Why is Online PR and Marketing inevitable? Lessons from the Obama campaign

The Obama campaign has shown how the future will look like not only in politics. Do you have a plan like this for 2009?

Traditional way: use journalists, voter lists, phone banks, direct mail

vs.

Obama’s way: social networking on the Web, can use now an opt-in e-mailing list to bring the message directly to the people, also helps during the transition period see http://change.gov/

This quote in the New York Times sums it up nicely:

“Thomas Jefferson used newspapers to win the presidency, F.D.R. used radio to change the way he governed, J.F.K. was the first president to understand television, and Howard Dean saw the value of the Web for raising money,” said Ranjit Mathoda, a lawyer and money manager who blogs at Mathode.com.

“But Senator Barack Obama understood that you could use the Web to lower the cost of building a political brand, create a sense of connection and engagement, and dispense with the command and control method of governing to allow people to self-organize to do the work.”