[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U [/youtube]

Every president since Roosevelt has given us a weekly address.  All on radio.  It’s not ironic that Obama is using YouTube for his.  After all, his campaign channel had 1,823 videos posted that garnered over 19 million views.  Anyone using YouTube as a communication channel, and everyone of you should, can appreciate the hugeness of that.  He used Twitter and Facebook along with a gigantic website to connect with people.  And his transition effort has its own website, change.gov

Speaking of irony, people, come on, is anybody else dumbfounded by the fact that Obama is the first to use the URL change.gov?  Did nobody in our government ever before think to use it?  Too big of an intellectual stretch to put “change” and “government” together?  So I’m guessing smartdecisions.gov is also not in use yet (don’t bother checking, it’s not)?  But I digress. . .

As a marketing consultant I’m also a student of communication and persuasion.  So I always watch the presidentlial campaigns.  It certainly can be argued that Clinton and McCain “fought the last war” when it comes to the two fundamentals of marketing: message and methods. 

What’s the lesson for small business marketing?  What “war are you fighting?”  What messaging and marketing implementation methods are you employing?  The ones you’ve always used, or the ones people are connecting with today?  It certainly can also be argued that if Clinton or McCain had embraced the digital world as early and aggressively as Obama we would be inaugurating a different president come January.  Think about that as you do your marketing planning.