Gaming the system

So, as pretty much everybody expected, Obama has seized victory in the Presidential election. This morning I actually bought his book. Wondering if there are any online marketing tips and tricks in there!

Seriously, though – more than anything else, I was stunned at the impact of his advertising programme. Fair enough, with a stonking budget of around $150 million, the world was his oyster, but it’s interesting to look at the different methods he employed compared to previous election battles. He really went for new voters from the Y-generation voting group, and broke new territory by tapping into an advertising medium that appeals to this demographic – by the use of advertising on video games.

Obama is hardly a stranger to exploring new avenues. His presidential campaign saw a number of other commercial experiments. His social media popularity, with mash ups of his speeches and videos, his social network and use of Twitter, as well as LinkedIn. Then, the iPhone app.

In total, Obama’s video game ads are delivered to players in 18 games , ranging from “Guitar Hero 3″ and “The Incredible Hulk” to sports titles like “NASCAR 09,” “NBA Live 08″ and “NFL Tour.” In the video game “Burnout Paradise,” when players drive through the fictional streets of Paradise, they saw something new on the virtual roadside: billboards supporting the Obama campaign.

The idea of embedding advertising temporarily inside a video game is very recent, having only begun about 18 months ago. Now Obama has given an indication of what it can achieve, I wonder who else will see the potential of this new medium.

Sharing your thoughts almost instantly with your target demographics (which, of course, is something Mobypicture also enables you to do) is very powerful for awareness of this group about what you’re doing.

In The Netherlands, Maxime Verhagen, our Minister for Foreign Affairs, is on Twitter as well. Supposedly it really is him. I’d like to see him using Moby!

On a closing note for this post, I’d like to say that I think Barack becoming President is a surely good thing for the world, but it’s too bad he’s not against the death penalty.