Social Media Wins the Iowa Caucus
Posted January 7th, 2008 by admin
Set aside, for the moment, party affiliations, religious views, preferred candidates – and look at the facts about the presidential election so far: Mike Huckabee exploited unpaid media and won the Republican Iowa Caucus. Favored-to-win Mitt Romney spent almost 6 times more than Huckabee in TV ads, yet failed to capture the number one spot amongst Iowa GOP voters.
Some might say the large turnout of evangelical Christians swung the vote to Huckabee’s favor. While voter demographics was a large factor, one cannot deny the effectiveness of Huckabee’s Social Media Marketing versus Paid Media strategy. From YouTube to Facebook, Huckabee leveraged the Web and captured its online audience. His campaign recognized that the consumption of media has fundamentally changed and that spending millions of dollars on 30 second TV spots is a colossal waste of resources.
One could argue that many of the other candidates share similar social media properties and tactics. Clearly the voters of Iowa saw Mike Huckabee’s “product” (himself) as the kind of brand that epitomizes the fundamentals of social media – genuine, transparent, approachable, and human. The combination of a great product, transparent brand, and social media strategy is what got him the results in Iowa. Social Media tactics alone will not work if the product is fundamentally flawed. And while, I’m not personally a Huckabee supporter, I applaud the means of his achievements in Iowa.
Those who dismiss Huckabee’s social media victory by saying it’s a mere coincidence should look no further than Hillary Clinton’s latest tactics of rushing to increase her presence on Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Her campaign strategists have seen how Barack Obama has dominated the under 40 demographic and now realize that “old marketing” has absolutely no effect on this vital target audience since their consumption of media goes far beyond network TV.
Let’s see what happens in New Hampshire tomorrow…
