A great example of influencer outreach
From time to time I tell about a particularly bad job of doing influencer outreach at me. But I don’t directly balance those stories with examples of good outreach targeted at me. There are multiple reasons for this, including:
- My “How to pitch me” post was already arrogant enough. I don’t want to repeatedly conflate “This is how I like to be dealt with” and “This is how you should deal with analysts in general.”
- The nature of my business is such that, by the time I’m having a particularly good relationship with a company, there’s probably something confidential going on, or at least something I should be careful discussing in public.
As an alternative, I’d like to share a particularly good example of outreach I just discovered in the political sphere. Read more
| Categories: Barack Obama, Marketing communications, Political marketing | 25 Comments |
Enterprise IT marketing — a layered messaging model
Two things matter about marketing messages:
- Do people believe you?
- Do they care?
It’s easy to meet one or the other of those criteria. What’s tricky is satisfying both at once.
Many marketing consultants, me included, would phrase the core messaging challenge in terms such as:
What’s the most compelling claim you can make that people will actually find credible?
| Categories: About this blog, Analyst relations, Barack Obama, Layered messaging models, Marketing theory, Technology marketing | 13 Comments |
Obama’s polls/results gap may show the opposite of what people think it does
Barack Obama did much worse in the New Hampshire primary than polls suggested he would. As the night unfolded, analysts started relating this to similar events in other races featuring black candidates, such as Tom Bradley’s and Doug Wilder’s campaigns for the governorships of California and Virginia respectively. Evidently, Americans are more eager to be perceived as voting for an African-American than they are to actually vote for one.
If that interpretation is correct, and I think it is, there are two major ways of explaining the phenomenon.
- Hidden racism – people are ashamed to admit to being racists, but in the secrecy of the voting booth let their true feelings show.
- The virtue of supporting a minority – people are eager to be perceived as pro-diversity. But in the secrecy of the voting booth they pick the candidate they really want, with race being set aside.
Theory #1 is the conventional wisdom, but a key piece of evidence supports Theory #2 instead. Read more
| Categories: Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Political marketing | Leave a Comment |
Marketing change in the Democratic primaries, Part 4 – is it a wise strategy?
As I’ve discussed in three prior posts, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign truly revolves around a message of “change.” This has obviously been a successful strategy for him. So does that mean his rivals are right to try to blur his message or steal his thunder?
I think so, for each of John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, albeit for different reasons. Read more
| Categories: "Change", Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Political marketing | 1 Comment |
Marketing change in the Democratic Primaries, Part 3 – implicit messaging
When discussing strategic messaging, it is often useful to draw a distinction between explicit messaging (essentially, what’s said outright, in words) and implicit messaging (everything else). I outlined the explicit change messages of Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards in a previous post. Now I’d like to highlight some of their (presumably conscious) implicit messaging that supports – or contradicts – their explicit claims.
Again, Obama leads the way. He at least creates the appearance of using a variety of modern internet technologies to communicate with his supporters, and ties this into a pledge to use technology to make government more transparent and responsive to its citizens. The photo section of BarackObama.com focuses on showing him with a broad range of “ordinary” people. Read more
| Categories: "Change", Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Political marketing | 2 Comments |
Marketing change in the Democratic Primaries, Part 2 – competing definitions
Barack Obama is running almost purely as the candidate of change, and has been for his whole political career. Accordingly, he has the most complex, multi-faceted, and well-developed change message of any major candidate in either party, even ahead of libertarian/survivalist Republican Ron Paul.
When I visited BarackObama.com on Sunday, the first three slogans I saw were
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“Change we can believe in” (his overall campaign tagline)
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“New Hampshire – Our time for change has come”
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“I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington … I’m asking you to believe in yours.”
And it continues from there. Obama has been active in various return-the-government-to-the-people kinds of issues – campaign finance reform, a search engine of government information (which he presented on the debate as a big deal), and so on. His “Let’s be united, not divided” message is couched in terms of change. His recent book title “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” is full of words with connotations of change. He calls himself a “progressive.” He even compares himself to Martin Luther King. And his campaign hardly shies away from the suggestion that Obama’s very skin color would, if he were elected, represent dramatic change.
John Edwards’ message is similar, but at its core he’s pushing a narrower, classically populist concept of “change.” Read more
| Categories: "Change", Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Political marketing | 1 Comment |
Marketing change in the Democratic Primaries, Part 1 — different approaches
At Saturday’s New Hampshire debate among four Democratic contenders – Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Barack Obama, and John Edwards – the central theme was change. All the Democratic candidates agreed on four basic concepts:
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Change from the Bush Administration is paramount.
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Change has something to do with helping the poor, the working class, and children.
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Change in Iraq policy – specifically, bringing US troops home from Iraq – is mandatory.
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Change in health care insurance is important.
No surprises so far – the first three are obvious Democratic positions, and the fourth has been a major Democratic theme since early in the Bill Clinton Administration.
But the debate also highlighted considerable disagreement and competition to further define what “change” entails. Read more
| Categories: "Change", Barack Obama, Campaign 2008, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Political marketing | 1 Comment |