Obama Campaign’s Internet Strategies a Key Reason for Success

November 12, 2008
by Lindsay Hodges Anderson

Effective use of advertising and the Internet were two key reasons for the Obama campaign’s success, according a panel of Institute of Politics (IOP) fall fellows.

Former Iowa Gov. Thomas Vilsack, Internet strategy expert Nicco Mele, and political consultants Jennifer Donahue and Alex Castellanos discussed the successes and weaknesses of both presidential campaigns during a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum Monday (Nov. 10) night. The panel was moderated by IOP Director Bill Purcell.

The fellows analyzed the huge role the Internet played in Obama’s campaign – from fund raising to network building. Mele said he believes Obama’s team will continue leveraging the Internet throughout his presidency and thereby continue to engage American youth.

“Obama built an incredible national infrastructure by combining the Internet and his field operations,” said Mele. “And I fully imagine he’s going to figure out how to use that to ask people to do their part and to help bring about his agenda. The day after he was elected he launched change.gov… it was meant to set a tone that the Internet has a central and critical role in this coming administration.”

Purcell asked the panel their opinions on Obama’s 30-minute television spot which ran in the final days of the campaign, and about the style of both campaigns’ advertisements in the race.

“There were a lot of firsts in this campaign,” Donahue said. “One was that negative campaigning didn’t work.”

GOP consultant Castellanos complimented Obama’s campaign on its consistent messaging and said people learned a lot about Obama’s personality because of that – a sentiment that Vilsack echoed.

“The concerns I had about McCain’s ads – it seems like it was a different issue every week,” said Vilsack. “Obama’s ads had a consistency about them.”

Castellanos said McCain was simply not the candidate people looked to for sweeping change and that he did not focus his campaign thoroughly enough on the future as Obama did.

“John McCain has many great strengths,” he said. “But I do think he could have run a better campaign about how to get to the future… [Obama’s] great gift has always been… that great gift of vision.”

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