Thursday, November 6. 2008

Geography and our Newly Elected President

It's been just about two days since the world learned Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States. Now its time to parlay him and his geography into marketing.

Platial

Platial sent out an e-mail to its users inviting them to add to and them embed in their own sites a map of where they were when they learned Obama was elected. That's a fine time-sensitive marketing effort, no question. It made me think of the big question that perhaps prompted the question: Where were you when JFK was shot/died? The difference between these two questions? In the case of JFK people were going about their normal lives not expecting such a tragedy. In the recent election, virtually everyone in the world, save those disconnected for one reason or another, knew there was a U.S. election going on and knew that it was likely Obama would win. So, the where question or even the "what were you thinking" question, doesn't have the immediacy or compelling nature at least for me.

I am curious, as the media seems to suspect, about how people feel about the US electing its first president, but the interest is in a different vein.

Somerville

I live in a city that borders Boston, called Somerville. It's famous as the place that invented Fluff. Alongside that historical tidbit, residents learned this year we can call Barack Obama a fellow resident. He rented a room in the city when was as Harvard Law School. In fact, I run by the building every Thursday night. So, leave it to the local paper to headline this week's issue with: Somerville Resident Elected President. It's a little bit of pride, a bit of marketing and basically true.

Illinois

The AP notes that Illinois and Chicago expect more tourists to visit.

Have you seen another other uses of "presidential geography?"

Comments

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Here's another one: on Wednesday Columbia University sent an email to alumni that said in part "We note with pride that Barack Obama '83CC will be not only the first African-American but also the first Columbia degree-holder to occupy the Oval Office." The email also included a link to a longer announcement (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/08/11/obama.html) giving more details.

#1 Tina Cary on 2008-11-07 09:34 (Reply)

Kenya expects more tourism, too!

http://www.chnpress.com/news/?section=1&id=2005

#2 Adena Schutzberg (Link) on 2008-11-10 06:31 (Reply)

Where was I when I heard? I was in Dublin for my company helping move employees out of the US in anticipation of an Obama win. My company believed Obama when he said he will raise their taxes to pay welfare to his supporters. I can't blame them because their taxes already are way higher in the US than in Ireland and any higher would put them out of business, so they are shutting down the US division before it is too late. They've offered to pay me relocation if I'm willing to move to Ireland. I'm mad that Obama cost me my job in the US so he can pay welfare to half the country by taxing me and the company I work for. If you think taxing productive people and businesses to death to build a bigger welfare state is a great idea, maybe you should move to Michigan or Cuba to see how it works in real life.

#3 JasonK on 2008-11-14 17:32 (Reply)

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In reply to	[ Top level ]#1: Tina Cary on 2008-11-07 09:34 #2: Adena Schutzberg on 2008-11-10 06:31 #3: JasonK on 2008-11-14 17:32
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