Obama leverages social media to become “The Great Communicator, Jr.”
Ronald Reagan was known as “The Great Communicator.” Barrack Obama will have a similar legacy. Agree with him or not, the man is a powerful communicator which gives him and his party a tremendous advantage in selling ideas. Barrack leveraged technology and social media to extend his reach to his audience. Blog posts mentioning Barrack outnumbered his opponent 3 to 1. Barrack had 24 times the followers on Twitter than McCain, which means Barrack had a much more engaged and energized constituency. As noted by Phil Ayres, Barrack’s vision and leadership played a large part in mobilizing his supporters (you can’t have influence with people if they don’t trust you). But vision and leadership aside, he leveraged technology to spread his message at historical levels. And this trend will continue…
Traditionally, the president gives a weekly radio address to the nation. If you happen to be standing next to a radio when he gives the address, or when it’s played back, you get to hear it. Personally, I’ve never heard a single radio address…I don’t listen to talk radio. I’ve heard clips played back, but I’ve never heard the full thing. Now, Obama announced he’ll do his weekly updates via YouTube. What does this mean? It means that people will now subscribe to his weekly messages and play them back at their own convenience. It means millions more people will have Obama staring them in the eye each week. It means Obama will be able to make the hard sells to the American people to get things done, much like Reagan did. It also confirms that traditional television is no longer the primary medium for spreading news and ideas. Pure genius. I really don’t agree with his world view and a lot of his policy objectives, but I admire his intelligence and style. Technology is changing everything…politics, business, social life, everything.
November 16th, 2008 at 9:21 am
When I saw this address on you tube from “The Office of the President Elect” I knew he was playing a different game and that most all of Washington had no clue what it was let alone the rules of the game. It is going to be interesting watching him over the next four years becuase I think so many new rules are going to be written. Remember the presidential radio address of the 40’s that was such a mainstay of America today its only for back water cow towns. TV is headed down the same path but that is just one of many things about to change.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It’s a little sad that we’re calling someone a “Great Communicator” in this era of social media when he makes a speech on TV. Eisenhower did that — Obama is just using a different form factor for delivery.
How about if there were interactive bits, polls, images, choices the viewer could make, feedback that was reported, agree/disagree buttons you could push in real time, link-outs to more drill down on each topic, etc.
Yes, it’s nice he’s putting a speech on YouTube. But if you wanted that from Bush, you could have just set up a $50 video camera at the microphone and then uploaded it. I was expecting a little more from the Obama campaign.