Dean Campaign as Marketing Case Study

by phil on Friday Sep 19, 2003 1:04 AM
Business

Check out Howard Dean's Blog for America. I love his site as a case study in some fresh marketing ideas.

Everything's a concert - Dean has taken advantage of the real-time nature of the web and blogging, and used his site as a 24/7 party. Every day you go on there, there is some new frenzy or increasing excitment. Some examples are his catchy campaigns, "September to Remember" and "Sleepless Summer Tour." Also interesting are all the shared partying by his blogging staff, such as birthday announcements and the excited reporting of good poll returns.

Illusion of Crowd - The Dean Blog has the appearance of being busy and thriving without being crowded. There's like 500 outbound links from the site plus 4-10 posts a day. Placed nicely in there are knick-knacks like registration-number tickers, updated poll results, announcements etc.

Personal Feel - You can tell the site is run by excited kids. Personal comments riddle the site and the links on the blogroll seem informally chosen. All of this creates the impression in the viewer that Dean likes to have fun and give his supporters freedom. I can imagine this attitude contrasting with those of Lieberman and Kerry, where they would be too careful and political to allow their campaign staff to have free reign.