Obama And Power Of Social Media

The European Business Review

Obama and the power of social
media and technology

This case was prepared by Victoria Chang under the supervision
of Professor Jennifer Aaker as the basis for class discussion rather
than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an
administrative situation. Contributors included Joe Rospars,
Chris Hughes, Sam Graham-Felsen, KateAlbright-Hanna, Scott
Goodstein, Steve Grove, Randi Zuckerberg, Chloe Sladden and
Brittany Bohnet.

I

n early 2007, Barack Obama was a
little-known senator running for president against Democratic nominee and
household name, Hilary Clinton. But on November 4, 2008, Obama, 47, was the first African American to win the election against Republican candidate, John McCain, becoming
the 44th president ofthe United States.
Obama won by nearly 200 electoral and
8.5 million popular votes. A major success
factor was how Obama’s campaign used
social media and technology as an integral
part of its strategy, to raise money, and, more
importantly, to develop a groundswell of
empowered volunteers who felt they could
make a difference. Obama won by “… converting everyday people into engaged andempowered volunteers, donors and advocates through social networks, e-mail advocacy, text messaging and online video. The
campaign’s proclivity to online advocacy is a
major reason for his victory”1 (Exhibit 1).
Obama’s campaign garnered 5 million
supporters on social networks. By November 2008, Obama had approximately 2.5 million (some sources say 3.2 million2) Facebook
supporters,outperforming McCain by nearly
four times. Obama had over 115,000 follow-

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May - June 2010

ers on Twitter, more than 23 times those of
McCain. Fifty million viewers spent 14 million
hours watching campaign-related videos on
YouTube, four times McCain’s viewers.3 The
campaign sent out 1 billion e-mails, including 10,000 unique messages targeted at specific segments of their 13-million memberlist. The campaign had garnered 3 million

A major success factor for
Obama’s victory was how
Obama’s campaign used
social media and technology as an integral part of
its strategy, to raise money, and, more importantly,
to develop a groundswell
of empowered volunteers
who felt they could make
a difference.

mobile and SMS subscribers. On Election
Day alone, supporters received threetexts
(Exhibit 2).4
The campaign’s social network, www.
my.barackobama.com (MyBO), allowed individuals to connect to one another and activate themselves on behalf of the campaign.
Two million profiles were created. Registered
users and volunteers planned over 200,000
offline events, wrote 400,000 blog posts, and
created 35,000 volunteer groups. Obama
raised $639 million from 3 milliondonors,
mostly through the Internet.5 Volunteers
on MyBO generated $30 million on 70,000
personal fundraising pages.6 Donors made
6.5 million donations online, totaling more
than $500 million. Of those donations, 6
million were in increments of $100 or less,
the average being $80. The average donor
gave more than once. The campaign not
only used these tools more effectively than
othercandidates to organize, communicate,
and fundraise, but also leveraged them to
support its grassroots strategy that tapped
into the hearts of the voters. What resulted
was both a victory for the Democrats and
Obama, and the legacy of one of the most
effective Internet marketing plans in history,
where social media and technology enabled
the individual to activate and participate in
a movement.The Beginning
Hiring Right
In January 2007, Obama hired 25-year-old
Joe Rospars to work on the tools and systems
that were not technology related. Rospars
had started Blue State Digital7 while working
on the Dean campaign: “It was frustrating
to see people want to get involved, but not

be able to get involved,” he said. The Obama
campaign had just hired Kevin Malover,
founding...