There has been much written lately about how Senator Barack Obama has mastered the web to build a powerful and effective fund raising machine. Obama recently announced that his campaign brought in $40 million in March alone, more than double the amount raised by Senator Clinton’s campaign that month. Some 1.3 million individual donors contributed to Obama’s huge fund raising tally, the majority of them doing so via the web.

But, there is another aspect of Obama digital strategy that is less well known but also generating significant results for his candidacy. Obama has become known as the young person’s candidate, and he has done a masterful job of reaching out to and engaging young people – youthful voters as well as kids – through the Internet channel. I think Obama success at bringing kids (not just teens and young adults) into his campaign is particularly interesting and instructive, because as a recent New York Times article pointed out (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/us/politics/08kids.html?scp=2&sq=jan+hoffman&st=nyt), these kids have played a big role in convincing their parents to vote for Obama.

These kids have become the new “Superinfluencers.” And, this is equally true in consumer marketing as it is in politics these days. The Superinfluencer kids represent an incredibly powerful constituent group for politicians who are clever enough to appeal to, and then enlist, them in their cause. They are just as influential for marketers trying to convince mom or dad to buy a certain brand of toothpaste, or visit a preferred fast food store, or even buy a particular car.

Now, the kids of the family have always played a role in influencing purchase decisions in the household. But, that role has grown exponentially in recent years given the major cultural changes in how parents and kids relate to each other. The Times article described this changing relationship brilliantly:

“While politicians inevitably invoke children and the future, rarely have the political preferences of children themselves carried much weight with their elders. On the contrary: when baby boomer parents were the age their children are now, the ideological and social gap between generations was more pronounced. Parents were, by definition, authoritarian. Their children were, by definition, anti-.

“But the sharp distinctions between generations have eroded. Parents now are exponentially more entwined with their offspring, inclined to place their children’s emotional well-being ahead of their own. Even when students live away at college, many parents call them and send text messages every day.”

One doesn’t need to be a marketing genius to recognize the important ramifications of this generational shift. And the effect it can have, and is having – both positive and negative – in how brands engage families through their consumer marketing and communications activities. It was especially interesting to me reading about how the gap between the generations is so much smaller than it used to be. That narrowing generational gap is not just manifested in the fact that parents wear the same jeans their kids do (with not always attractive results), or listen to some of the same music on their iPods. The Obama campaign recognized this and aggressively reached out to and mobilized the Superinfluencer children to “pull” their parents into Obamaworld. The parents, more desirous than ever before to be on the same page with their kids (and even be like them in many ways), are coming along for the ride with very positive results for Obama’s campaign results. (The Times piece noted how the major Obama endorsement by Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, was largely catalyzed by Casey’s four teenage daughters. Talk about Superinfluencers!)

At the center of this new Superinfluencer shift is – you guessed it – digital communications, including the web, cell phones, etc. The Internet provides a vital communications channel for reaching young people of all ages, and they then use the web to build and take part in communities of interest that can build support for and even sell a candidate, an idea, a product, a movement. The Superinfluencers are also using their preferred communications channel, mobile phones, to weigh in on issues and subjects of all types. And, as the Times piece outlined, they are also communicating with, and influencing, their parents via cell phones (talk and texting). Parents are keeping in touch with their kids away at college through text messaging.

Clearly, we marketers need to be thinking strategically and creatively about how these Superinfluencers should and will factor into our marketing and communications plans. Smart marketers and politicians are already doing so, frequently with great results. Obama is just one example of this. Of course, as with any marketing strategy, especially one dealing with a key influencer group, you need to take great care in how you actually go about reaching the parents through their kids, the Superinfluencers. If you are going to communicate directly with these young people, you need to do so respectfully and in a relevant way. For starters, that means that you need to bring real value to interacting with the Superinfluencers – whether that value is entertainment, financial or even new thinking and ideas about political leadership, the environment, human rights, etc. (issues that kids and young people in general are interested in).

Here’s a tangible example of how marketers could tap into this new Superinfluencer opportunity. Just about every major car company today is trying to position itself as “Green,” from GM to Toyota to Honda and its “Enviromentology” campaign. Instead of just trying to hammer their environmental credentials home to adult buyers, what if a car company invested in a cause-related campaign specifically focused on pre-teen kids. This campaign could provide valuable educational and informational benefits to the participating kids, including providing support for local environmental efforts in schools and the community. The program would empower the kids to come up with the green ideas and drive the results, all integrated together through a web based community and digital communications.

Again, such a cause related program by a car company would have to be done just right. You cannot pander to these young people, or over promise to them. They can smell insincerity immediately. Obama is succeeding in reaching out to young people because he speaks their language and they believe he is real.

But, by tapping into the environmental issue that is clearly so important to kids, a progressive car company could bring these Superinfluencers closer into their brand. It would then only be natural for these Superinfluencers to enlist their parents in the effort, with the very positive results ultimately redounding to the auto manufacturer’s brand.

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. The best way to parents’ hearts is through their kids – now more so than ever. Senator Obama realized early on that these new Superinfluencers would be a force to be reckoned in the rapidly changing realities of campaigning in the 21^st Century. We marketers would do well to take heed of this important new influencer strategy.

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