Dear readers,

Barack Obama is officially elected the 44th president of United States!

When two political powers clash in a contest to be the most powerful man in the nation, it takes a huge amount of effort to come up top.

Marketers around the world has got to give credit to Obama and his team for the brilliant use of the Internet to give themselves to promote their campaign. This is probably the best case study ever, demostrating the power of the Internet in international marketing.

Here are some examples of how Obama used the Internet to propel himself into presidency, reinventing the way campaigns are run with modern tools.

Updated information, 24/7

People who wanted to know more about Barack Obama were able to find out more about his accomplishments and the policies that he were pushing for in his website. Obama’s website also kept its supporters and the nation updated with the latest happenings of his campaign through streaming videos, photos and blog postings.

Fundraising

Volunteers used Obama’s website to organise over 150,000 campaign-related events over the entire course of the campaign. Over a thousand phone-banking events and online donations helped Obama raise a record-breaking US$600 million fund for his campaign in contributions from more than three million people.

Combat Against Rumors

Like all political campaigns, rumors about politicians are bound to spread like wild fire, be it intentional or not. In a large country such as the United States, it is not an easy task to combat rumors and politicians typically either choose to have a press statement to refute these rumors, or ignore it completely which could be a disastrous move.

Obama again made use of the Internet to combat rumors. The team launched the website, FightTheSmears.com to provide the facts about the rumors about Obama and his campaigns. The website also served long with many other internet action groups to collect and refute rumors as quickly as they come.

Obama’s online initiatives have helped touched the hearts and minds of the nation on a very large and cost-effective scale. This soon-to-be textbook example of empowerment through people and technology goes to show that the Internet is the right way to go for businesses to market themselves.