Thomas Gensemer - Obama (not so) secret weapon (never Tweeted)

February 19, 2009
by Rob Watts

For those who don’t know, Gensemer led the team at Blue State Digital who orchestrated President Obama’s online campaign, generating over $500,000,000 in campaign funding, an amazing amount of money by any standards.

On the lecture itself, @lukeregan summed things in his own inimitable, rather pithy way:

about 12 hours ago · Reply · View Tweet

lukeregan: Gensemer lecture cool. Numbers- segment, re-target, enable advocates, clear CTAs, ROI either upfront or within life cycle. Profiling key.

There’s already been a lot said about the campaign and why it was a success and the various tools and platforms used so I won’t rehash those. This is about the core message delivered from the horse’s mouth, along with observations and learning’s. Did you know for example that Obama, despite his huge twitter following, doesn’t even tweet and never did!

Engagement, mobilisation, action

Gensemer’s message was of engagement and action. Consistent themes throughout were of mobilisation through connections formed with core and peripheral constituencies. Surprisingly much of the success was attributable to direct electronic mailings, yup - good old fashioned emailing out to a subscriber base of 13.5 million.

The messages were usually 240 to 300 characters long, with a direct message and call to action. There was nothing lengthy or time consuming, just simple direct communications. Throughout the campaign over 1.2 billion emails were distributed. Click through rates were monitored and messages tweaked according to demographic. Test, test and retest was a big part of the process.

One request was for people to phone into a central bank and leave messages with their view on the war In Iraq. The result was 1000’s left emotive messages which were then picked up by traditional offline media, stimulating debates and pushing agendas forward.

The Obama website itself was key in generating engagement, users could set up personalised spaces where people who cared enough could find tools and methods for helping the campaign, a place where individuals could connect and engage on issues that mattered to them, a place where anybody remotely curious could go and learn about Barak and his views and policies.

Gensemer talked about a guy named Charles from Boulder and how a video sparked an upsurge of interest aired on prime-time TV and written about extensively. A look at the link profile for this URL shows it received over 1000 web citations.

The video acted as a great recruiting tool by speaking to Americans about issues close to their hearts and mobilising actions from people wanting to help.

The constant process of information sharing where a large audience could be quickly accessed, questioned and mobilised formed a vital part of the communication and strategy process. The simple message being that if you ask people about things that matter to them, then they will engage and become an advocate of the message.

Simple but powerful.

Gensemer also touched on the UK political scene, recounting how a major UK political party (he didn’t say which one) invested a paltry $500 into an Adwords campaign, spread out over a month to test various ideas. The message being that they really needed to up their game and engage in the process seriously. A message picked up today and broadcast loud. Indeed, as I write this, papers like the Guardian are asking the question, is he the future of politics advising both Labour and the Tories on what they can and should be doing?

This all appears very state-the-obvious when you look at it like that. But how many of you aren’t translating or at least transmitting these and similar messages to your clients, products or team members?

Be the message about politics, services or products there are many learning’s to be taken from all this. If you believe the idea that Barak Obama was bought into and sold online, then marketed and distributed through the various channels, it isn’t too difficult to make the leap from person to service or product and introduce such aspects into a coherent holistic approach.

Companies need to get out and engage with their constituencies, seek them out in their various watering holes and feed into their needs and desires. Be this through email, forums, newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or Google it’s where people are and can be directly accessed, tracked, enthused and communicated to.

As Gensemer averred, online now sets the agenda for offline. What you say or do in the spaces that people inhabit online has a dramatic affect on how your message is picked up and distributed offline. Newspapers and TV hungry for stories and information are increasingly turning towards online media in a bid to keep up. This begs the question, how do you intend to use this to your advantage?

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