The lead article in Newsweek reveals that Barack Obama’s win in Iowa is partly attributable to a strong reliance on traditional word-of-mouth. According to the article, Obama’s campaign has been recruiting hairdressers in South Carolina and used high-school students in Iowa to help spread the word about Obama. He has also bucked conventional campaign wisdom and run an entirely positive campaign, never deigning to go negative on his opponents. While the low-tech methods have served him well, Obama’s campaign has also effectively leveraged Facebook.
Based on Obama’s recent, convincing win in Iowa yesterday, a win leveraged largely on an unusually strong turn-out of pro-Obama voters under age 25, we can certainly conclude that not only is Obama’s positive message a winning one, but that his ability to leverage both traditional and online social networking is undoubtedly one of the key drivers of his current success.
