Barack Obama was elected the next president of the US on 4 November. His marketing strategies were widely discussed by the media and many of them deemed 4 November as ‘the biggest day ever in the history of marketing’, and Obama himself was even selected as the Marketer of the Year by executives in an annual conference in October.

Advertising Age said Obama’s campaign was a successful branding strategy – with his messages being consistent, simple, and relevant. These are important elements that all marketers should learn from. Obama does not have a long history in the political scene but managed to build up his own brand in 2 years. Moreover, Obama had strong opponents – Hillary Clinton and then later, John McCain. And, being the youngest among them, Obama’s résumé is the shortest. It looked like an impossible battle, but he won by having a better marketing approach than his opponents. This made him stand out from the rest and eventually ‘win the market share’.

1. Consistency
Comparing Obama, McCain and Clinton, Obama had successfully created a single message that is used throughout his campaign right from the start – ‘Change’. In fact, the consistency had forced his opponents to follow him and adopted ‘change’ as a key word in the final part of their campaigns. Clinton’s message was unclear and confusing. From the start of her campaign she was boasting her experience, and then shifted to ‘Countdown to change’, followed by ‘Solutions for America’. McCain, meanwhile, did employed ‘Country first’ as his main message, but changed the tune and called himself ‘the agent of change’. This message came a bit too late.

Not just ‘change’, Obama was consistently calling McCain a clone of Bush. No matter how McCain defended this allegation, Obama insisted that the ghost of Bush’s policy will still be there if McCain moved into the White House. Obama promoted his believes which McCain found it hard to deny.

2. Simplicity
Obama’s message is simple – ‘Change’, which is easy to get into the minds of voters, especially with the economy’s turbulence for the past year. Voters needed ‘change’, a change that could improve their lives, a change that could turn around the economic downturn, all these provoke their inner feelings and allow the whole incident closely connected to voters.

His opponents’ promotion was much more complicated and failed to coin into the minds of the voters.

3. Relevance
Obama has his relentless focus on change, which forced his opponents shifted their devotion to discuss the changes they proposed for the country, and how their plans were different from the previous term. All these talks distracted McCain and Clinton from talking about their strength, for example their experience, their international experience.

Utilisation of social media

Besides keeping his message simple and consistent, Obama’s communication mix was also well praised by marketers. He deployed technology and penetrated into different online and traditional media. He cleverly utilised social marketing tools and had successfully gained the attention of younger voters whom traditionally not interested in politics.

(Screenshot from BarackObama.com)

(Screenshots from youtube.com, 3 Nov 2008)

The above 2 images are taken from their respective youtube.com page with some short introductions about themselves.

Can you spot the difference?

• Obama’s Youtube channel had 18 million subscribers, while McCain’s only had 2 million.
• Obama employed Google checkout online payment systems to provide an easier channel for viewers to donate money to his campaign, and McCain did not.
• Obama set up his video channel on Youtube back in 2006, and McCain catch up the game 5 months later.
• McCain provided detailed instructions to viewers on how to ‘subscribe’ to his videos, while Obama did not.

From the above information, the differences in promotion strategies are obvious:

• Young vs Mature
• New media vs Traditional media
• Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0
• The Long Tail vs 20/80 Rule
• The ability to draw Netizen’s attention
• The demographic profile of voters (age, education, race, class, perceptions….)

In spite of the prominent profile of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, it is not easy for them to retain staff.

The HA is in an enviable position when it comes to attracting people to join them. “We are the 7th largest employer in Hong Kong and holding 95% of the market for health care services,” says Anthony Wu, HA Chairman. “Although we are successful in recruiting, we are conscious that our staff attrition has to be controlled.”

“We cannot allow short-term cyclical changes to affect our long-term plans and good training programmes are our key factors of success. We invest heavily in training to ensure that our services are not affected by staff movements”.

Wu says HR management has changed dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years. Employers no longer dictate the job market – they have to go out and find ways to attract people (talents) to join and stay in their organisations.

“Money is less of a motivator in the HA than in the private sector” Wu said. “For example, our financial directors are paid much less than their friends working for private businesses, but, given our funding constraints, HA can only retain staff by recognising and respecting their work.” Mutual respect is a very important element in developing human relationship.

Training as a Strategy

About 320 to 350 new medical graduates join the HA each year, and there has to be good management plans to retain them, offer them a career path and make them feel proud about working in the HA.

HA conducts most of its training in-house. Apart from on-job training, soft-skills and management training is also very high on the HA agenda. Many doctors enjoy seeing patients and working in the theatres, but they should realise that having a well managed hierarchy of professionals, they could cure more people every day. To cultivate a desire for management jobs, the HA runs many executive leadership programmes for the professional staff.

“We may be short of people, but we are not short of talents. My challenge is to find the talent, motivate them and offer them a career”, said Anthony.

Adapted from: A-performers.com October 1, 2008

‘Spare change, please?’

I had a very interesting encounter with a beggar while I was in Shenzhen a while go. I was approached by a beggar while waiting for a friend outside a well known mall in Shenzhen.

He asked me for some spare change. I had some time, so I asked him why he came to me.

‘I saw you from afar. … You are loaded with shopping bags, so you must have just spent some money in the mall and should not mind handing some change from the shopping. You also look like a generous person so I decided to ask you for some spare change’

I was amazed by his informed comment.

In general, people are afraid of beggars because of they way they look – scruffy, dirty, torn clothes and sometimes smelly. This beggar is different. Although he has most of the begging characteristics, but he is clean. He pointed out that he needs to stand out of other beggars to be less intimidating.

‘I know my SWOT’

‘I am conscious of my own strengths. People don’t find me intimidating if I have a clean look – and that is my strength.

‘I look at my opportunities too. The huge population and its flow offer me opportunities. Only if the passers-by outside this mall are willing to give ¥1 a day, the opportunities would be ¥30,000 a month. Of course in reality, not everyone would spare me a yuan, and I can’t ask all of them in a day either’.

He strategically identified his targets – the passers-by of the mall. He continued his business forecasting.

‘If 30% of the flow around this mall is my reachable patrons, and if my success rate is 70%, my chance of success would be 21% of those approached.’

Selecting the patrons

‘There are several groups of people I regard as potential patrons. They should be around 20-30 years old. If they are too young, they would not have the money and if they are too mature, or already married, their partners often have control of their money. My targets are:

1. Relatively young ones and well dressed – they would be more free with spending money;

2. Young couples – they would at least, act generous to avoid embarrassments in front of their partners;

3. Singles and pretty girls – they are always scared of being harassed by strangers and willing to spend money to avoid them.’

He works eight hours a day and applying his chance of success, he could end up with ¥300 a day. He confirmed that he makes about ¥200 a day on weekdays and around ¥500 on weekends

He went on to disclose his marketing tactics. ‘You cannot keep chasing your patrons. You would easily waste time on chasing a customer without any success. I need to decide at which time to give up and find a new target.’

‘The business of a beggar cannot rely on luck. I need to plan on every ¥1 of my taking.’