Wondering how people feel about the Federal government’s intervention in General Motors? We were too.
If you want to know how many times the words “General Motors” have been used online, there are lots of folks who can help you. If you’re interested in the polling results of this site or that one, there are plenty to choose from.
But if you want to understand what the online conversation really means, you might be interested in this…
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Companies are rapidly adopting web 2.0 technologies as they see consumer opinion affecting their brands and marketing campaigns. When 41% of bloggers post about brands they love or hate, companies sit up and take notice. Their efforts to engage in the dialogue—from J&J’s Motrin Mom babywearing campaign to Chris Brogan’s sponsored blog post for KMart—are heavily reported on as large brands and consumers struggle to define the appropriate terms of engagement.
Comparatively little attention is being paid to the government’s move to engage with citizens using similar technologies. The new administration is interacting with citizens online as a logical extension of the Obama campaign’s successes with new media outreach. Recent developments include Change.gov’s eliciting citizens’ stories of giving back to communitites, implementing Open ID for commenters, switching to a permissive Creative Commons license, and creating an iPhone app.
These activities are breaking new ground for the private and public sectors, and the drastically reduced cost of web 2.0 technologies has the effect of leveling the playing field. It will be interesting to see the successes and inevitable missteps as corporations and the government use new media to encourage and measure constituency engagement.
The two weeks since the election have been filled with theories about what, precisely, fueled the Obama victory. Technophiles and social media gurus have been quick to connect the dots between the huge gap in the youth vote (Obama led McCain among the under thirty crowd by a 2-to-1 margin) and the Obama campaign’s extensive use of “hip” technologies to announce his running mate, raise money, and defend himself.
It is a joke to assume that every one of Barack Obama’s 3,164,379 Facebook friends voted for him. The lesson behind the punchline is that “friending” is a lesser commitment than voting―but the latter is fostered by the former. The real takeaway for brand managers is not the Obama campaign’s use of the internet to make news or to raise money; it is its use of the internet as a way to turn semi-interested supporters into devoted, uber-committed brand evangelists―especially via fightthesmears.com―that we find most exciting.
To paraphrase Mack Collier, brand evangelists are committed to your brand to the extent that they are willing to go the extra mile in order to see the brand succeed. The Obama campaign recognized that whether the “extra mile” is spent driving a bit further to a beloved local book store or walking down a stretch of sidewalk knocking on doors for your candidate, the principle is the same.
What’s the next “brand” challenge for Obama? Obama has set the bar high by connecting directly with voters to drive evangelism/engagement. It’s an entirely new order of magnitude―and perhaps an important measure of success―to maintain this connection as he transitions from campaigning to governing.
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