Barack Obama is arguable one of the best success stories in the last century – whether he gets elected to sit in the oval office or gets beaten by ol’ John McCain, fact is Obama has made an impact.

However, it is Obama’s use of the web to build loyalty amongst current and new supporters that has really been a story worth telling.

The Wall Street Journalran a piece last month that highlighted Obama’s online success where he and his staff relied on building an online community, www.barackobama.com, to help supporters find one another and to disperse the campaign’s messages to a broad audience – fast and efficiently.

Additionally, Technology Review argued, that most of the other candidate’s campaigns (Hillary and McCain), as well as corporate companies and medium-sized businesses, had access to the same technology and tools and didn’t have anywhere near the online success of Obama!

So, what was his recipe for success? It’s simple (and it’s something that we at World Wide Creative preach to everyone we bump into – even on national TV!) – :

“Technology is only the accelerator & only ONE component of a successful online campaign; how that technology is positioned in relation to your message and how appropriate it is for your target market demographic is the secret sauce!”

Thing is, Obama’s success can be replicated - maybe not in terms of numbers (Obama gets +-2.5million unique visitors per month ) – but in terms of getting the most from your target audience through using AND UNDERSTANDING the appropriate online technologies.

Well done Barack! Well done for teaching us a thing or 2 about balancing technologies in relation to strategies.

PS. One of the guys heading up Obama’s online strategy is Chris Hughes. Don’t know who he is? Well he’s one of the guys that started a humble social networking platform that some of you might’ve heard off – Facebook… kinda makes a case for getting experts involved in your online projects, doesn’t it !?

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Louis is the Johannesburg manager of web marketing firm World Wide Creative. Louis is also known as the ‘Case Study Guy’ with an encyclopaedic knowledge of research resources to support the strategic initiatives he is involved in. In between organising Heavy Chef Sessions in the Gauteng region, Louis happens to have a mean sidestep on the rugby field. With his silky skills, dashing good looks, Colgate smile and cunning wit, Louis is the high school quarterback of the World Wide Creative marketing team.

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