Selling OBAMA

I started typing this post as I watched the inauguration of the 44^th US President – Barack Obama. And like thousands of other people who have been writing about him for the past few months, I too am going to write about this event, this person and this outcome.

As I write this, I remember all that I have seen, heard or read about the great marketing campaign to catapult Obama to the presidency of the US. There have been enough and more articles about his great positioning, his terrific virals, his e-mail campaigns, of Obama's Twitter presence, his digital marketing, his websites, his TV campaigns…. and much more. For those who are interested, his social media statistics are mentioned at the end of this post, duly acknowledged.

But importantly and finally, Obama had to be "SOLD", and not just "Marketed". So as you can guess, this post is about "Selling" the product Obama, and not just "Marketing" it. I was privileged to hear and read highly respected marketing "Gurus" speak about marketing brand Obama. And all through, I kept on trying to get the answer – how did the Obama "Sale" finally happen? I am sharing here how I have perceived this whole process as an ever learning "Salesman". Readers will have to pardon me if I refer to Obama as "Product". I use this phrase only because I am looking at a purely "Sales" perspective here.

Once posed with this question, I began digging more, and came out with not only the social media statistics, but also importantly, the on-ground statistics of the two campaigns. Of the many statistics, I am presenting 2 interesting ones:

1. The table below shows the number of campaign offices opened by the 2 candidates in certain states:

State	Barack Obama	John McCain
AK	4	0
MI	40	No Data
MO	30	10
MT	6	No Data
OH	18	8
PA	18	No Data
VA	20	6

2. The second table below is even more interesting. It lists the number of events within 100 miles of specific US zip codes:

courtesy: www.thedailypage.com

US Zip Code	Obama Events	McCain Events
45416 (Dayton, OH),	492	22
43963 (Tiltonsville, OH)	231	21
48701 (Akron, MI)	205	22
45203 (Cincinnati, OH)	435	23
6607 (Topeka, KS)	54	6
75968 (Pineland, TX)	3	3
44127 (Cleveland, OH)	243	33
95903 (Beale AFB, CA)	320	23
12985 (Schuyler Falls, NY)	55	4
73503 (OK)	21	6
73105 (Oklahoma City, OK)	30	7
62205 (Centreville, IL)	84	4
12979 (Rouses Point, NY)	41	3
81152 (San Luis, CO)	22	1
29105 (Monetta, SC)	84	1
50660 (New Hartford, IA)	103	0
76105 (Fort Worth, TX)	67	12
84314 (Honeyville, UT)	389	1
61605 (Peoria, IL)	30	0

CONCLUSIONS: What do the statistics above suggest? Obama clearly had more Effort going in. Whether it was on the ground or on social media. Obama was clearly OUT-SELLING McCain. On election day, more Obama followers were voting than McCain voters. Obama garnered support of more volunteers than McCain. He was more visible to customers – not just through TV or print campaigns, but importantly through his volunteers, meeting people one-to-one, braving the heat, the cold the rain.

They were his SALES TEAM. Meeting more customers. Generating a larger pipeline. Improving his chances of conversion because of sheer numbers.

Brand OBAMA was as much created through a great strategy, great positioning (Yes We Can), as through Superior Execution, a focused, more coordinated effort, more calls being made, more sms messages being sent, creating more followers ..... everything was more.

Well, tell me what you think about this, if you are not already bored with reading the reams and reams of articles already written about OBAMA.

Annexure : Social Media Statistics for US Presidential Campaign.

Courtesy: www.web-strategist.com

Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters  McCain: 620,359 supporters

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161   McCain: Friends: 217,811

Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993

Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603

Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

1,000: The number of phone banks organized by volunteers using MyBO in the final week of the campaign.

150,000: The number of other campaign-related events organized on MyBO over the course of the campaign.

1 million: The number of phone calls supporters made using MyBO on election day alone.

35,000: The number of groups created by supporters on MyBO. These were clumped by geographic proximity and shared interests.

1.5 million: The number of MyBO accounts created by election day.

$650 million and counting: The amount of money Obama raised, more than half of it through his website.

Sphere: Related Content

Display of Sincerity

Three Incidents impacted me last week. I am writing about 2 of them today, and the third one I shall write later.

I was travelling most of last week meeting customers, trying to push sales, create new openings and explore customers / segments which will offer business opportunity. One of these calls was a formal presentation to an Architectural house - a very important call. We had a fairly large team from our side to take care of various product verticals. Among our group was one individual with an unshaven chin and wearing sports shoes to work. He is a promising young fellow in our team, and has come in with very good references. He has a good record of customer service and is generally liked by customers. But his attire sure did upset me a little.

Pix by hyougushi

The Other incident was at Bangalore airport. All flights are running empty these days and passengers are few. As I approached the counter of the airline I was flying, I saw that the 3 check-in clerks at the counter were involved in a friendly banter and I my walking in on thier banter perhaps served as a slight intrusion. On my right was another set of counters belonging to another airline. This airline too had no passengers at the moment, but all counters were manned, and each person appeared either busy working, with a couple of them always eagerly awaiting customers so that they could greet them with a warm smile and smoothly process their check-in.

Mind you, my own check-in was extremely smooth and the staff was polite and nice to me. But I found a subtle difference in the approach. While the other airline appeared sincere and friendly, the staff on the airline I was flying was only friendly. While it is great to have fun at the work place, I thought it was equally important to convey a message of being sincere in approach. The second airline seemed very sincere and determined to ensure that any customer walking in would be treated like Royalty and made to feel extremely welcome. They ensured that a lack of work was not visible to the customers.

I have been thinking about these two incidents over the weekend. If I was a customer, I would carry an image of "casual" about the employees and effectively, the company.

While being casual may have been ignored in the frenzy of work going on during the boom times, during a slow-down, this is simply a no-no. Customers will give business to those individuals and companies they like. And first and foremost, they will like sincerity.

Sincerity has to be VISIBLE now. In every action, in every e-mail, in every telephone call and in every aspect of your persona.

In our next post, we will explore sincerity further. In the meanwhile, tell me your views on sincerity. Share few stories where sincerity impacted you. This sharing will be of great learning value to other readers.

Let us together spread Hope and Faith and conquer fear and dispair. Sphere: Related Content