Obama Takes the Presidential Transition Process to the Web

Looks like president-elect Obama isn't losing any time preparing to take office in January. Today, his campaign launched change.gov, a website supposed to chronicle the presidential transition process. Most interesting to me is the part of the website that allows users to share their vision for the country. To do so, users fill out a short form and can then input their ideas into a form field and upload a picture or video.

Start right now. Share your vision for what America can be, where President-Elect Obama should lead this country. Where should we start together?

I've always been convinced that the Obama campaign really understood the power of social media. I think the campaign results and the money raised speak for themselves. What's nice to see now, is that they seem to be planning on keeping those social media tools in place even after winning the election. To me, the webpage shows a desire to stay connected with voters and a willingness to listen to them. Change.gov seems to be all about transparency and dialogue - a true web2.0 site.

Actually, the idea behind this site reminds me a bit of Dell's Ideastorm site - a site which encourages users to post ideas for Dell products and services and which has received a lot of acclaim.

Listening - the new consumer research method?

In class yesterday we discussed Paul Gillin's idea that enthusiasts can be seen as a "global online focus group that works for free" and that businesses stand to learn a lot by simply listening to their online conversations (from Gillin's book The New Influencers). It seems like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have taken Gillin's advice to heart. In an Advertising Age article published Monday, Kim Dedeker, VP of external capability leadership, global consumer and market knowledge at P&G, is calling for the end of consumer research as we know it. The article, appropriately titled The End of Consumer Surveys? questions the viability of "boring and antiquated" survey research and argues that it is time for companies to get serious about mining consumer feedback online. Definitely a lot of food for thought here. Also check out the Advertising Research Foundation page which has partnered with P&G and Unilever in their quest to devise new ways to harvest online chatter.