Transparency of Politic

By now, hopefully all my loyal readers (yes that was tongue-in-cheek) are aware that Barack Obama is President-elect of the United States of America.

As I was pondering this momentous occasion and all of its facets: his youth, his inexperience in the Washington scene, his race and other issues, one stood out to me that I think deserves a closer look.

Transparency. Obama manged to raise millions upon millions of dollars over the Internet Seth Godin has a nice blog post on the marketing of the election and how it relates to marketing in general. But one thing he doesn't touch on is what I see as a sea-change in the power structure of the United States.

For years, Gen Y has been talked about as the next big thing economically. We had our successful Boomer parents' money and influenced many a purchase. And then we started making our own money and still using our parents' resources. But in the last election, we didn't really impact a change at the polls. This time around, however, we might have been the deciding factor with record registration and record voting numbers seen throughout the nation. Which begs the question of why?

In my mind, it's because we felt involved every step of the way. Obama (and I might add Republican candidate Ron Paul) was masterful in his use of the internet to bring an air of transparency and openness to his campaign. Not only did this allow internet savvy youngsters to empower themselves and their friends, but it allowed for instantaneous reaction from Obama supporters financially and conversationally.

We've seen examples of this in other companies as well. Starbucks started their idea blog which allows fanatic customers to post their ideas on new products, operations improvements and everything else under the Starbucks sun.

But I digress. What I wanted to focus on was the fact that transparency has worked for Obama. It is my hope that he continues to keep the lines of communication open with America. In my opinion that access is something that has been missing for far to long and has helped to create the culture of fear we reside in as a lack of knowledge led to ignorance which led to fear.

If this flickr post from Obama of his family on Election Night is any indication, I think we can keep hope alive.