Burson-Marsteller

All change! What campaigners can hope to learn from Obama.

by Michiel van Hulten on 16th March 2009 • The Cast Blog

Do symbols matter? Is the feeling of change palpable when a country has just elected a new government? I like to think so. In 1997 I spent a few weeks working on New Labour’s general election campaign in the UK. The campaign was based at Millbank Tower, a stone’s throw from the Palace of Westminster. Security was tight; a friendly private security guard on the door made sure that only pass-holders got in.

The day after Labour’s May 1 landslide election victory, I headed back to Brussels on the Eurostar. I recognised the security guard at Waterloo Station – it was the same friendly man who’d been checking my access pass at Millbank. He also recognised me and waved me through security without the usual formalities. After many years of open hostility between the UK and its continental partners, his gesture seemed to symbolise the beginning of a new era.

I was reminded of this when I travelled from Brussels to Washington DC last week. I flew via London, and made my first acquaintance with Heathrow’s new terminal 5 – the one where logistics completely broke down the day it opened. This time it took me an hour to go through security, and the subsequent journey from the terminal building to the plane, parked a 10 min bus ride away, did little to improve the airport’s image. What a contrast with that smooth Eurostar trip in May 1997 – and a powerful symbol of the decline in New Labour’s fortunes?

Now it was the US that felt different. On arrival in DC I cleared immigration in under 5 minutes. Had the security personnel here all of a sudden become friendlier too, reflecting the Obama administration’s new approach to international affairs? It was probably a figment of my imagination – but then everyone likes to be part of a winning team. 12 years ago it was Britain’s New Labour under Tony Blair – today it’s Obama’s ‘Hope and Change’ Democrats that are inspiring progressives around the world.

Together with 60 other consultants and campaign operatives from centre-left parties from around the world I was in DC for a seminar on the Obama campaign and what the global centre-left can learn from it, organised by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the think-tank set up a few years ago by John Podesta, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff and the man who headed Obama’s transition team.

CAP is the successful Democratic answer to the right-wing think-tank movement that helped propel the Republicans’ neo-con tendency into power 8 years ago. What sets CAP apart from other, more traditional Democratic think-tanks is the fact that it devotes 40 percent of its budget to communications. CAP realised that just producing new policies wasn’t enough – they had to win the hearts as well as the minds of American voters. So they set out years ago to redefine the public’s perception of what it means to be a ‘progressive’ – including through the use of slick tv and online videos.

By doing so, CAP helped generate an environment in which the Obama campaign was able to campaign for progressive policies in a much more receptive public environment. The key to the success of that campaign, according to a senior campaign official at the event? Define your message and your strategy early – and then stick to them. Where the McCain campaign kept adapting its strategy from one day to the next, the Obama team focused almost exclusively on implementation. From his keynote address at the Democratic convention in 2004, his announcement speech in 2007, his victory speech in 2008 to his inaugural address in 2009: as several speakers pointed out, the tone and content might have changed somewhat, but the message was consistent throughout.

So, several eager foreign campaigners asked, can other parties emulate Obama’s success simply by adopting his much-praised use of online campaign tools and tactics? No, was the unanimous verdict of his campaign team. Obama’s online presence was effective because it formed an integral part of his strategy, and because his online tactics were consistent with his campaign mantra: ‘Respect, Empower, Include”.

For the overseas participants who travelled from far to be in DC, many of whom had just started investing heavily in online communication tools, the message that they needed a strong candidate with a clear, credible strategy before they could start thinking about what tools to use to build a winning campaign, may have come as something of a rude awakening. But at least they had a hassle-free homeward journey to look forward to.

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