Just yesterday, I turned in a paper on Best Practice in Conversational Campaign for my IE studies. Naturally, I chose for analysis Barack Obama’s one, which involved heavily campaigning in the digital channels. All good, but there was an angle I didn’t ponder on and a colleague immediately asked about (Thanks to E.!)… What happens next?
A bit of recap – Based on Change (thanks to President Bush and still on his website), Obama said/promised many things to the people throughout the campaign. He isn’t the first to use this new medium and for sure he won’t be the last. But for sure, the charismatic, well-spoken and simply different politician is the only one in the present day that showed us all how it is done. Nowadays, even European politicians are blogging, advertising, and/or profiling in social networks.
All good, votes counted and objective reached – Mr. Obama became the 44th President of USA. But what happens in 4 years time, when he has to fight for re-election? What happens with all the things he promised and they for one or another reason did not turn into reality? I mean they are all online. The thing about the net is that nothing ever goes completely off the charts. Good or bad, it stays there. For sure, our most popular friend (Google Search) and likes will have it stocked somewhere in a server farm waiting for that seeker to find it with the relevant keywording, post it in his blog or Facebook (Twitter, MySpace, etc.) and then the whole hell breaks loose. What would be the response of the Democrats to the attacks of the Republicans? Cause mark my word, they will be back “The Terminator” style campaigning in the virtual space (probably not like Mr. McCain’s team did). How one defends oneself when the whole situational analysis is some typing, reading, and clicking away? I would say, Mr. President, you might find yourself between the rock and the hard place.
So any ideas, Mr. President?
Copyright © 2009 Borislav Kiprin. All Rights Reserved.
