This past weekend, Barack Obama announced he was filing the appropriate papers with the Federal Election Commission. Making the announcement using a handful of social media tools including an online video, he began his campaign for 2012 – only a scant 19 months before the election will actually take place. This is going to be a fascinating presidential election – and I don’t mean because of the politics and potential candidates – although those stand to offer a wealth of interesting and hilarious anecdotes, as well. To a PR person, the election is a great case study on the evolution of communication strategy, messages, social media tools and media outlets.
If you look back in time, 2004 was the year of the political blogging revolution. I had a solid half-dozen political bloggers on my daily must-read list throughout the election season. Who didn’t read Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette? Hilarious. For those of you who were either asleep or twelve at that time, the New York Times has a great article here that effectively describes the changing media landscape during that election.
And cut to four years later: the 2008 election year was most interesting from a communications perspective for Barack Obama’s use of social media. I wasn’t surprised in the least when I learned that that the Obama for America campaign took home two top prizes at the Cannes Lion International Advertising Awards in 2009, in part because of the campaign’s use of Twitter. It was a pretty bold – and smart – move for the campaign, as Twitter was just starting to take off.
The 2012 election is going to be even more interesting to watch. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will, no doubt, play a key role in organizing supporters and getting the message out. Will geo-location services like FourSquare and Faceboook Places be the talked about technology applications of the day? Will the election drive paid subscriptions for the New York Times, and perhaps various political blogs as well? I guess we’ll all find out over the next 19 months, stay tuned.
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