Barry Libert
Author, Barack, Inc: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign

Barack, Inc: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign

March 3, 2009

Love him, hate him, or somewhere in the middle, no one can deny the fact that the Obama campaign was a masterful piece of business marketing, public relations and tenacity.

Libert interviewed Obama supporters and studied election coverage to tease out the best business insights to be learned from Obama including these three pillars of Obama's successful campaign strategy:

• Creating a vast online community of supporters by harnessing the power of online social technologies including blogs, texts, video, and even an iPhone application. Just like politicians, business leaders need to create communities of stakeholders, and the latest online social networking technologies are the most effective community-building tools ever available. You'll not only learn the Internet strategies that won Obama's campaign, but also similar ones from the corporate world including Toyota's YouTube campaign, Coca-Cola's Facebook group, and Comcast's mastery of Twitter.
• Keeping his cool under pressure. Just like "no-drama Obama," business leaders need to keep their cool, solicit the opinions of others, keep an open mind until the final decision is made, and avoid distractions to stay focused on what matters. If you don't, the authors write, you might end up like "the impulsive Ted Turner, who was vulnerable to emotional manipulation and found himself outmaneuvered and sidelined in his merger with Time Warner."
• Becoming a catalyst for "change," which is not just what the public wants today, but is the engine of business--the real power behind growth, innovation and progress. Obama's mantra of "change" was a tired old cliché until he gave it new life by persuading Americans that government can transcend the petty partisanship of recent years. He became the embodiment of that change, telling us, "We are the change we seek. We are the ones we've been waiting for." By the same token, business leaders today must embrace and initiate change for the stakeholders within their own organizations-customers, employees and partners.

Libert discusses how Obama reacted with businesslike acumen to some of the most pivotal moments in the campaign, including losing the Texas primary; the surprise introduction of Sarah Palin; hardball politics with Hillary Clinton; preparing for the debates; and recovering from the Jeremiah Wright crisis that could have lost him the presidency.

Barry Libert is chairman of Mzinga, a leading provider of social software solutions that create online communities for marketing, customer support, and learning for major corporations around the world including ABC, AOL, Disney, iVillage, Chevron Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, MTV, Sports Illustrated, and Prudential Financial. He is co-author of We Are Smarter than Me and other books. A one-time McKinsey and Company consultant, Libert has appeared in Newsweek, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, CNBC, and NPR. He lives in Weston, Mass and is available for interviews in person in New York and Boston and nationwide by phone.

Visit www.barackinc.com to put the winning lessons of the Obama campaign into action within your organization.