The “Chief Marketing Officer” of the Obama campaign must be David Plouffe.  He’s the candidate’s campiagn manager (working alongside chief strategist David Axelrod), and while I know he has a ton of supporting players – including the invaluable Joe Rospars of Blue State Digital – I presume that Plouffe’s the mastermind of the communications and “packaging” approaches.  While Obama won “Marketer of the Year” plaudits from AdAge earlier this week, let’s give some credit where it’s due.  Obama is a brilliant politician but likely not a bonafide marcomm expert.

If Plouffe can be considered the CMO, then whether his candidate wins or loses tomorrow, I nominate Plouffe as “CMO of the Freakin’ Decade.”

Think about what’s been accomplished in 2 years.  Think about the candidate as a product.  Every detail has been meticulously planned in the Obama roll-out. 

I am not just talking about the speeches. 

I am talking about the logo and its many permutations (pictured). 

The font on all campaign materials. 

The advertising production values, creativity, tone and placement.

The absolutely brilliant use of text messaging.

The embrace of voters’ clever use of pumpkins.  Pumpkins!

The unprecedented Get Out The Vote movement.

The active and intelligent use of Social Networking.

The overall message consistency has been solid as a rock.  It’s a classic case of “Tell the people what you want them to hear.  Tell them again.  Tell them that you’ve told them, and then remind them again about what they’ve been told.” (Then, repeat!)  Compare that message discipline to the truly erratic, mudcake-du-jour McCain campaign.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been mis-steps.  The Clinton drama lasted too long; the flag pin b.s. was an unnecessary distraction; the Jeremiah Wright videos (‘nuff said); the “cling to guns and religion” line, which was allowed to be taken out of context and blown out of proportion (but showed uncharacteristic ignorance of the ubiquity of basic audio/visual capturing technology that’s in every consumer’s pocket). 

But in each case, as noted with simple brilliance by NYTimes columnist Gail Collins, the Obama campaign proved that at its core it is truly “anti-dumb.”  It’s been willing to tack left/right/center to ameliorate the impact of distractions. So you can add “crisis communications” to the list of solid PR attributes of this campaign.

Vote (!!!!!) for the candidate of your choice tomorrow.  But if you are a regular reader of this blog, I know you’ll join me in tipping your hat to what has been a remarkably successful marketing strategy.  Kudos, Mr. Plouffe (and good luck tomorrow)!

For additional campaign marketing posts, check out Ed Moed and WaggEd’s Frank X. Shaw.

Disclosure: I am voting for Obama. But for what it’s worth, I registered as a Republican in 2000 just to vote for McCain (vs. Bush) in those long-ago primaries.

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