• 50 facts you might now know about President Obama
• Why Obama won and McCain lost (A well written, though serious article, for the politically inclined)

The much anticipated, nail biting, gut-wrenching race to the White house is finally over….. I’ve always been an avid follower of the US presidential elections. A shame I don’t follow my own land’s politics this closely. But would you blame me?

Lessons learned from Super-Obama:



Getting everyone involved:

…The rich and the hand out takers are voting for Obama….. un-confirmed source, somewhere in the web

The celebrities got involved: Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Sean Penn, Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin, Oprah Winfrey, Clint Eastwood, Bon Jovi, Jane Fonda (wtf), David Letterman, Stevie Wonder, Whoopie Goldberg :D, OPRAH WINFREY, Will Smith, Robert D’Niro, Matt Damon, Tom Hanks, George Clooney to name just a few!
The big-wigs got involved: Eric Schmidt officially endorses Obama. Check out Candidates @ Google if you haven’t already.
The Couch potatoes got involved: have you seen Scarlett Johansson asking you to vote saying the both of you can… heck I would get up and move my ass to the polling booth, to vote for bush for crying out loud ;) (Ok I grandly exaggerate…) Basically, people who would otherwise not give a rat’s ass about who won, were intrigued and inspired.

drip drip drip you win !
I first read this quote on Seth’s blog, following which I decided to print it in bold, laminate and then frame it up!
Persistence: Obama was a new kid on the block, an underdog in comparison to Hillary Clinton (who I first, secretly hoped would win, merely for bringing the “women-empowerment factor” and more importantly the Indian ties). But No, Obama was persistent and diligent in his progress. Step by Step he took the campaign all the way to glory.
Grass Root funding: We hear this fancy term being thrown around, more as a fashion statement. Politicians I supposed are afraid to risk something so costly and tend to play it safe. Concentrate on the “bigger picture”, aim for the big guys. Again to quote the all-marketing-mighty:“Small is the new Big”.
Obama actually did something with this concept. He set up a really well maintained website, where the common man could donate as much as 1$ to the campaign, by simply paying through a credit card. I think this is the point where he took a phenomenal lead over the Clintons. I particularly like the “..Contribute to the Campaign today and your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar by another campaign supporter….” concept. Check out this post that talks about, how it can give you a feeling of being the change.

Technology:
Web marketing: He’s been termed the digital candidate of 2008. He was intelligent to realize that in an age of internet, people spend WAY MORE TIME in front of the PC than the idiot box. He capitalized on that! Besides his well maintained and frequently updated website barackobama.com, he harnessed the web to the max. Check out this link(for the geek-inclined) on “how the Obama campaign used wikis to organize volunteers.”

Running a tight-ship:
Hats off to him for his campaign strategy and organization, I remember a quote of his, where he said something that went like this, “see how I organize my campaign and judge my experience…..” (I can’t find the exact quote, but it was a retort to a question that doubted his experience for the position). Read this post on rollingstones and see how methodical and organized Obama was in picking his key performers (it’s a long article).

“No matter how chaotic the campaign got that there’d be an island of tranquility.”
– Senator Barack Obama

Choose the competition wisely:
Many voted because they “preferred” Obama to McCain. They didn’t vote because they “liked” Obama’s policies, they thought if we have a 200 year old president who is all for war and thinks an Alaskan maniacal control freak of a woman who grants government positions based on a liking for cows, is a wise VP choice, well….. “Vote for Change! Vote for Change! Vote for Any bloody thing but this!” . (By the way I personally thought the choice of a woman, and that too someone who garnered so much “celebrity” status for the campaign was a smart choice. This may appear contradictory, but do notice, I said smart not good).

Getting those important Fan girls uh… I mean supporters who believe in you:
This is like, how I am starting to have inclinations of buying the G1 Android and sell my iPhone on eBay. Its simple, having those 5 preciously loyal fans is much better than 10 pledged supporters. An example of the amount of loyalty the Obama supporters have: James Lee curtis thanks Obama. I love one statement she makes, “Thank you for blowing away the ether of complacency”. Wow powerful! I didn’t really enjoy the rest of the article though or rather was indifferent towards it, and using Kipling’s “If” is too much of an overkill. You can’t simply plug in the best poems in history to make an interesting post(….or can you…?). I’m digressing again….

Design and Typography?
Small things really do matter, the Obamian Sun’s design clearly shows blue over red. Demos over Retarbs :) sorry, couldn’t resist.
Newsweek has this in-depth article on why the Obama brand is working. Note the mention of merit in choice of the more Americany Gotham font. Who would have thought typography was this important?

Lastly and most importantly: Smooth talker always finish first. Period!
If you had Biden in the front-running position with the exact same policies and the exact same ideas as Obama, you think he would have won? My brother feels the gift of gab isn’t merely enough, the ability to inspire and lead is as important. I feel, with the gift of gab comes the power to motivate. Inspiring is definitely important, but smooth talking takes higher priority. There are somethings no matter how fiercely you detest or try to disprove are just outright simply true. Everyone loves the charmer.

Of course I could be completely wrong with all of this, but that’s why I have a comments section :wink-wink .

Groovy Resources

• 50 facts you might now know about President Obama
• Why Obama won and McCain lost