Like him or not, Barack Obama’s improbable campaign that led to a 53% winning margin of victory can teach us plenty about strategic marketing. Obama was named the Marketer of the Year by Advertising Age magazine.

He won 66% of the 18-29 year-old demographic, 52% of those 30-44 and 50% of those 45-64. Capturing this much market share across such a large swath of demographics would be any marketers dream.

On the Facebook social networking site, the Obama-McCain divide was evident among those who maintain a profile on the site. By the end of the presidential race, about 2.4 million users had signed up as supporters of Mr. Obama – the most of any Facebook page – compared to roughly 624,000 who were fans of Mr. McCain.

A 66% share of the 18-29 demographic equates to 16 million people, give or take a hundred thousand. Brand loyalty is created as a result of what Richard Petty and John Cacioppo call the elaboration likelihood model or cognitive elaboration. Cognitive elaboration is when consumers think about a brand and assign positive or negative attributes. Since 16 million young voters assigned a positive attribute to Obama and ultimately the Democratic Party, chances are good the large majority will live a life loyal to the democratic brand. It is a fundamental principle of positioning.

POSITIONING

In the seminal work on marketing, Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, Al Ries and Jack Trout advance the concept that the easiest way of getting into someone’s mind is to be first. It is very easy to remember who is first, and much more difficult to remember who is second. Even if the second entrant offers a better product, the first mover has a large advantage that can make up for other shortcomings.

EMOTIONALISM

Emotionalism is another key characteristics we marketers hope to elicit from the buyers of our products. Emotional as opposed to functional attachment makes it very difficult for competing brands to change our opinion and buying habits. The first time voters in this historic election will, on every presidential election, experience an emotional connection to their newfound political brand.

HOW DID OBAMA SUCCEED?
He had a marketing strategy and he understood the dynamics of communication. According to Ries, Obama reminded us all of the some very fundamental practices that are often ignored or misunderstood.

Simplicity.
About 70% of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, hence Obama’s focus on the word “change.” Why didn’t talented politicians like Ms. Clinton and John Edwards consider using this concept?

Based on my (Ries) experience, in the boardrooms of corporate America “change” is an idea that is too simple to sell. Corporate executives are looking for advertising concepts that are “clever.” For all the money being spent, corporate executives want something they couldn’t have thought of themselves. Hopefully, something exceedingly clever.

Here is a sampling of slogans from a recent issue of Business Week:

• Darden School of Business: “High touch. High tone. High energy.”
• Salesforce.com: “Your future is looking up.”
• Zurich: “Because change happenz.”
• CDW: “The right technology. Right away.”
• Hitachi: “Inspire the next.”
• NEC: “Empowered by innovation.”
• SKF: “The power of knowledge engineering.”

Some of these slogans might be clever, some might be inspiring and some might be descriptive of the company’s product line, but none will ever drive the company’s business in the way that “change” drove the Obama campaign. They’re not simple enough.

Consistency.
What’s wrong with 90% of all advertising? Companies try to “communicate” when they should be trying to “position.”  Mr. Obama’s objective was not to communicate the fact that he was an agent of change. In today’s environment, every politician running for the country’s highest office was presenting him or herself as an agent of change. What Mr. Obama actually did was to repeat the “change” message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr. Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the “change” idea in voters’ minds.

Relevance.
“If you’re losing the battle, shift the battlefield” is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Mr. Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country. And how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed.

All the talk about “change” distracted both Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain from talking about their strengths: their track records, their experience and their relationships with world leaders.

Barack Obama, a young, black man with a different sounding name, competed and won, against a war hero who had a 26-year track record. I doubt that your brand has as many obstacles. It’s about positioning. In a down economy, the buyer must have total clarity of what your brand delivers.