The Monkey Shack

As I watched the inauguration of President Barack Obama yesterday (via CNN.com while liveblogging on Facebook), I thought back to the many posts I had written, and the vast number of articles I had read about Obama's unique marketing strategy that brought him both his party's nomination and eventually the White House. It was a strategy that combined online and offline, social and traditional, which some have since called Obamarketing.

The high point of Obamarketing began on a chilly January night in New Hampshire. Barack Obama had just lost the state's Democratic primary contest to front-runner Hillary Clinton. At the 10-minute mark of a 13-minute speech, he slipped into an aspirational cadence punctuated by a steady incantation of “Yes We Can!”

will.i.am, a hip-hop musician and frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, was listening. The speech sent him into the studio, where he teamed up with director Jesse Dylan to create and produce a “Yes We Can” video in just 48 hours.

From that point on, the timeline accelerated at a pace that had nothing to do with traditional advertising. Within a month, it was up and running on YouTube. Within three weeks, more than 22 million viewers had seen the clip. It was advertising. But it was advertising unlike any other that had played a critical role in a race for the White House.