ADOI Blog

Ham – If Obama can admit he ‘Screwed Up’ so can we

admin2 on 03 16, 2009

Marketing lessons from the world’s most successful political campaign.

With the coming UMNO General Assembly and the spectre of how elections play out in the country’s biggest political party, thoughts of what Roger Fisk, Obama’s National Events Director, had to say about the politics of winning raced back to my mind. For a moment if we assume a political utopia in our midst for the next National General Elections slated for 2012, here are some lessons I have paraphrased from the Obama campaign for our local political pundits to ponder on…

The Younger Vote.
A recent online poll by the PULSE Group, commissioned by Marketing magazine asked 1,000 respondents across market centres if the power of Youth would play a big role in the next National Elections. And a unanimous 96% agreed that youth will play a decisive role in the 2012 general elections. A majority of the 4-million plus citizens who were not registered as voters at the time of the last election was in the age group between 21 and 35. Once they are convinced to be stakeholders in their political destiny, they will be the deciding vote.

Direct Talk.
Obviously, nothing beats honesty and straight talk. It reveals that after all we are human. “I’m frustrated with myself, with our team. … I’m here on television saying I screwed up,” Obama said in an interview on NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams. In reference to a couple of his key appointees, most notably former Senator Tom Daschle, Obama’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services who stepped down after news broke he failed to pay nearly $150,000 in back taxes. Even ad legend Bill Bernbach once said, “A little confession can get you a lot of compassion.”

Consistent Message.
As Roger Fisk said, “We never had to wonder what our message was as Senator Obama always knew exactly what he wanted to say and where he wanted to take the country.” So flip-flopping is out, and sticking to a central core message is in. Call it brutal honesty, but the PULSE poll show 71% of respondents feel our political players are detached from the realities of the day or what the electorate really wants.

Yesterday vs Tomorrow.
2012 will be a battle of yesterday against tomorrow and their respective ideologies. In the US elections patriotism, experience and accomplishments were about yesterday. And ‘tomorrow’ meant Hope and Change. Taking a leaf out of that, I’d say May 13 and communal politics is so yesterday. Tomorrow for us is about education, empowerment, openness and true independence of thought. Including inter-racial marriages.

New Media.
No lengthy explanation required. John McCain does not use email. Period. The rest are in the facts: On Facebook,
Obama has 2,379,102 supporters and McCain has 620,359 supporters. On MySpace, Obama has 833,161
friends and McCain 217,811 friends. On YouTube, Obama has 114,559 subscribers, McCain 28,419. And we wont even get into Twitter!

Low Base Donors vs Money Politics.
If Obama’s formula of getting supporters to contribute small amounts of US$5 or US10 to attend his rallies provided the impetus to raise US$100 million in 11 months, the days of money politics may be over. You just cannot fight the power of the citizenry adding to the pot and fighting the battle on fair grounds. Think how we’re already dishing out small change daily at toll plazas. And the habit of paying people to attend rallies may be a thing of the past.

Transparency.
Obama launched www.recovery.gov so every American citizen can track where each dollar of the stimulus package is being spent, on a daily basis. Selangor Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim has also gone transparent by declaring the assets of the state’s 10 executive councillors on their website last Friday. Assets declared include property, stocks and cash spent on official duties from March 24 last year – the date state assemblypersons were sworn in – until now.

However, the good news is, according to the poll, 66% of Malaysians were upbeat that there was hope for change in the Malaysian political landscape in line with events happening around the globe, especially in the US.

Political pundits should also note that when asking 1,000 respondents what their main sources of news were, they cited Newspapers (20%), Television (20%), Online newspapers (19%), Blogs (14%), Radio (13%), Word of Mouth (10%), RSS updates (3%) and Twitter 2%.

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