One of the main features of Barack Obama’s previous presidential campaign in 2008 was his novel tactic of getting the average American to contribute to his campaign fundraising. He engaged with the public on a level never witnessed before. Aside from simply preaching his message on how he would make the country better and hoping they would vote for him – he got them to invest in him. By simply asking for their 5 or 10 dollar contribution to his campaign they had a stake. They had effectively put a bet on – and like most of us, when we put a bet on, we want to see it win.
This resulted in a record 131 million US citizens voting and Obama’s campaign slogan of ‘Yes we can’, which echoed around the social media space, sticks in our minds more so than any of this year’s campaign slogans.
But it is not surprising that Obama went after the ‘small change’ – a tactic he used again this time, only the newsworthiness of the tactic had worn off a little. It costs an enormous amount of money to run presidential campaign across the States as our infographic shows. Although did Bertie had more funds at his disposal?