I'm nearly finished with Kate Kaye's book Campaign '08 A Turning Point for Digital Media and as one of the folks quoted within the book I found it very fascinating. Why? It fills in a lot of the blanks and lifts some of the fogs of war I was unable to see during the campaign season. Plus it is a great resource to have at your finger tips if you'd like to get a quick view of the digital media tactics used during the 2008 season.
Kate grabbed a lot of quotes from people that were running or part of the digital strategies for each of the Presidential campaigns and she does a great job of putting them together in very relevant chapters. She also pulled some quotes from my blog which was completely cool by me. I actually got a kick out of some of the things I wrote over the past two years.
I learned quite a few things especially what the Obama campaign did with their digital campaign and it of course confirmed how ubiquitous I thought their marketing was. The book also confirmed for me the lack of digital marketing that pretty much all of the other campaigns did during the season.
- Clinton Campaign - very little online advertising
- Ron Paul - a lot of out sourcing to their supporters who in turn did marvelous things with it
- Mitt Romney - a lot of advanced online advertising experimentation that I was jealous of, but in the end we won the Primary.
Once you read through the chapters you'll also confirm what I've been telling you for a while. The McCain Campaign did a tremendous amount of digital work, more than every other Presidential Campaign before 2008 and during 2008 with the exception of the Obama campaign. It is all there in Kate's book for you to read if you never believed what I wrote. Sure we had money problems, President Bush, and a few other challenges but we accomplished a lot even though we fell short of our ultimate goal.
Kate covers a lot of topics including search marketing, social networking, mobile, online advertising, and other subjects. Kate's book offers great perspective and insight on the tactics used; it is also a quick read and flows just like her informative ClickZ blogs. Between this book, Kate's ClickZ posts, my blog, and techPresident, you'll get an accurate picture of the digital tactics used during the race for the White House in 2008.
BTW - Kate's book might inspire me to write my own book on my experiences working with the McCain campaign and Connell Donatelli.
PardonMyFrench,
Eric.
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