Barack Obama is Ad Age's 2008 Marketer of the Year

Ad Age recently announced that its pick for 2008 Marketer of the Year was Barack Obama. Their story points to the campaign's fundraising prowess - the ability to spend $2.5 million per day - forgoing public funding and able to outspend the McCain camp by miles and miles.

Obama's campaign has been a phenominal example of using online media and social netwroking - not just to augment the old fashioned means like direct mail, but to use social networking as the very core of their efforts. That's significant. To quote the Ad Age story, his campaign team has had a firm grasp of branding, messaging and old-fashioned political ground organization. It's also been able to balance mass marketing with social media and niche marketing. The team has also gotten a boost from the kind of consumer-generated media that mainstream marketers would die for. In fact, much of this consumer-generated material has been produced by professionals. When entertainer Will.i.am put together a music video featuring celebrities reading an Obama speech, it climbed to the top of YouTube and sat there.

Recently, one of the advertising/branding editors compared Obama's brand to Target - style, substance, etc. I think that's a pretty fair comparison. As for McCain - he was compared to AOL. That pretty much fits - generic, dumbed down for the masses - I would go a step further and compare McCain-Palin to Wal-Mart. Nuff said.