow to get true benefit:

1. Balance risk and reward - handing over control increases your access to customer data

2. Relinquishing control with reasonable ground rules - helps develop trust within target communities

3. Soliciting feedback - promotes opportunities for engagement with key communities

4. Enabling advocates - leads to faster and more permanent loyalty

5. Assigning specific community advocates - gives the customer a voice and makes them want to support an organisation more

If you’re looking to increase your use of social networks in business I hope you find this information useful.

Rob Skinner

I’ve seen a few of these videos before and think they’re great but thanks to Mike for bringing to my attention again - an easy to understand guide to social media that your mum would understand.