Obama media

[glyn]

Poster art can be so powerful and impressive. Next time you visit the UK try to visit the Imperial War Museum as they have a vast collection from around the world, some of which were on display last year.

[Desdemona]

Wow, those are amazing images! If you find more, I hope you will post them.

[Southie]

Here's a couple I found.

[Parihaka]

[Parihaka]

Barack Obama campaign claims two top prizes at Cannes Lion ad awards

Barack Obama election work hailed for mix of new media, community and TV advertising at Cannes Lions awards

The campaign that drove Barack Obama to victory in the US presidential election has claimed two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards.

The campaign, submitted by Obama for America, has been hailed as a masterful combination of new media, door-to-door and community grass roots campaigning with a clever tactical use of traditional TV advertising.

The campaign won two grands prix in the Titanium and Integrated Lions categories.

To win the Titanium grand prix, a campaign must involve a breakthrough idea that is "provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction".

"Titanium celebrates work that causes the industry to stop in its tracks and reconsider the way forward," according to the rules set out by the Cannes organisers.

The integrated prize is awarded to a campaign using three or more media – such as TV, press and the internet - that is "high standard and state-of-the-art".

Earlier in the week, Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, gave a seminar about how the different facets of media were used to deliver the campaign.

The Great Schlep, the campaign featuring Sarah Silverman designed to increase Obama's Jewish support, won a Titanium Lion for agency Droga5.

The campaign to boost sales of the Zimbabwean, a newspaper that attacked Robert Mugabe's regime by using the troubled country's almost worthless bank notes to make billboard adverts, was awarded a Gold Lion in the Titanium and Integrated Lions category. The campaign, created by the South African agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris Johannesburg, previously won the grand prix in the outdoor advertising category.

The US presidential campaign also featured in the awards in the Film Lion category.

Charles Stone III, the creator of Budweiser's famous "Wassup" TV ads from 2000, was given the unique award of a special jury commendation.

Stone produced a 2008 version, through Los Angeles-based Believe Media, to galvanise support for Obama's presidential bid.

The ad features the formerly happy-go-lucky characters in dire circumstances, such as being posted to Iraq and the stock market crash, since we last saw them in 2000.

Under the rules of entry the ad is not eligible for consideration for an official award as only work that has been commissioned by a commercial client can be judged. However, the jury felt that the work could not go unheralded at Cannes.

"It was an extraordinary piece of work, as a standalone political statement it is perhaps second to none," said Bil Bungay, judge and co-founder of UK ad agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay. "It completely captures eight years under president Bush. But we have rules that every work has to be commissioned [by a client] but we felt it was so significant it needed special mention".

In a year of significantly less buzz and expectation around the traditionally high profile battle for the film grand prix one of the UK's big hopes, ad agency MCBD's epic "history of Britain" TV ad for Hovis could only manage a bronze lion.

[Parihaka]

This also won an award for Droga5

[Parihaka]

Barack Obama won using 'old school' technology, says his campaign manager

David Plouffe, who masterminded Barack Obama's lauded web 2.0 presidential campaign, today admitted that it was "old school" technology including emails and TV advertising that propelled the campaign to victory and not Facebook and Twitter.

Obama's campaign had been feted as a successful example of harnessing modern digital media, including social networking websites, to win campaigns.

However, Plouffe, speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, admitted that much older web technologies and a good dose of old-fashioned TV advertising were chiefly responsible for the victory.

"It was a historic marriage, in US politics at least, between digital technology and grassroots [campaigning]," he said.

"We did have a big Facebook presence and MySpace. When we started, Twitter wasn't really around, it was at the end. The real drivers were old school, email and web [traditional websites for the campaign]. We did build a social networking [presence] but it was web and email."

Plouffe said that the campaign, which included a massive amount of classic door-to-door campaigning, harvested 13m email addresses. During the course of the presidential race more than 1bn emails were sent and people made 4m donations online. Total online donations topped a record $500m (£307m), with the average amount $85.

However, Plouffe was quick to debunk another myth, that the Obama campaign was a pioneer of online donation, pointing out that John McCain was very successful at it in 2000 in his challenge to George Bush for the Republican nomination. "Lucky he forgot this time around," he said.

While hailing the combination of digital and grassroots strategy, Plouffe pointed out that the campaign was hugely dependent on solid TV advertising.

"It is fashionable to suggest that TV ads are less and less important, but we needed to have balance, and they were incredibly important to the campaign," he said.

However, the Obama camp adopted a different TV strategy to traditional US political marketing doctrine.

The campaign ran a half-hour TV ad in the closing days of the campaign – "it could have been presumptuous, could have turned people off" – but sacrificed traditional 30-second and 60-second adverts in favour of a specifically targeted two-minute TV ad as the economy hit the skids in September.

"We sacrificed reach for targeting," he explained.

The two-minute TV ad, which Plouffe describes as "probably the most important ad we ran", aired in all battleground states with a no-nonsense message about Obama's view on the economic situation and policy.

He said that the advert ran with no music, jargon or sound bites and no graphics other than a website address at the end.

"We talked to people like they were adults," he said. "Nothing is more important than authenticity. People have very sensitive bullshit-o-meters. There was a lot of depth to that ad."

Plouffe said the campaign learned that online video was watched much more avidly by consumers, young and old, than other media.

He paid tribute to online activity from outside the campaign that had an impact. He pointed to the phenomenal impact of clips such as Sarah Silverman's The Great Schlep to galvanise Jewish voters; the music video created by Black Eyed Peas singer Will.I.Am, which features stars such as Scarlett Johansson, using lyrics from Obama's speeches; and the 2008 version of the famous Budweiser "Wassup" TV ads which featured the characters in dire circumstances, such as being posted to Iraq.

He said that the advert ran with no music, jargon or sound bites and no graphics other than a website address at the end.

Yeah right David. No mention of the cutting-edge production techniques you DID use:))

[Parihaka]

Man, I would SOOO love to go up against these guys in the next election....

[pate]

Apparently this is a new sticker, a la the Andre the Giant 'OBEY' stickers & the 'OBAMA' one you put up (post #12 this thread), is popping up in LA on light poles; does it count? I know it's not 'official' Obamedia, but hey... Found it on moonbattery

Moonbattery: The Snickering Starts

[Parihaka]

does it count?

Yes it does: as seen here, we're starting to get serious subversion of the narrative.
Pajamas TV - Afterburner with Bill Whittle - The Power & Danger of Iconography: The Resistance Steals Obama's Weapons

[Parihaka]

[xinhui]

Obama Becomes Japan’s English Teacher


Article Tools Sponsored By
By MIKI TANIKAWA
Published: October 11, 2009

TOKYO — When Utako Sakai was changing the background music in her beauty parlor recently, she did not opt for the classical piano pieces she usually chose.
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Miki Tanikawa

A CD of President Barack Obama's inaugural speech has sold a half million copies in Japan, leading publishers to flood the market with over a dozen language-learning titles centered on his oratory.

Instead, she picked her favorite CD: “President Obama’s Inaugural Address,” released by Asahi Press, a Japanese publisher of language books. She says the speech lifts her spirits and helps her to learn English all at once.

“All our customers love it,” said Ms. Sakai, who is based in Ayase City, in Kanagawa Prefecture, outside Tokyo.

The speech CD and its accompanying book have been a resounding success, selling 200,000 copies since its release in January. A compilation of President Barack Obama’s speeches has done even better, selling half a million copies since November, solidifying his role as Japan’s English teacher.

Publishers have since flooded the market with over a dozen language-learning titles, including “Speech Training: Learning to Deliver English Speech, Obama Style”; “Learn English Grammar From Obama”; and “Yes, I Can With Obama: 40 Magical English Phrases From Presidential E-mails.”

Asahi Press followed up its inauguration book and CD with a recording of Mr. Obama’s “World Without Nuclear Weapons” speech, also in book and CD form, given in Prague in April.

The publishers are trying to tap into a foreign-language teaching industry that the Yano Search Institute said was valued at ¥767 billion, or $8.7 billion, in 2008. The figure includes the cost of books, CDs, dictionaries, e-learning programs, standardized English tests, and the cost of private language lessons. The institute, in Tokyo, says the majority of the spending is aimed at learning English.

Most Japanese people, including those studying English, would have difficulty comprehending a speech given by a native English speaker. But “Mr. Obama’s English is easy to understand because he pronounces words clearly and speaks at a relatively slow clip,” said Professor Tadaharu Nikaido, a communication specialist here. “Movies tend to be the most difficult for Japanese, especially when actors mumble their words.”

Mr. Obama sets his range of vocabulary wide enough to accommodate the highly educated and the less educated, Professor Nikaido added, and at the lower end, it sometimes comes within the range of non-native speakers’ comprehension.

But there are probably a large number of buyers who do not really possess the basic English skills to understand his speech, said Yuzo Yamamoto, an editor at Asahi Press. Since the sales took off, he has received postcards from readers saying they had been touched by Mr. Obama’s speeches, but “those same people have said they were moved even though they didn’t understand English well,” he said. “Some even said the only phrase they caught was, ‘Yes, we can.’ They said they were in tears nonetheless.”

Mr. Yamamoto said there was a sincerity about Mr. Obama’s speaking style that listeners could perceive phonetically, combined with a delivery that was almost musical.

“That seems to result in sensation, the kind of which you get from listening to good music,” he said.

Other observers say that Japanese buyers probably feel as though they understand his speeches just from the nonverbal cues.

“The audience in the background helped too,” Professor Nikaido said. “The audience’s echo in the background works the same way as, say, laugh sound effects inserted in TV comedies.”

That may explain why Ms. Sakai, the beautician, and her customers were so enthralled by Mr. Obama. Ms. Sakai describes her English skills as less than perfect and says she relies on others for translation when she travels overseas. But when she hears Mr. Obama talk, she feels perfectly at ease.

“I feel as though I am not Japanese,” she says, because she is able to understand the English speech so well.

The fervor over Obama-speak, some say, reflects other aspects of Japan’s changing society. Among the public, there is now a longing for leaders with a communication style that is more effective, dynamic and inspiring, something not prevalent in the political culture here, they say.

Since late last year, economic recession has only deepened with no end in sight, and hope has been difficult to find. “There is a sense, why isn’t there an Obama in Japan who can raise people’s spirits,” Mr. Yamamoto said. This year, as the Obama books were beginning to boom, the prime minister then, Taro Aso, was making a series of political gaffes, Mr. Yamamoto noted. They included misreading kanji, the Japanese characters, in public.

The Obama speech phenomenon peaked in the spring, observers say, and has given way to more books and magazines that focus on how Mr. Obama’s communication skills might be adopted in Japan for business and political purposes.

Professor Nikaido himself has recently published a book called “Creating an Audience Frenzy: Learning From Obama’s Strategic Oratory.” At least half a dozen books and magazine covers of this kind have appeared in the past several months.

John R. Harris, a Canadian speechwriter who is based in Chiba, a Tokyo suburb, and who has worked with Japanese politicians, says he knows a good deal about the dire straits of political communication in Japan. The art is virtually nonexistent and is only beginning to be discovered, he said.

“Japan has not been serious about communication,” he said. “In a Japanese company or political party or anyplace where Japanese come together as a group, the process is consensus-forming, and the outcome has to be consensus, and the consensus is internal. In that, the audience often gets forgotten.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/bu...?_r=1&ref=asia

[gunnut]

Well...at least it's the inaugural speech and not the one he made to NAACP or some other black organization.

Obama's speech pattern changes according to his audience. He sounded like a normal American during the inaugural speech, but sounded like a black southern preacher when he spoke to black audiences.

[Blue]

[citanon]

Here's a couple I found.

Gosh, talk about 3rd world propaganda having great effect in the world's lone super power. Three more years till we get out from under this garbage.