CHICAGO — Sen. Barack Obama strode into a hotel ballroom filled with expectation one recent Tuesday and declared that his quest for the Oval Office, which “began as a whisper in Springfield, has swelled to a chorus of millions calling for change.”

That’s the essence of the Illinois senator’s message: Obama equals change; Hillary Rodham Clinton equals status quo. All else cascades from there. In this contest — where the candidates are but a micron apart on most policy matters — message is everything.

This simple theme has powered Obama to victory in 23 contests,

I think that a large part of the “marketing” is done by people who aren’t really associated with his campaign at all. The Obama girl was one of the earlier examples of this, and more recently, the music video by will.i.am. I think the fact that people have been inspired by what Obama says (even if you don’t agree with or like him he does say some fairly inspiring things) has done just as much if not more as any intentional marketing. The Obama campaign knew how to grab on to that wave though. It’s like a company that makes a product for one use, but when people use it for something else that wasn’t originally intended they realize they can make more money marketing it for that instead. For example, Coca-Cola started out as a medicinal syrup.

Of course, now that the politicians are starting to see the effectiveness of viral marketing, I think we’re gong to be seeing a lot more stuff like this in future elections.

Also the Sacramento Bee published a piece a few weeks ago that I already quoted in a post here. The Obama campaign’s “basic training” here in CA, stressed not talking about Obama in terms of policy by merit of supporters’ conversion:

On the verge of a hectic few weeks leading to Super Tuesday, the crucial Feb. 5 multistate primary including California’s, Mack wanted to drill home one of the campaign’s key strategies: telling potential voters personal stories of political conversion.

She urged volunteers to hone their own stories of how they came to Obama – something they could compress into 30 seconds on the phone.

“Work on that, refine that, say it in the mirror,” she said. “Get it down.”

She told the volunteers that potential voters would no doubt confront them with policy questions. Mack’s direction: Don’t go there. Refer them to Obama’s Web site, which includes enough material to sate any wonk.

Wonderful – what ever happened to being able to actually discuss the issues and know your candidate’s platform. No small wonder why people think he’s lite on policy. Non of his supporters talk about it and likewise the candidate himself is just getting around to it, as I noted above.

FYI, the Republican Noise Machine is kissing up to Obama with all the media love because he’s no match for Hillary and they will roll over him with a steamroller. That’s my opinion. And I stated it without using tired right wing talking points.

You know this was a decent conversation about the marketing aspects of the campaign. An attack on Obama – it wouldn’t even come close to an attack if we weighed it up against your comment dropping the same old tired right wing talking points about HRC, that I have asked repeatedly (and politiely) for months that you don’t continue to post here.

I’m trying really hard to all the conversation civil here. I’m trying really hard to moderate comments as little as possible here, and I really don’t want to ask again. You are valued member here Buzz.

Many of us feel that Obama would lead us to a “third presidential defeat.” It’s not going to help those of us who feel that way to post the vile innuendo about Obama here — is it?

In most other places there is just a constant back and forth of short lines such as “experience” vs. “hope.”

There’s a lot of that in the blogosphere.

I do think that marketing is integral part of campaigns at this point. Was it you I pointed to the book Applebee’s America? All the prevelance of demographics we are seeing in this race is a huge part of marketing a candidate to the voters. The Bush campaign was simply far more successful in ’04 than we were, in part by target marketing to voters.

We are by and large a consumer society. If voters go to the booth on style over substance that doesn’t say a lot in my opinion. But remember last time around people chose the guy the wanted to have a beer with. Me I wanted the guy who had the policy creds and the experience. I’m going there again.