Sidor

måndag 3 mars 2008

Obama and Clinton in Texas

"Morning, starting a new week. How to motive innovative companies to use Social Media, blogs, wikis, twitter to connect with clients/partners," was my first Twitter entry at 10 am.

I'm working with a challenging communication task, looking for Venture Capital for an innovative company.

I've studied the upcoming Clinton - Obama race in Texas and Ohio, and how they end up getting financing for their campaigns.

"Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, began diligently mounting the opposition. They set up in a donated former quickie-loan store, plugged in their computers and got the place cleaned up for a celebrity cameo by the actor Samuel L. Jackson, who was filming a movie in nearby Shreveport, La.," writes New York Times.

Helge: The story continues...

In dozens of interviews across Texas over the last two weeks with campaign workers, volunteers and voters, a similar picture has consistently emerged from place to place: a well-prepared Clinton campaign has relied on longtime friendships and deep connections to the state’s party operation here, especially in the highly organized, heavily Hispanic cities of South Texas. At the same time, the Obama campaign nearly always feels smaller — sometimes even makeshift, despite its considerable money advantage — but it also seems remarkably self-generating, drawing hundreds of the first-time campaign volunteers that have fueled his success elsewhere.

Helge: Grassroots, volunteers, self-organized.

While Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has also generated more first-time volunteers and many more small-money Internet donors in Texas than it has elsewhere, the difference in the grass-roots flavor of the campaigns can be seen almost everywhere. Type “Texans for Obama” into a search engine, for example, and one of the top results is a volunteer blog with hundreds of entries stretching back almost a year. Doing the same with “Texans for Hillary” or “Texans for Clinton” brings up texansforhillary.com, which has no content, and texas4hillary.com, a blog with entries going back only to Feb. 10. (There are smaller blogs that are either part of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign Web site or the Democratic National Committee’s Web site.)

Helge: The combination of TV and Internet, Social Media and Mobile communication.

Over the last two weeks, the feet-and-phone-call operations of the campaigns have been mounted alongside a heavy bombardment of television advertisements in which the Obama campaign spent about $10 million to the Clinton campaign’s $5 million. Commercials for both campaigns have focused mostly on working-class issues like jobs and health care. Mr. Obama has briefly tried out his Spanish, while a Clinton advertisement flatters Texans’ spirit of practicality as a means of sowing doubts about Mr. Obama.

Helge: Which way are the Hispanics going?

Inga kommentarer: