Obama 2.0: notes from the morning at Adam Street

Last week I was a participant in the Digital Training Co’s event “Obama 2.0: Lessons in Social Media from the Obama Presidential Campaign held at Adam Street in London last week. The objective of the morning was to look at the Presedential campaign and see what lessons ther are for businesses. Now keeping in mind the obvious differences I think that we did in fact uncover some useful lessons; both strategic and tactical.

My slides and speaker’s notes are all on slideshare, I’ve blogged the transcript and I’ve also bookmarked most of the sites and articles I refer to on delicious.

I was fortunate enough to share the stage with some very impressive co-speakers and can’t possibly do their presentations justice – but a few notes from their presentations follow;

The morning kicked off with Candace Kuss from Hill and Knowlton who has been a long time Democrat and campaigner for both Kerry back in 04 and Obama in 08. There are two main things I got from Candace’s presentation and they’re things that one is inclined to forget in the excitement of the new and the social;

1. The democrats and progressive political activists have been using social media for a relatively long time and efforts like Dean’s blog, the fund raising site Act Blue and Moveon.org have all served to provide lessons for the Obama team as well as a foundation for Obama’s success with social media  from an already significant base of interest and support – on the shoulders of giants etc. The salutary lessons being test and learn and don’t try to start a brand new conversation – find an existing base and build from it.

2. Candace took us through the bewildering array of offline activity that the campaigns conduct – and the lesson is – social media doesn’t happen in a vacuum (doh!) – Obama’s campaign showed the significant results that can be achieved from a cohesive, integrated and really comprehensive campaign across many platforms and in many environments.

I then had a bit of a natter about our KUDOS planning framework and used it to analyse three elements of the Obama campaign. The main point I’d make was that in doing the KUDOS analysis it became quite clear that the needs and interests of Obama’s campaign and those of his supporters were Very Closely Aligned; Elect Obama as President. Not a cigarette paper between them as my grandfather would say. As brands it is worth thinking about what we are attempting to achieve through our social media activities – in doing so are our aims and those of our audience as closely aligned as those of the Obama campaign, or are we erring on the side of our own interests in the way that the MacCain and Clinton campaigns did?

Noah Koff from Mgen took us through a series of examples of the innovative ways that the campaign used mobile for interaction and retention including a remarkable 20M sms a month – and this in a market where sms has only recently really taken off – and a great and almost inevitable iPhone app.

Finally Alan Moore from SMLXL took us through a series of thoughts stitching together great examples, inspirational quotes and so many references I cursed him afterwards for blowing my reading list for the month. To add insult to injury Alan then pointed me to this excellent reading list on his site. You need to see Alan speak to get the full impact but one of the many quotes i feverishly scribbled down was from Woodrow Wilson and was just so apt given the presidential theme and the social media context: “The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.”

A great morning and a note book full of thoughts and ideas that will eventualy find their way to the pages of this blog. Eventually.