Lessons for Advancement from Obama for America

I chose to watch NBC at home: I didn’t trust that CNN or Hulu wouldn’t crash. [Here are some impressive numbers: CNN served 13.9 million live video streams globally from 6:00 a.m. to noon yesterday and as of noon, Obamas Facebook Fan Page had more than 4 million fans and in excess of 500,000 wall posts.] I’ll confess: I was moved and am more enthusiastic and hopeful about the future of our country than I’ve ever been in my adult life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what those of us who work for colleges and universities-in communications, marketing, branding, alumni relations, campaigns-can learn from the Obama campaign. There are a lot of takeaways, some of them not really intuitive.

In fact, the new issue of CASE Currentscontains Yes You Can: What can advancement learn from the Obama campaign, which you can read now if you have a CASE member ID that allows you to log in to the site.

The article makes some good points about the campaign, reporting, for example, how MyBarackObama.com (MyBO) extended the campaign’s reach. For example, here’s Rich Mintz, VP for strategy from Blue State Digital, the company considered the technological mastermind of Obamas campaign:

Even more significant, MyBO did a good job of capturing online energy and channeling it into real-world action, Mintz says, by enabling supporters to find other like-minded voters in their community. MyBO linked to 16 different social networks, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr, so supporters could easily join an already established online community or special interest group, such as Pennsylvania Women for Obama or Jon Stewart and Obama Enthusiasts. Backers could also create their own groups. 

You might have read some of this kind of stuff before. I’ve been amassing (and I chose that word deliberately since there’s been so much written about this already) articles and links about the campaign’s use of technology since last year. Just about any of the numbers is staggering.

But let’s take a breath and think about some of the key lessons for advancement. Here are some of my thoughts about what we can learn from the Obama campaign.

Lesson 1: This never would have happened without a cause so compelling that people were willing to invest heart and soul in making it a reality.

Without the right cause, all the technology in the world won’t do you any good. Many of those who were involved in the Obama campaign believed that America was nearly at the point of no return—things were so bad that our nation desperately needed change to occur for us to survive. So, when a charismatic leader with a brilliant organizing strategy emerged, they were ready to follow him.

Can you provide a cause so compelling that it will mobilize hundreds of volunteers to work selflessly toward making it a reality? What are your stakeholders passionate about? Can you offer them a vision that has the possibility of transforming your institution-and then deliver it? Because if you adopt the strategies of Obama for America and succeed, you’ll have a large group of connected stakeholders who are really invested in what happens on campus-and you don’t want to disappoint them.

Lesson 2: Be prepared to lose control.

Everyone involved in the Obama campaign-and astute observersagreed that the genius of the campaign was that it empowered volunteers to organize themselves and to make decisions. Many of the choices the Obama campaign made, from their technology rollout to the organizing strategy embodied in the “Camp Obama” volunteer trainings, were focused on giving ordinary volunteers the technology, the training, and the authority to run their own campaign. In Texas, for example, the campaign could identify Obama supporters, email them, and train them to organize and run their own campaign officesbefore the Clinton campaign had a single organizer in the state. The campaign technology strategy, embodied in MyBarackObama.com, gave individuals technology to communicate with people in their network-or their town.

Joe Trippi, who is credited with putting together Howard Dean’s campaign, said that the days of the old-style, top-down campaign are over. And, indeed, one consequences of Obama for America’s grass roots, online/offline strategy is that though they worked hard to establish the campaign theme and spread this meme, once it was released, the central Obama campaign team no longer had the ability to control the campaign’s message. They were prepared for the consequences of this decision. Are you?

[And we still don’t know about the longer-term consequences of empowering so many voters. What will happen if large numbers of them decide that they don’t like the decisions President Obama is making?]

This empowerment extended even to campaign advertising. One of the great thing that happened during the campaign was that everyone from ordinary citizens to celebrities created their own campaign commercials, posters, t‑shirts, and other messages. [One of my favorites was the Tom Hanks endorsement, which was at times a bit uncomfortable to watch because Hanks was so nerdy.] Empowerment: you should be so lucky!

Lesson 3: All this technology-and the people to make it work-isn’t easy, or cheap.

Julius Genachowski, a high-tech entrepreneur who was one of the key technological masterminds behind the campaign, had a simple philosophy: “If we don’t build it, they won’t come.” According to reporting in Rolling Stone, Genachowski

… credits [David] Plouffe [Obama’s notoriously stingy campaign manager] for taking the leap of faith required to invest, on the front end, in pricey technology with no guarantee of return, and in ramping up the investment as the tools began to prove their worth.

How many capital campaigns-even ones of the >$1 billion variety-have seriously invested in databases and linked their back-end technology to a campaign website and associated social networks? To achieve the kinds of results that the Obama Campaign did, you need to!

Lesson 4: Brand Obama took a long time to build, and it is deeply rooted in Barack Obama’s self.

Much has been made of Brand Obama. Here’s just one recent example: Andrew Careaga pointed out yesterday:

How will Brand Obama fare in the global marketplace over the next four years? Today is the official rollout. Tomorrow, the product testing begins in earnest.

Andy links to a Fast Company articleabout Brand Obama—one of hundreds on this subject. Like all great branding, though, Brand Obama was about enhancing perceptions of the reality of Barack Obama.

Obama wasn’t a tabula rasa, after all. His two books-which he wrote himselfdepict his struggles to understand himself and to make sense of his heritage. His life and his career pathone of community service, rather than self-aggrandizement at a top law firm, on Wall Street, or in business-are symbolic of what seems to be his real interest in service to others. So the messages of his campaign, the constant refrain of “this is about you, it’s not about me” seems much more genuine and less rhetorical than when other politicians say the same thing. It’s not that I believe Obama is without ego, but that he seems to be authentic. [I know, there’s that word again!]

Here’s Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, a jaded reporter if there ever was one, writing about Obama on the campaign trail:

… Watching him at work, you realize that Obama’s remarkable success has almost nothing to do with the same-old product being marketed by the same-old political machine, and almost everything to do with the specific qualities of the individual who is selling it. The same stuff that sounded like hollow, invidious horseshit coming from Kerry and Gore sounds, as dispensed by Obama, like nothing less than a clarion call to collective action…. 

Given an authentic candidate, the campaign worked hard to make decisions that were congruent with Obama’s character and personality in continuing to build Brand Obama. Here’s just one example, again from Rolling Stone:

For those working under [David] Axelrod [the campaign’s senior strategist], many of whom are veteran Democratic staffers used to the old way of doing things, the long-term approach has taken some getting used to. “You think about your response to attacks twice more than you normally would,” says political direct-mail operative Pete Giangreco, a veteran of six other Democratic presidential campaigns. The emphasis, he adds, is “Let’s not try to win today in a way that screws us up for tomorrow. With Obama, you have to do this horrible thing: You have to treat voters like adults.” 

This has a couple of major implications: You can’t often pick your president or dean. Sometimes “you got to dance with them what brung you.” So part of your campaign strategy may be to tailor it to compensate for lack of charisma of your leader. Secondly, your institution needs to be working day in and day out on developing and communicating its brand—one that’s authentic and is genuinely embraced by the many individuals who make up your community. And then treat people like adults.

Lesson 5: Enough is enough.

If you were plugged in, you were contacted. A lot. I was a donor to the campaign; made calls; and canvassed before the election. I couldn’t handle all the email I got from the Campaign, MyBO, and my local Obama circle. I was glad I never signed up up for text messages—and that I’m not a big Facebook user. Because I just couldn’t handle any more contact.

In short, this is great stuff if the stakes are high and you have a cause that has has the potential to change a world that’s badly in need of help. But few advancement officers can offer those sorts of stakes to potential donors or other supporters. Be realistic about how much people care about your campaign-your “cause”-and how much contact they can tolerate. Because too much contact is sure to turn them off.

Lesson 6: Big + Small Contributions = Wow!

While Obama didn’t spend the kind of time that his rivals Hillary Clinton and John McCain did in chasing contributions from big donors, he didn’t turn large gifts away. But the campaign constantly made the point about the large number of small gifts they were receiving. Psychologically, this provided incentive for both small donors and large ones to give—and emphasized to everyone the broad base of the campaign’s support.

Here’s a thought about this from Bob Groves, who’s the Vice President for University Advancement at Michigan State University:

I think the Obama folks used classic campaign momentum strategies more than most realized … they had major donors and significant dollars came in through those means, but they emphasized the number of donors and small gifts to emphasize the importance of the broad base. They played the publicity angle exactly the opposite that we normally do … and I think it payed off in a number of ways for them. 

In short, we can benefit from leveraging the small donors and the big donors.

Lesson 7: Integration. Integration. Integration. 

I’m most impressed with how tightly integrated the campaign was, despite all the grass roots flavor. The technology made it possible for people to connect online—and offline. There was really no divide between the two realms. The campaign worked hard to build Brand Obama, but supporters connected to that brand in an authentic way and their stories reflected the brand and augmented it. It was all of a piece.

Note: There’s been a lot [!!] written about the Obama Campaign and I’m sure there will be more to come. Here are some of my favorites:

• My wife picked up a copy of the Barack Obama commemorative edition of Rolling Stone, which contains copies of articles written during the campaign. The same articles are online (links in the entry above), but having them in one place, in print, is helpful.
• The New York Times had some great articles on the campaign, including The Wiki-Way to the Nomination and a terrific profile of communications director Robert Gibbs.
• There’s a piece on Wired, Obama’s Secret Weapons: Internet, Databases and Psychology, that probed the campaign’s blend of online/offline.
• Business Weeks’ piece, It Takes Tech to Elect a President, is a succinct synopsis of the campaign’s technology.
• Guy Kawasaki links to Edelman PR’s The Social Pulpit, an analysis of the Obama Campaign’s use of social media.

Update: I corrected some typos and clarified a few points in the entry on 26 January.