by Mark Silva
Barack Obama is "a successful brand.''
And the man who managed the president's election campaign told fellow marketers at a convention on the French Riviera, in Cannes, today that a combination of digital and grassroots marketing is responsible.
At the DDB Worldwide Audacity of Successful Brands Seminar, part of the 56th Cannes Lyons International Advertising Festival, Plouffe said that the former junior senator from Illinois had overcome "the longest of political long-shots'' to become the 44th president of the United States.
He did so by embracing the ability of the Internet and emails to start a dialog, Plouffe suggested, with a campaign that encouraged voters to talk with one another.
He also raised a lot of money, a runaway record, with that email database.
Some of the other successful brands big at this year's marketing festival:
(Photo of David Plouffe above, in Cannes, by Francois Durand / Getty Images) Poster of President Barack Obama by artist Shepard Fairey and an April 27, 2006, file photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama by Associated Press photographer Mannie Garcia at the National Press Club in Washington.)
Comments
This reminds of the Pet Rock craze of the 1970s - a whole lot of marketing and not a lot of substance
Posted by: Terry | June 25, 2009 9:19 PM
Rock/Barack, eh.
OK, Terry I get it. Very clever.
And you are right. Nothing for Replicans to be concerned about here, at all.
Just ignore Plouffe.
Pay no nevermind to anything he says.
The only significant thing he did recently was---
engineer the electoral coup of the century.
Posted by: ornery | June 26, 2009 10:13 AM
On the other hand, rocks are a substance.. A lot of marketing for a whole lot of hard substance. When you're party's dense like a rock--always sinking to the bottom of the swamp like a pile of rocks-- the god old times are always on one's mind. If in 2010/2012 anyone can bring back the rock craze it's the Republican party. After all, the short lived craze happened under a Republican President who came to office after that other short lived Republican President resigned. "Hard, and always sinking fast." Republican's revived. Let's not forget the others. "A rock in the hand is a stone in a glass house" and "Rock the axis of evil cradle, and when in doubt sandblast."
Posted by: East Coast Canary | June 26, 2009 12:40 PM
Ornery,
Didn't even consider the rock and Barack pun. My thought on this was Americans fall far good marketing schemes all the time. The pet rock example was no different than BO - no substance to either
Posted by: Terry | June 26, 2009 7:58 PM
I'll remember who said this later today, but here's what he said (and it has some truth to it):
American electorate has a giant collective "sleepy eye".
Rarely awakened and alert.
But when a really important national election is coming up, there comes a brief moment in time that that collective eye opens and takes an incredibly precise photograph of the political landscape.
(Sort of like the Leica 50 mm Summilux lens.)
And that moment of ocular truth occured in 2008 about the second week of
September.
And the electorate voted based on that photograph.
R.I.P. Republican Party.
Posted by: ornery | June 27, 2009 10:47 AM
President Obama campaign is one of my favorite case study for my branding class I'm taking. It was such a cool campaign!!
Posted by: Grassroots marketing | August 6, 2009 2:26 PM