The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

You can find a complete list at Politics.

Starting with Senator Obama's homepage on Saturday, 10 Feb 07...

Senator Obama's campaign website homepage was communicating using a V15 style (Myers-Briggs equivalent is ISFJ). You might remember from Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics, Presidential Election 2008 and Political Websites 19 Aug 08 (080829) that Senator McCain's site was using a V16 style. What's the difference?

First, there's several dozen more elements to each communication style, what I'm sharing here are just the tip of the iceberg. That offered, we often tell web clients that all they need concern themselves with is the tip of the iceberg.

What are the substantive differences? Recognizing that they share similarities, the Obama site was going after people who needed some finger-pointing before they were willing to get involved, almost a "Come on, people. Wake up! This isn't your fault unless you're not willing to do something about it" whereas the McCain site was communicating "Think about it. Here are some ideas on how to change things".

Presidential Messaging

At this point in time Senator Obama's strongest messages were that he had a vision for this country and that he could lead us to a better place.

<ASIDE>
Hmmm... you know, it never occurred to me to look for a "My god we're in one heck of a hole and I don't know anybody who could get us out of this one" message. Might be a fun exercise in my copious free time to work out the math...I wondered about that because, looking at the strongest messages in this particular homepage, I thought "well, yeah. Of course those will be strong messages. Duh!"
</ASIDE>

Remember my writing previously that messages are one thing, the strength of the messages is another? Let's compare the relative intensities with which Senators McCain and Obama were broadcasting their presidential messages.

What we see here is that Senator Obama was (depending on how you want to spin it) either working much harder at getting his message out or he was shouting much louder.

What's most interesting to me, however, is that both candidates (at this point in time) are pretty much not listening and definitely not listening to "you", the voting public (or anybody else, evidently). This is interesting to me because not listening to voters' concerns was one of the most distinct downfalls of the candidates in the 2004 campaign season.

What about gender?

The Republicans have been calling Senator Obama a celebrity and rock star for quite a while now although I don't know if they were making their claim at this point in time. Based on what the Republican and McCain sponsored ads are demonstrating, I believe part of the "rock star/celebrity" claim is Senator Obama's appeal to a female audience.

Though not appealing to a predominantly female audience, back in Feb 07 Senator Obama's website's gender appeal numbers were excellent in the sense that he was appealing fairly equally to both men and women. Difficult to do and nicely done.

A little less than a month later and the Obama site is still reaching out to a V15 audience. The relative messaging (percentages of total message) didn't change all that much. He's still broadcasting the same messages at about the same strengths relative to each other. Nor, for that matter, did his gender appeal change that much. It went all the way from 53/47 to 52/48 M/F, not enough to be concerned about at this level of inspection.

The fact that the gender appeal has remained relatively stable for about a month does indicate that there's more intention (if not method). It's very impressive if intended and still impressive if it wasn't as that close a gender appeal is usually difficult to do without lots of work (and training).

Who's Shouting the Loudest?

According to WindKiller's comment on my previous post, Senator McCain's homepage at this point in time coincided with his announcement that he was officially running for US President. That is borne out by the numbers in this chart. He's fairly "shouting at the top of his lungs" (not a judgement, just a comparison) compared to Senator Obama's homepage, especially the "I Have a Vision for This Country" message.

Again (and I think noteworthy), note that neither candidate is neither listening nor listening to "you". In fact, it appears their both not listening at about the same level. This is interesting to me from a marketing perspective and especially as I tend to view comparisons like these to analyzing competitive marketing campaigns.

At this point in time it seems that listening to the general public wasn't something anybody thought worth doing, or at least not worth emphasizing.

So much for "your opinion counts", huh?

A little over two weeks later and so little has changed communications and messaging wise on Senator Obama's homepage that I am strongly reminded of the 2004 campaign; so little changed day to day that its monotony became mind-numbing (to me, anyway).

The homepage still communicates best to a V15 audience, the gender appeal is still 52/48 and the Presidential Messages numbers have changed so little as to be inconsequential.

However, the Obama homepage's consistency can be a good thing for audiences that like consistency (note that V15's aren't necessarily motivated by consistency). The Obama homepage was being "out shouted" by the McCain homepage briefly and when compared to the McCain homepage for Thursday, 22 Mar 07, the Obama homepage is definitely stating its purposes more clearly to the largest possible audience.

(more to follow...)

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