奥巴马竞选策略调整不得人心

    但这些不应该阻止他们利用自发组织的力量。2008年的奥巴马竞选活动早已经证明，可以在不算还竞选主旨完整性的前提下，放手让群众自行创立支持社区。拉哈弗•哈福什曾为奥巴马的社交媒体竞选工作并写书记录其经历，他说，奥巴马竞选班子设定了明确的交战规则，比如禁止拿萨拉•佩林的家庭大做文章。如果支持者的言论与奥巴马的竞选主旨不合拍，竞选班子就会明确宣布这类出位言论并不代表奥巴马。这一次，他们也可以向全世界发布附加条款/免责声明，说明支持社区并不一定反映竞选活动的观点。社区本身也可以赞同或反对个人成员的言论。

    为奥巴马负责数码事务的官员也指出，由于多种社交网络工具的存在，他们无需倚重MyBarackObama.com。然而哈福什指出：“Facebook不能帮助人们组织起来，和MyBo（MyBarackObama.com）没法比。”

    如果竞选活动不能尽快回到其制胜之道，就会有继续隔绝（甚至疏远）年轻人的风险。年轻人不愿被组织，只想自发行动。他们希望参与、而不是被动接受竞选指示。他们想采取主动，而不是听命于无所不知的竞选策略专家。茶党都明白这一点，奥巴马也不是不知道。

    如果奥巴马竞选班子想要重新赢得“我们”，它该怎么做？

    1．向下放权。不要告诉人们怎么做，让他们成立自己的社区，交结朋友，建立联系，筹集资金。开始对话吧，让他们做出自己的贡献，不要高高在上，发号施令。有很多控制出位言行的方法，而社区比自上而下的层次结构要强大得多。“让组织外的人士去发布消息，给人的感觉会真诚得多，”萨利姆说。“听到某个朋友谈论奥巴马的成功，效果会更好。”

    2．重建平台。2008年，奥巴马的竞选平台MyBarackObama.com大获成功。到选举当天，全国共成立支持奥巴马的团体3.5万多个，他们组织了超过20万次活动，筹集了大量竞选资金。效果很好。何不再试试？

    3．关注热点：就这个群体关心的话题开展对话，比如避孕，萨利姆说：“这个方法很好，可以吸引没有归属感的千禧世代，奥巴马想要赢得大选就需要他们的投票。”

    Don Tapscott (@dtapscott)撰写了14本讨论新技术在商务和社会中的应用的书籍，最新书名《宏观维基经济学》（Macrowikinomics）。

    But that shouldn't stop the campaign from tapping into the power of self-organization. The Obama campaign itself showed in 2008 that you can let people create their own communities without hurting the integrity of the core message. The Obama campaign set out clear rules of engagement that prohibited, for instance, trash talking about Sarah Palin's family, said Rahaf Harfoush, who worked on Obama's social media campaign and then wrote a book about it. Whenever supporters said something that didn't jive with Obama's message, the campaign made it clear that the outlier didn't speak for Obama. This time, the Obama campaign could write a clear rider/disclosure statement to the world that the communities do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign. The community itself could register its approval, or disapproval, of statements by members.

    Obama's digital people also point out that they don't need to rely so heavily on MyBarackObama.com because there are so many other social networking tools out there. Yet as Harfoush point out, "Facebook is not equipped to help people organize, as MyBo was."

    If the campaign doesn't return to its winning ways, and fast, it risks continuing to isolate itself (or even alienate) youth. Youth don't want to be organized; they want to take action themselves. They want to participate, not be passive recipients of campaign instructions. They want to take initiatives rather than be told what to do from all-knowing campaign strategists. The Tea Party understands this; Obama once did too.

    So if the Obama campaign wants to get back to the "we," what should it do?

    1. Let go. Instead of telling people what to do, let them create their own communities to make friends and contacts, and raise money. Start a conversation. Let them contribute in their own way, without instructions from the top. There are plenty of ways to contain the outliers, and the community will be far more powerful than any top-down hierarchy can be. "It's important for people outside the campaign to disseminate messages so it feels authentic," said Saleem. "It helps to hear one of your friends talk about the successes."

    2. Recreate the platform. In 2008, the Obama campaign's platform, MyBarackObama.com, was wildly successful. By election day, more than 35,000 groups had formed to support Mr. Obama, and they had organized more than 200,000 events and raised vast sums of money. It worked then. Why not now?

    3. Engage with them on the issues: Start a conversation with them about the issues they care about, like contraception, says Saleem: "It's a really good way to draw in disenfranchised millennials than Obama will need if he wants to win."

    Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) is the author of 14 books about new technologies in business and society, most recently Macrowikinomics.