Hope

When President Obama ran for his first election, his campaign was spearheaded with a concise message. His posters, his speeches, and his supporters proclaimed two things: “Hope” and “Change.”

Image from linkedin

Officially the two slogans were “Hope” and “Change we can believe in.” The popular chant for the campaign was “Yes we can.”

This whole campaign exuded an air of hope and possibility. With positive campaign slogans that seemed to cover all the possible issues (albeit by being very vague), Obama’s campaign reached out to the voters of America.

For any problem there was “hope” for a better future, and by electing Obama “change” will happen.

The effectiveness behind this campaign was it empowered the people. Given the setting of the 2008 election when the economy was struggling, the war on terror was dragging on, and everything seemed dark and depressing. Then from the Democratic Party came a congressman proclaiming that there was hope. Furthermore, Obama was different from all the previous presidents. As the first African American on the ticket, Obama not only promised change, but appeared as a change from the norm himself.

The other part that made Obama’s campaign quite successful was his use of the internet and technology to connect with the voters. By 2008, the internet had come a long way since the last election of a new president. Heck, it even came a long way from 2004. This change a whole new media to campaign on.

Paper campaigns were very limited and often left the voters disconnected from the candidate. Travelling campaigns were better at forming a connection with the public, yet one candidate could only be in one place at one time. Television and radio campaigns eliminated the location restriction but came with the downside of time restriction as broadcasts can only air at certain times. With the internet, the campaign can reach anyone with connection anytime at all. This greatly increased the candidate’s connection with the voters and made it so much easier for messages to be spread.

Obama did an excellent job of utilizing the internet in his campaign. His campaign slogans and chants were short and concise, allowing for easy understanding by the attention deficit internet users we are. Furthermore, they fitted easily into Twitter messages and Facebook posts without becoming a wall of text.

Image courtesy of the wonderful Wikimedia Commons

Although most of the strength of Obama’s campaign came from his internet presence, the above picture shows one of his famous posters. This simple palette and short message quickly became iconic.

However, his second campaign did not fare as well. He struggled to find a new unique message to convey. Regardless, the campaign's official slogan of "Forward" is still effective. It continues the message of the previous campaign and once again looks towards the future.