Is Obama a cult marketer?

A reporter asked me the other day my thoughts on the Obama campaign and if it was a viral success story. Here’s what I said:

The Obama campaign is an unquestionable viral success and has all the makings of a cult. Obama’s “yes we can” music video has been an enormous success on YouTube with over 10 million views in under one month. That same video is running on a site called DipDive.com, which in less than three weeks has attracted over 6 million visitors. DipDive is ranked by Alexa in the top 7000 sites for US-based traffic [which is amazing given its short existence.] This is viral marketing at its best. By the way, my 17-year old daughter was the first in my household to see the video and she then shared it with the rest of our family. She had heard about it from one of her friends who linked to it from her Facebook page. And so it goes.

Obama has struck an emotional chord with millions of Americans. Not since JFK, has the word “charisma” been so often associated with a presidential candidate. People who know him speak highly off him. I was at lunch with a business associate in New York who had a good friend who knew him from Chicago. That friend heaped praise on him, sufficiently so that my friend in New York was prepared to support him even though she really had no idea what he had done or what he hoped to do. It is almost to the point of blind faith. And that’s what a cult is all about. Many want to follow a leader with a grand promise who exudes confidence. That’s Obama. He makes himself very easy to like. He makes it exciting to be excited about a candidate. My daughter, who turns 18 in August, will be voting for the first time this November and is simply thrilled at the prospect of casting her vote for such an exciting candidate.