David Plouffe’s, (President Barack Obama’s point man on social media) innovative strategy not only got Obama elected but also managed to raise the largest amount of campaign funding in election history.

At the IMD OWP 2010, David Plouffe will share his insights on the historic Obama campaign while framing it in the context of how Obama's leadership is shaping the United States and the world today. Weaving in his own experience managing and leading the campaign that propelled Obama into the White House, Plouffe will share: the stories behind the campaign and current strategic issues facing the administration; the importance of strategy in managing campaigns, public policy initiatives and crises; how Obama is still garnering support from the movement created during the campaign.

I finally got around to looking hard at the Forrester table in your article on sexy numbers. What they show is that even though the CAGR for Search Marketing is relatively timid the projected gross dollar increase in Search Marketing spending is greater, by $4 billion ($18b vs $14b), than the projected gross dollar increase in all other forms of interactive marketing combined.

Social Media expected spend is $2.5 b, a big number, but CMO's can and should be paying more attention to Search than anything else in that list. As the man said, "follow the money."

Projections of this sort are notoriously unreliable. IF we make the switch to being able to track returns on Social Media efforts, likely through ROAS as you suggest, and if those numbers are positive, then Social Media spend will take off and Forrester will have to reprint.

Doug Brockway

ps – good article.

ROI seemed very fuzzy for many companies, and the list that you have on this blog is pretty comprehensive and informative.

Thanks for the information.

Robin Low

Used properly social media is an excellent branding tool. My main note of caution is that since true engagement is key to success in such a campaign, not to use the "push method" popular in most traditional PR practices. Attempts to force awareness of you brand onto your target audience often drives them away.

The best type of engagement when you are trying to build awareness is something interactive. For example, I know of an outdoor snow sports manufacturer whose high-end product did not meet sales expectations because its retail partners did not properly upsell the benefits. So they launched a social campaign focused on the sales folks that worked the show floor of their retail partners. The campaign included educational online games and contests that essentially served as a training tool.

What I liked about this in particular campaign is that while the retail partners where made aware of the campaign participation was optional, yet the manufacturer did an excellent job of providing personalized individual incentives to participate. The end result was that the majority of their target audience participated and sales increased because the sales folks not only could articulate why the product's price tag was worth the extra money, but they themselves had become advocates of the brand.

These are very helpful insights. As a medium sized-tech company we are always struggling with prioritizing between different marketing channels to reach out to our target audience within the budgetary constraints – and such metrics are always very helpful! We recently initiated a social media marketing campaign for brand awareness, and hope to measure and capitalize the results for demand generation activities. Any ideas / thoughts?

Bhavneet