Much has been written everywhere about the Obama campaign and how it has set new standards in campaigning. Most of this writing has probably been online while it has possibly also looked mostly at the online elements of it. The most quoted contributor here is BlueStateDigital, the US firm that helped build Obama’s (primary) fundraising and social networking capacities. Less known about BlueStateDigital is that they had also been hired by then London mayor Ken Livingstone for his re-election bid in May 2008. Apparently, they could not help much but it is also hard to see what they had really contributed to that campaign. Ken’s website is still up and running though… a bit ironic to read the first graph when being governed by “the joke” by now…
Anyways, I was talking the other day to an Italian friend about internet campaigning and what we do with techPolitics and her first association with this was GMMB. Now this US PR agency has run the bigger part of Obama’s PR but I really wonder if I have ever read any reference to them in the German media. It is interesting to see how different people can get quite different interpretations of who is actually behind someone’s campaign (and sucess). So, does it all boil down to selling yourself best again?
In Germany it has not been unknown that PR agencies of winning parties follow them into their respective ministries. I should have a look at how this works out with the new US administration (when I find the time for it…).