If they were coffee products, Barack Obama would be Starbucks and Hillary Clinton would be Folgers.

That’s what I gleaned from a cover story of the current issue of Fast Company, a trendy business magazine that reports on trends, technology, and changing marketplaces. A big headline that says, “The Brand Called Obama,” is played prominently on the magazine cover, as is a photo of the candidate looking off into the distance somewhere.

There’s a good amount of hero worship in the magazine article inside. When such adulation involves a politician, one should be careful about drinking too much of the Kool-Aid. Still, the article offers an insightful analysis on how the Obama campaign has skillfully tapped into the amazing and relatively new world of the Internet and all of its possibilities.

While the Clintons have largely clung to the usual political scripts, (i.e. depend on historically big donors, rely on mostly older establishment poiticians), the Obama campaign has tapped into a new age message machine of online clicks and Internet-based social networks. It is a machine that has not only worked to spread the candidate’s message and themes - but to also raise tens of millions of dollars a month from average wage-earning Americans.

While Hillary has been going to the usual fatcats of her party, Obama has gained hundreds of thousands of Internet-driven $50 donations from 18-to-34 Americans, many of whom had never given a contribution to a candidate before. Obama now regularly raises $30 million and more every month while Republican presidential candidate John McCain is lucky if he raises one-fifth of that amount while following traditional models of political fundraising.

“Obama has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation,” the Fast Company article states. “Obama’s inclusive rhetoric is pitched to appeal to a Web generation of voters who want to be involved in creating messages and policies.”

Much, if not all of this, will surely sound like high-folluting nonsense to older voters, say a 40-something baby boomer like myself who struggles to get his mind around the richness of Internet intricacies and the online culture of instant messaging and social networking. But the kids get it and they’re moving fast, so fast that while skeptical boomers roll their eyes at Obama’s new age media machine, he has run right past the Clinton restoration,  with McCain now in his sights.

For all of Obama’s abilities as a candidate, his secret weapon might be a 24-year-old whiz kid named Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, a social networking engine that is hugely popular among young online users. Hughes took a leave from Facebook to become one of Obama’s chief gurus for all things online.  Fast Company says Hughes brought the Obama campaign “a mastery of the human side of social networking that has translated into real results.”

Millions of youthful Obama supporters have communicated amongst themselves about the campaign, the candidate, and in the process of all of their online social networking, generated enthusiasm, money and passion for the Obama campaign.

“This is where the Obama campaign has been strategic and smart,” says Andrew Rasiej, the founder of an online organization that studies how technology is changing politics. In the Fast Company article, Rasiej goes on to say, “They, (Obama campaign), have made sure the message machine was providing the message where people were already assembled. They’ve turned themselves into a media organization.”

This high-tech message machine will be the rubber that hits the road this fall against the McCain and the Republicans, if Obama does finally oust Clinton in the Democratic race. And then we will see if this new model of American political marketing and promotion will hold up against what is sure to be a full throttle Republican attack machine. A Boston Globe story this week reported that various Republican-leaning political groups are preparing “the book” on Obama, i.e. the return of the so-called “swift boat” line of attack advertising that helped to sink John Kerry in 2004.

It could be the battle of old-school swift boating vs. the new age social networking this fall, lining up not just a clash of ideas, but of political marketing and promotion that could decide a most interesting presidential race between a 46-year-old Democrat and a 72-year-old Republican.

Win or lose, Fast Company says the Obama Brand and the way it has run its Web-driven campaign has changed American politics, and is sure to generate a raft of imitators in the years ahead.

- Joaquin C. Tijerina, Official Chisme Blogger

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