The true click in history

Traducción al inglés del artículo publicado en Revista Debate.

INTERNET AND POLITICS
The true click in history

The campaign that took Barack Obama to the White House marked a before and after in the history of political communication. The use of the Internet as a weapon for citizen participation, converting it into the principal mode of communication with and between users (voters) allowed him to obtain exceptional results.

In Argentina the fascination produced by this phenomenon didn’t help to identify Obama’s true digital strategy – his axis- and now that attempts to copy it have rapidly followed suit a la youtubeesque which had one of its star performances on that video site, but not the real brains of the team. Facebook, You Tube, My Space and Twitter were the highlighted goal scorers which occupied the front pages of Monday’s newspaper but the player that served up the winning pass has been completed overlooked by the cameras.

This is why understanding which were the true landmarks and virtues of Obama’s digital strategy should be the first step in the rush to imitate his success.

A numerous digital team conducted by David Plouffe and consisting of a multidisciplinary staff, with a large investment of millions of dollars and over two years work gave rise to this historic click. It wasn’t just the enthusiasm of a good number of people nor the decision to bet on new techniques but the arduous graft, immense resources (and priorizing the investment in these new media) and a strategy that began two years prior to the election day.

Obama was not the first candidate to use the Internet to receive donations or to connect with the electorate. But he was the first to create a strategy that integrated existing media to communicate a simple and concise message (Change and Yes We Can) in order to meet his objectives. He understood above all else that Internet should be a media channel to motivate an electorate to enter into action and to help him on his campaign trail, organizing it.

That is why his digital team created the a key campaign axis tool: MyBo (My Barack Obama). This space – inside the campaign website – enabled the registration of people that wished to be a part of the project and from there organized them to make the change possible.

MyBo reunited more than a million individuals that interacted online, sharing ideas, receiving news and campaign updates, seeing before anyone else the campaign TV spots and commenting on them, creating their own support blogs and receiving messages directly from Obama in their e-mail. Over and above all this it brought them together in face to face dialogue. Via this tool they were invited to meetings in nearby locations, events and campaign activities. John lives close to your home and is interested in collaborating with the campaign; why not meet up and invite five more from the neighborhood?

Starting with the premise that this campaign is about you and your capacity to change things the most important collective force in the history of campaigning was created. In this form a multitude of followers that worked on the campaign became the first world army of digital militants.

In addition the campaign raised 750 million dollars from among four million individual donors, the greatest amount ever in American history. This tripled the sum raised by the Republican rival John McCain. Obama harvested more than 3 million “friends” on Facebook and today that figure is now over 6 million. He was present everywhere (Obama everywhere) people congregated, open to dialogue in the multiple social networks.

Today, now in Government, Obama’s digital strategy continues on course. The launch of Recovery.gov a site that allows one to follow by the instant the destination of the anti-crisis funds or the recent space created inside the White House (www.whitehouse.gov/openforquestions) to receive questions that will be answered by Obama (who now has more than 100 thousand queries) are just a few of the examples. In addition from his personal site the President is promoting political participation. He invites the American people to call their Congress representatives to support his legislative proposals.

In Argentina, until now the digital activity of the candidates starts just a few months prior to the elections and finalizes on the day they are elected. They do not promote a dialogue but rather a unidirectional message. They are still a long way away from taking advantage of the potential of a network that across the country now unites over 15 million people.