It's All Politics

In an article entitled “Non-Stop News” featured in this week’s New Yorker, Ken Alletta presents the argument that Obama was able to market himself successfully to the country during the 2008 election by being selective on the media outlets he spoke with, and through social-networking. This process enabled Obama to build a character or create a presentation of himself he wanted the world to see.

Alletta quoted Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, with this statement “Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allowed the campaign to ‘go around the filter’ of the press--an obsession in The Obama White House.” Obama used social networks to help shift the focus of potential scandals. When the press questioned his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama made a speech illuminating the issue of race in America. Millions of people watched this speech on YouTube. While Obama didn’t personally post the video, he wrote a good speech that shifted the focus off of himself to the broader topic of race and these words received mass-distribution through YouTube.

Book Publicist, Greg Mowery spoke with our Marketing class and triggered a little bit of a debate in our online marketing class with his comment against online book marketing. Mowery spoke specifically about finding scandal or controversy in a book and then presenting that information to the media. Mowery incapsulated this idea with the statement “get straight to the sex.” Unlike the Obama campaign, Mowery does not have the automatic attention of the media. He often must create press for a book through scandal and gossip.

Obama had the attention of the world and in this position he was able to pick and choose media sources. Once his story was presented to a selected media, social networks acted as catalysts to get this information to the public.

The difference between marketing a book and a presidential candidate is vast. For one thing the release of a book is not necessarily a life changing event. Online marketing/social-networks can be effective for books. The problem is the task of creating enough buzz for a book or press to gain an internet audience. If controversy is created for a book in the papers or on TV then people will search the internet and potentially look at social-networks involving the book/author/publisher. The problem is getting the public to care enough to search this material out. This problem is magnified for small presses that don’t have any pull with the media or consider Oprah a personal contact. To create press for their book they must try at a more local level, such as through weeklies like The Portland Mercury.