Lessons from Obama’s man
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.
