No Box in the 2008 campaign

The cover headline of the April 2009 issue of Fast Company reads “The Kid Who Made Obama President.” The teaser continues with, “How Facebook Co-founder Chris Hughes Unleashed Barack’s Base – and Changed Politics and Marketing Forever."

Think about this for a moment. Could a 25 year old really do anything substantial enough to impact an election – or to change politics and marketing forever? Please, enough with the hyperbole, right? Regardless of your political persuasion, I suggest you read the article, as this is not another story simply heaping praise and adulation on the new President. Rather, it is a story about how Hughes used his knowledge and imagination about social networking on the internet to produce some astonishing results, much to the delight of Obama and his supporters. As is reported in the story, volunteers had used My.BarackObama.com to: “create more than 2 million profiles, plan 200,000 real-world events, form 35,000 volunteer groups, register 1 million voters, post 400,000 blogs and raise $30 million on 70,000 people’s own fund-raising pages.” Real people in every part of the country, who somehow wanted to get involved in electing their candidate, suddenly had a very organized and synergistic way to do so.

Couple of key points here. First, these kind of results would have been seen as surreal, not just impossible before the election. Ignoring the box can often produce the unproducible. Next, you may disregard this creative use of the web as interesting but irrelevant to the outcome. Maybe so, but think about it this way. During the next election would you rather your candidate or the other candidate have this kind of means to rally and capitalize on volunteer support? Finally, never underestimate what a young person (or middle-aged or elderly person for that matter) can accomplish when passion kicks into gear.