Recently, I read anarticle in PR Week about Barack Obama's win in the presidential election in relation to the field of public relations. The article explained that Obama's recent win has forevered altered how public relations is practiced, especially in political campaigns.
Obama's campaign was successful because it focused on developing a specific message: change. He focused on socially interactive commuinications, especially the Internet. In particular, Obama's campaign placed great mephasis on hsi web site and creating a presence on Facebook and Twitter.
While technological savviness should not affect election results, I think it did in the 2008 presidential election. Simply put, Obama's campaign was much more in step with current communications practices and trends. They ran a very integrated campaign; I received messaging from them via several mediums, including e-mail, text messaging, and Facebook. Certainly, Obama's campaign was superior to that of McCain in terms of communications.
The article can be found at: http://www.prweekus.com/Obamas-savvy-comms-propel-him-to-victory/article/120451/?DCMP=EMC-PRUS_Daily.
3 comments:
I think it's so interesting that media use in campaigns has gone beyond tv ads and television coverage. I think Obama reached the younger voter population because he used facebook and other social media to reach the public. It will be interesting to see how this campaign will effect future campaigning.
Obama's PR and his campaign was also really focused on grassroots efforts in cities where people went door to door and campaign centers were set up. Besides actual PR professionals, essentially every person campaigning for him was part of his PR team.
I just want to add to Lindsay's comment that essentially it is EVERYONE at the grassroots level who were Obama's PR workhorse. Even PR people often forget that the real power of PR is actually vested in everybody in an organization from janitors to the CEO. Everybody has a part in sending the same message, not only people with PR titles.
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