Almost five weeks ago I posted about Barack Obama's viral campaign, Logobama. This is an update on how that campaign is progressing as well as the presidential race.

Since then nearly 6700 have created logos using the website and a total of $651 has been donated by 24 people. That's not a lot of money or donations really, but I'm sure the number of exposures will be much higher.

Barack now has 156 more pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton and needs just another 183 to become the Democrat candidate. Significantly less than the 339 that Hillary needs to beat him.

Perhaps this is down to Barack's inventive use of new media to support his campaign. A strategy, which Hillary seems to be replicating. In April 2007, Barack started using Twitter to aid his campaign. In January 2008, Hillary followed suit and started microblogging too. Since then Hillary has posted 139 times, whereas Barack has posted a mere 115 times.

If frequency isn't the key to using Twitter successfully then what is?

I think interaction. Although neither candidate has actually entered into a two-way conversation with their followers. I think following other users has been a crucial factor in Barack's success. Barack follows almost 30,000 other users, whereas Hillary follows nobody. No one. Not a sausage. I think people like to have followers, it feels good, even if they know that their followers are not really reading what they have to say. So it's not surprising that Barack has over 25,000 more followers than poor old Hillary, who has just 3,745 in total.

Labels: barack obama, formby, hillary clinton, logobama, matthew watson, microblogging, new media, presidential campaign, twitter, viral campaign

On thursday I made my way down to London for an interview at Cake Brand Entertainment. I very much like the company, their work and their offices. Anywhere with an aquarium in the reception gets my vote.

Discussion ranged from the nightlife in Southport to my dissertation and my blog post about the Logobama viral website a few days ago. A topic, which appeared on the Cake blog a few hours later. It's probably just a coincidence, but a cool coincidence nonetheless.

I should find out about the job soon. So wish me luck!

Labels: cake pr, dissertation, formby, logobama, matthew watson, southport

Barack Obama's PR team have started a pretty cool viral campaign that both promotes Obama's presidential campaign and raises money from his supporters. Logobama lets you customise the colours of his campaign logo and add a picture of yourself in the centre. Naturally, I created my own. Looks pretty good don't you think? Maybe I should run for President!

I think embracing new media and technologies is a very clever move for a candidate whose campaign is based around change. Also the viral campaign seems to have been started as a reaction to Obama's supporters already using his logo online to support him. I also like how all of the user generated logo's are uploaded to Flickr after they've been approved. I imagine inappropiate images could be quite detrimental to the campaign so approving them first is quite a wise step.

The only negatives of the campaign that I can see is that it is not targetted terrifically well. I created a logo and I'm not an American voter. However I imagine many of the people who did create logo's are Americans. Although not all of them may be registered to vote as some of the images feature children who are too young to vote.

Also the campaign has only raised $520 so far from 18 people, which isn't much considering more than 4000 people have created logos using the website. I think the website itself may have cost more than that to create, unless of course it was created for free by a supporter's web design company. That said, the campaign has still reached more than 4000 people who will probably reach even more by featuring the logo on their blogs, facebook profiles, flickr accounts, msn messenger profiles, websites or whatever.

Labels: amerca, barack obama, blog, facebook, flickr, formby, logobama, matthew watson, msn messenger, presidential campaign, viral campaign