Digital Strategy - how to win elections with Big Data, Predictive Analytics and Social Media Engagement. A summary of the SMAC (social media - mobile - analytics - cloud) strategy of Obama's campaign teams in 2008 and 2012

1. Social Media, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud in
Presidential Campaigns
Elisabeth Bitsch-Christensen
@echristensen42 - www.echristensen42.com

2.  Big Data from Social Media
 Disruption
 Engagement

4.  SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) is the
concept that four technologies are currently
driving business innovation.
 SMAC is really an evolutionary development of what
is commonly known as CRM
 The convergence of these 4 technologies is proving
to be a disruptive force that is creating entirely
new business models for service providers.
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/SMAC-
social-mobile-analytics-and-cloud

5.  Big Data and Social Media
 Turning Big Data and Data from Social Media
into Insights
 Winning election campaigns with Big Data
and Social Media

8.  Involvement Through Empowerment
 Sincere Open Collaborative Interested Authentic Likeable
 S O C I A L
 Twitter for updates and voting reminders
 Facebook for events and campaign highlights
 Myspace (!)
 SMS
PUSH

9. 2008
2012
”Unprecedented inclusivity”

10.  The strategy went from focusing on the
campaigning efforts to focusing on the voters
 From using social media to empower the
believers to using social media to engage the
”persuadable audience”

11.  BIG DATA – mix & match
◦ Identify a subset of persuadable in households that
watched < 2 hrs TV a day and schedule ads when
these voters would actually be watching.
 matched lists of voters to TV operator data about
subscribers — and then match that information to the
anonymous ID numbers that the telcomms provider
uses to track the usage patterns of television set-top
boxes.

12. Dr. Pamela Rutledge
Director, Media Psychology
Research Center

15. 1. Social media creates a new political dialogue.
It takes the power of political messaging away from the
mass media model and places it firmly into peer-to-peer,
public discourse.
2. Young people who are politically active
online are twice as likely to vote than those
who are not.

16.  Statistics are dead – long live statistics
 Predictions are useless without factoring in
disruption
 Big Data just means the same amount of data
– but now collated from all the different
sources and placed in context.

17.  Obama 2012 had 53% of the total social media
shares of nearly 7 mio
 Obama 2012 had the most Facebook shares at 51%
and Twitter shares at 86%
 Obama 2012 had 69% of shares on blogs
 On YouTube, Obama 2012 had 43% of the most
comments on video but had more views than all
the other candidates combined (62%)

19.  Maslow (1943)

20.  Listen => Engage
 Personalize =>
Engage
 Include => Engage

21.  Big Data – applied
◦ A robust real time analytics tool that uses predictive
analysis and modelling
 Make it available – make it ubiquitous
◦ KISS – keep it simple, stupid
 Make The Data Speak
◦ Don’t get hung up on numbers – look for context
Social Media – Mobility – Analytics - Cloud

22. Elisabeth Bitsch-Christensen
@echristensen42 - www.echristensen42.com

23.  http://www.computerworld.com/article/2475696/it-
transformation/smac-and-the-evolution-of-it.html
 http://www.slideshare.net/lovegod1/smac-and-transforming-
innovation
 http://www.dragonflyeffect.com/blog/dragonfly-in-action/case-
studies/the-obama-campaign/
 http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-
media-battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/
 http://www.salesforce.com/customers/stories/obama.jsp