The Buzz around Barack...

President Barack Obama has been in office for almost two months now and there are still people talking about the viral marketing that he used during his race to become president. He created a unique viral marketing campaign that simply got people talking, created a buzz. This was never been done in politics before.

He wanted to reach out to the group that always has the lowest turn out rate for voting, the age group 18-24 years old. He realized that non traditional methods would have to be used. To connect with this age group he would have reach out to them on the virtual communities such as MySpace and Facebook. This has been the first campaign to aggressively tap into social networks. He was also the first politician to use the Internet to extend his reach to this extent. More than 10 million of Obama's second quarter contributions were made online.

Internet fundraising has many advantages such as it's cheap and very effective. Obama's marketing team gave a new meaning to this. One of Obama's bundlers started a website online that asked people to donate depending on how tall they were. He asked for $10 for every foot and $1 for every inch. Many people ended up donating much more, unless or course the majority of donations were coming from people that were seven feet tall. This creates buzz...

One reason why Obama is appearing at dozens of low-dollar campaign events around the country, such as a $25-a-head rally in Minneapolis on June 29, which has sold 3,000 tickets. He has held an online raffle in which those who gave at least $5 could win a chance to be part of a dinner for five with Obama. This creates buzz...

Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate to puchase ad space in a video game. His face appeared on billboards and on backboards of games such as NFL Live. This creates buzz...





Numerous videos were created by advocates for Barack Obama. Will I Am created a video using many other celebrities to endorse him. He mimicked certain ideas and phrases from some of Obama's speeches in his song. This creates buzz...

Check out this video with interivew with Philip Kotler. He's a marketing guru and speaks of the marketing lessons we can take away from Obama's marketing campaign.
Obama was able to established two key lessons from this video: high touch and high tech.





These are just a few of the ways that Obama dominated in marketing during his presidential race. Let's see what other unique tactics he uses throughout his term.

A Little Intro

I have been reading a lot about blogging over the last little while so I finally decided to create one. I am currently in my last year of university at McMaster University getting a degree in Commerce. Over the years I have taken a variety of marketing courses that have all increased my desire to be in marketing.

I completed a one year internship at a company in the automotive industry. This internship gave me great insight into the marketing at a corporate level. I was able to get some exposure to working with advertising agencies, which I found very interesting. The company I worked for had yet to really engage in e marketing tactics. This is when I began reading about what other companies are doing online and how they are gaining a competitive edge by taking advantage of new technologies available to connect with customers. I began sharing things I was learning with the team I was working with. Unfortunately they were resistant to change and unsure that these new tactics were successful. This increased by desire to learn more about digital marketing and different e marketing tactics. For this reason, I enrolled in e marketing courses to further increase my knowledge on a more professional level.

This blog is about sharing unique creative ideas that companies have used to engage customers online. There is so much going on in the digital world that people and companies can take advantage of.

I hope you enjoy these ideas.... the digital sense the has been invading the web.