Any one of those would be a radical shift for America. But all of those changes – all at once? How the heck did we end up electing this guy?
To be sure, President-Elect Obama benefited from shifts in the social fabric – immigration, urbanization, and the rise of Gen Y. Just as crucially, though, he ran a political campaign that took a page from the business world – specifically, from the history of cell phone adoption.
As any marketer will tell you, it’s hard to get people to buy a new product. It’s harder still if that new product is something as radically different as a cell phone. When they first came out, cell phones were certainly not the mass-market phenomenon they are today. Their path to ubiquity is a classic case of adoption theory in action.
Source: Bryce Ryan & Neal Gross (1943)
The first people to use cell phones – the Innovators – were technology enthusiasts, people who love to try new ideas for the sake of their novelty. Between 1956 and 1983, 600 of these innovators signed up for the first mobile phone, Ericcson’s 90-lb Mobile Telephone System-A (its successor, a svelte 20 lbs, was released in 1965). Back the, the idea of a walking-around phone didn’t make sense to most folks.
The industry soon wised up, and started crafting a strategy aimed at Early Adopters, visionaries who selectively adopt new ideas in order to affect great change. Wall Street power brokers were the perfect Early Adopter group: they were affluent enough to afford pricey mobile phones, and they had an urgent need to communicate stock market information as quickly as possible. These Early Adopters showed the rest of us the benefit of a mobile phone.
By the late nineties, the mainstream started to warm up to the idea of purchasing a cell phone. In 1998, Nokia released the groundbreaking 5110, a mobile phone with colorful changeable faceplates. This product made the phone seem less like a complex device, and more like a fashion accessory. It showed ordinary people how something a mobile phone might, in fact, be a practical addition to everyday life. The 5110 was instrumental in getting the Early Majority on board with mobile phones. Not too long afterward, mobile phone prices dropped to near-commodity levels, spurring adoption by the Late Majority – a segment motivated more by peer pressure and necessity than by a vision for the future. Today, even most Laggards have cell phones (albeit decidedly low-tech ones).
Obama’s genius was in recognizing (perhaps implicitly) that “marketing” his own candidacy wasn’t altogether that different than marketing a cell phone. Like mobile phone manufacturers, Obama had to sequentially target each segment of the adoption curve in order to win over voters.
He started with the Innovators by explaining his “technology”: who he was and what he stood for. Much of this went on behind the scenes during his tenure in the Senate as he won over wonks, insiders, and political junkies. But Innovators alone can’t deliver an electorate. The next group, the Early Adopters, is far more influential in determining how an idea, a technology, or even a presidential candidate is later received in the marketplace.
As my colleagues Alonzo Canada, Pete Mortensen, and Dev Patnaik pointed out in a recent article in the Design Management Review, appealing to Early Adopter visionaries requires a narrow focus on iconic aspects of a new idea – just those parts that will set a vision for how things can be different. This is where Obama made his greatest mark. He set a vision for change, embodied by the refrain “Yes We Can!” He delivered speeches in Chicago and Iowa that invoked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s ideals and sent chills down people’s spines. He helped people envision unification, individual promise, and collective achievement at a time when people felt divided, stymied, and undermined. That single phrase, and his powerful vision, captured the hearts and minds of the Early Adopters.
Just as Geoffrey Moore predicted in Crossing the Chasm, Obama’s next great challenge – one that almost sank his presidential ambitions – was making the leap from Early Adopters to the Early Majority. His visionary rhetoric was inspiring, but in order for the Early Majority to buy into it, they needed a more practical message. Opponents from both parties derided his campaign as high on rhetoric but low on specifics. Obama eventually shifted into a more pragmatic message to appeal to this practical segment. He toned down the vision and inspiration in his message, and turned up the specifics. He showed how his ideas would translate into specific actions that would affect the wallets, homes, jobs, and education of everyday American voters.
Of course, Obama couldn’t have been elected without also appealing to the Late Majority, folks who joined with him over the last several months. The recent economic crisis may even have forced him into a strategy designed to appeal to these harder-to-reach folks. Like cell phone manufacturers who increased their markets by decreasing the cost of the mobile device, Obama played his economic hand effectively. In the last few weeks, he showed how a vote for him was a vote for economic survival. With jobs disappearing, homes being foreclosed, and stocks in a slump, Obama demonstrated to the Late Majority that he was the right person to address their immediate, pressing economic concerns.
Last night, we found out that Obama’s adoption strategy worked. His campaign’s relentless drive to appeal to each segment of the adoption curve allowed him to introduce a set of new ideas, new approaches, and new thinking to an electorate that was badly in need of change. As remarkable as Barack Obama may be, he’s certainly not the only political candidate who can benefit from such an approach. In fact, other campaigns may equally benefit by harnessing cutting-edge thinking from the product development and marketing world.
As Obama proved, the road to success requires a simple adaptation of the strategies Canada, Mortensen, and Patnaik lay out in their article.
1. Convince the Wonks.
While the Wonks can’t deliver an electorate, they are the gatekeepers. If they don’t buy into your legitimacy, nobody else will, either.
2. Inspire the Change Agents.
Give the Change Agents – Early Adopters – a vision of what they’re working toward. Show them how you’re going to change your community, your region, or our world. Inspire them toward a better future.
3. Tackle the Pragmatists.
This is the part that bores the Change Agents, but is crucial to developing a critical mass of voters. Show how your vision translates to practical action. Speak in concrete, tactical terms. Cut the rhetoric, stick to specifics, and show that you know how to block and tackle.
4. Show the Skeptics What’s in It for Them.
The Skeptics are motivated by peer pressure and economic necessity. You can try to peer pressure them into voting for you, as Obama did, by creating a sense of community or belonging around your movement. This is harder to do if you don’t have his charisma. Alternatively, you can appeal to people’s bottom-line motivations, and show them that the biggest risk they face is in not voting for you.
5. Let the Skeptics Convince the Laggards.
Trying to convince the Laggards to vote for you is a fool’s errand. Like other groups in the adoption curve, they’re most likely to be convinced to adopt a new idea if the group before them is doing the convincing – in this case, the Skeptics. This also helps increase your return on campaign dollars, as this strategy relies on the (free) manpower of people who are already in your camp.
Candidate Obama ran a smart campaign – one that demonstrated a clear understanding of human issues as much as political issues. Let’s hope that President Obama’s administration will continue that tradition.
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