the obama magic is obama himself
I have to confess: I left the event feeling a bit underwhelmed. At any situation where the receiving party feels that way and is asked why, the answer would more often than not be along the lines of, “Not what I expected”, or “Nothing new there”, or “Rhetorical…”. It is a tad hard to pinpoint the exact reason, so I suppose I’ll do it in my usual go-around way.
Maybe there was a big picture that I failed to see. Maybe I missed out on something important during the first 10 minutes when I wasn’t there. Maybe the ideas I’d formed in my head about the seminar remain mine. Whatever it is, I sure was not the only one who felt that way.
Roger Fisk on stage. Sorry about the quality — I used zoom ‘cos I was lazy to move to the front
Roger Fisk was the former National Director of Special Events during president Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He told us about his job (or part of), how he went around the country scouting for locations for Obama’s speeches, how he had assorted campaign banners strategically placed for maximum media exposure to highlight locality, how they raised funds by charging very little money ($10 – $20) per ticket; in effect metamorphosing a stand-by supporter into a campaign investor. Every dollar helped Obama’s presidential campaign fund swell to a most impressive, record-breaking $600 million by Oct ‘08. A photo slide show accompanied Fisk’s speech, with mostly images from his around-the-country journey.
What of the new media strategies? There was My.BarackObama.com (affectionately known as MyBO) where supporters could advertise their own fund-raising activities as well as communicate with other supporters, local or otherwise. This was created as early as January 2007, effectively allowing for microtargeting and to a point, narrowcasting. There was the use of Facebook, and I suppose I don’t have to spell out how it’s used seeing that most of you hold a Ph.D in that subject 
Fisk very briefly mentioned but did not elaborate on Twitter; if I remember correctly, he said something about the ROI (my own term) will only be seen in later months.
Here’s a doodle to break the text monotony
Would I be seen as arrogant if I say that I don’t see any of the strategies above as, for lack of a better word, magical? Well, I don’t mean to be. It was definitely radical, brave and inspiring. Unique? Definitely! I might as well have been describing Obama. Please bear with me while I attempt to translate my thought process to text. It’s all very simplistic and here, there, everywhere because succinctness is not part of my vocabulary.
- Marketing campaigns work better if the product or brand is substantial. You have to admit that Product Obama is pretty damn good. You want in Malaysia also don’t have lah (please don’t feed me rubbish of [insert you-know-who's name here] is our Obama).
- For ‘new media strategies’ to work, you need someone who gets it. I can’t imagine GWB, Hillary Clinton or McCain employing these methods because they are old skool. Obama twitters. McCain doesn’t use e-mail.
- When my product beats your product and goes with the flow, the only problem I’d face with the website is whether the programmers understand how I want it to be built. I don’t see this as a major problem.
- If I were in charge of location scouting, I’d darn well know how to utilise existing features and add on new ones to give my product the advantage. A lot of this is Journalism 101. One senior manager I spoke to during tea break said that this would normally (and expectedly) be handled by the advertising/ event management team.
- In this day and age, if you are lobbying to be the most powerful man on the face of Earth, you’d better be communicating and listening to your supporters. I wonder why this is even a point at all. Maybe he was still selling Obama…
- If you’d intently followed the presidential campaign, you’d already know a lot about what was said.
Actually there are a few more points that I sort of know that I have, but not really. See, the event was last Monday. Whatever strong opinions and views I had or voiced out or discussed with fellow attendees are mostly gone by now. If I’d delayed this post for another week, I wouldn’t have remembered anything at all, heh.
Camwhoring with Citizen Nades. Why did he look the other way… why?!?
While I appreciate Fisk coming down to our neck of the woods to share his experience (which honestly must have been monumental, and I would so have loved to be in his shoes), it would have been rather nice if more emphasize and focus were given on the ‘new media strategies’ part. From what I’d gathered, that was largely the reason the attendees signed up. That was what the brochure said anyway 
I would also love to have an insight on how the Obama on-line campaign (or presence) will carry on. Now that he’s president, the e-mail list of 13 million people can no longer be so freely used, as they were amassed for political purposes. Wonder if the team’s still trying to sell Obama winter hats…
By the way, the Obama look-alike was unable to make it to the event as he was down with dengue.
Camwhoring with ZI and Kim. Why did he look the other way also 
There were two panel discussions – one in the morning and one after Fisk’s afternoon session. The first one’s theme was “The Power of New Media”, panellists were Roger Fisk, Nadeswaran, Henry Tan (Astro COO) and Roy Tan (Carat Malaysia’s MD), moderated by Greg Paull (principal of R3 Asia-Pacific). Nadeswaran was… entertaining, heh. The second panel discussion’s theme was “Is There Hope For Change?”; panellists were Nadeswaran (back by popular demand), Datuk Vincent Lee, Datuk Kadir Jasin and Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, moderated by Premesh Chandran (CEO, Malaysiakini). Interesting to see how ZI is hailed as a hero, at least by most of the attendees. Also a bit funny to see Fisk sit though the panel discussion, seeing how he wouldn’t have any idea about the micro-politicking going on in our country.
Basically a lot of talking, and talk is just… talk. Some people were IMHO condescending as well…
Despite my feeling a tad underwhelmed thingy, I have to give props to the organisers (Sledgehammer Communications which publishes ADOI & Marketing mag) for the well-run event. I’ll leave you with a video taken and edited by TV Smith and Daniel Tang. Me in the same video clip as Tony Pua, w00t!
Yah, it’s not an optical illusion. Yah, I know that I don’t have a chin. Really, I know.
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And I thought I was being slow for not getting it, until Ming told me that he doesn’t understand shit too.
My feeling is that at some of these ‘new media’ events, they often talk about stuff that is pretty obvious to a dedicated blogger such as yourself. You can do instant updates with Twitter – duh; you can organise group gatherings on Facebook – really? You get the idea
But for someone who doesn’t know much about it (and there are many), it’s an eye-opener.
LOL
I like your speech, Suanie.
Malaysia doesn’t have ‘this’ product
And the transparency .. LOL
and I don’t know what Datuk Vincent Lee was talking about, trying to generalized Chinese like he represents every single Malaysian Chinese, serious the guy needs to get closer to the ground, he’s lost touch. You don’t speak for the whole population of Malaysian Chinese based on your personal family experience. That was one of the most appalling things I’ve ever heard.
Haha very well said! We don’t have a product like OBAMA! Cheers…
yeehou: har. you guys are doing it what. to a lesser extent, of course
julian: what you’ve said is true. however, a lot of the attendees i spoke to were expecting something more… revealing? the event was targetted at marketing execs and managers, and i suppose they’d be better off signing up for ‘how to make web marketing work for you’ or something. different expectations, i suppose
cynthia: hehe thank you
totally under duress 
KY: i don’t remember what he said. i remember kadir jasin. uh…
eiling: true what
I know why Suan is so underwhelmed – they brought in the wrong Obama inner-circle guy. They should have got speechwriter Jon Favreau here instead..
http://kiminidelfos.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/jon-favreau-speechwriter-obama.jpg?w=460&h=628
http://blogs.thetimes.co.za/minor/files/2008/11/jon-speech-writer.jpg
You’d be surprised how much South-east Asianist / Malaysianist Scholars from the U.S. do know about our country. Assuming our guest had been well-briefed before coming, he might know a thing or two about our cess-pit politics… or maybe not.
bagusssss..NO transparency under the current ruling coalition nor the opposition..bagussss *claps*
Hey blogger chick! you actually sat through that obama yo momma session.. Bravo! nice summary too! Who is ‘Kadir Jasin’ and ‘Citizen Nades’??
Sam
suertes: i think you may be right. about jon favreau that is. re: briefing: i don’t suppose fisk was briefed about the situation in malaysia. if he was, maybe he was too polite to comment. sekali end up like another al gore. the panel discussion was rather superficial, playing to the masses. hey, sounds like any BN or PKR rally speeches
yatz: sekian
samo: hey journo man! takkan you don’t know
pura2 issit
Too many camera shooting at one time, so ZI and Nades don’t know where to look lol.