Why is Obama winning? Useful Analysis

13Feb08

Being into marketing and with a deep interest in human psychology and politics, the thought of analysis of Hillary and Obama campaigns and how well they are utilizing the fundamental concept of marketing – tapping human emotions, was very exciting.

Looking at the recent results and Obama’s victories over Hillary really surprised me, since my research on past American presidents and who did what after office, clearly pointed that people should vote for Hillary, specially the middle class and other working classes.

But once I looked into the campaign of both that surprise factor was soon gone, and it was very obvious why Obama is winning over Hillary. It is the Obama’s team’s campaign and their way of packaging Obama and then targeting the right segment of voters which are known for their ability to bring viral effect – the young voters, specifically the college going crowd. All this added good enough momentum for Obama to lead.

For e.g. just look into two sites:

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/ and http://www.barackobama.com

Most of the people looking at the two will certainly incline more towards Obama unless one is a marketing person. And its no wonder why.

As a person I would vote for a candidate which represents me my needs the best. And most of the needs I myself do not know, since as the country is doing well there are jobs and money for my eduction and to take care of my everyday life I would not have that much of time to really bother about problems which are not directly touching me. So if you bombard me with this plan or that plan I wouldn’t bother. However if you say “You know you are not voting me, you are voting yourself. I ask you to vote for resolving your problems, I want you to vote to favor yourself”, these type of words will catch my attention — “Oh ok there is something related to me”. These words are talking about me and not directly calling for action to favor someone.

These words would make me like the person who is saying these, doesn’t matter who that person is. And that is what Obama is doing, he is making people like him, not calling for any action to favor him. However when you look at Hillary’s campaign, there is an immediate call for an action, in fact it seems like she is demanding to vote for her and the reasons being some problems which do not even touch me directly.

When she talks my focus goes to the problems and then her abilities to handle them which I really do not bother that much, and I do not end up like her in someway or other, because she is not involving me personally in anyway, she remains to talk about third thing.

However when Obama talks I feel to be directly involved, although he may be talking abstract but he uses words which addresses me, what I want, makes me feel somehow he is asking me to favor myself.

There is very less Obama is Obama’s talk, there is lot of audiences in his talk, his talk uses words to make audiences feel involved. And ultimately as an audience I tend to like Obama, because he is not talking about problems, or work or how to resolve them etc etc, he is talking about me, he is talking about involving me to resolve the problems. I find lot of me in his speeches.

In contrast there is lot of Hillary in Hillary’s talk, and audiences in the talk are just spectators and their only expected action is to support her. Her talks are more about problems and to effectively resolve them. I would say her talk is more logical and would certainly make any ideal computer intelligence to vote for her. But when it comes to human, they vote for someone whom they personally like.

Obama is targeting to make people like”him” however Hillary is targeting to make people realize the problems and understand she is most effective is resolving them, and history says people really do not like to realize the problems unless problems directly effects them in a bad way.

Well, I have few suggestions on what Hillary should do at the moment.

She should first take 4-5 hrs off from her regular schedule, look into Obama’s site and his speeches as a common person as if she has to choose between Hillary and Obama whom she would choose, try to get the reasons why as a common person she would get inclined more towards Obama. Now use these reasons effectively for her own campaign.

Secondly, try to reshuffle her campaign staff, get top people who are into psychology and know how to effectively use it for marketing.

Third, she should stop calling for actions directly to support her or vote for her, instead change her tone mainly to involve audiences. Use more “WE” than “I” (for past, present and future things). Give credit of good deeds to people and they would give you vote.

Fourthly, I have suggested in my last post.

And bottom line, she should focus more on making people like “her” than what she has done or she is capable of doing. Once audiences start to like her more than Obama, when it comes to voting they would prefer her more than Obama.

Filed under: 2008 elections, Politics, elections, hillary, judiciary, obama   |  8 Comments
Tags: 2008 elections, hillary, obama, Politics