At the Obama campaign rally in Asheville, NC this past weekend I heard people questioning certain aspects of the event.  As the Obama campaign provides an example of some very talented movement builders, I wanted to break down a few of those confusing elements and explore what they can teach us about building powerful movements.

Obama Movement: RSVP Needed

The Obama campaign strongly recommended that you submit an RSVP online to ensure that you would be able to get it into the event.  Once you arrived, however, there was no one checking RSVPs — only a 5,000 person long line.  So why did the campaign imply that you needed to RSVP?

Because this rally is one small component of the movement.  One of the most important parts of this event for their movement (and a key benefit of any event for your movement) is obtaining the ability and permission to continue a dialogue.  For every person who submitted an RSVP — regardless of whether they made it to the rally — the campaign now has both the ability to follow-up and a reason to do so.  The rally was one component in the ongoing process of building a movement, and the Obama campaign made sure they could leverage it to grow the movement in the future.

Obama Movement: Get Your Tickets

As you were waiting in that very long line, event volunteers came through multiple times handing out the tickets that you would need to enter the event.  For each ticket, you would fill out your contact information on one half and then the volunteer would detach it and hand you the stub.  All of this seemed logical until you arrived at the gate and discovered no one was collecting tickets.  If you then pulled out your ticket stub and read it more carefully, you found written in the fine print, “No ticket needed for admittance.”

Again, the Obama campaign is going to great lengths to collect contact information.  Many people were left standing on the outside of the arena, but the campaign now has the contact information of everyone who waited in line for the rally.  It is positioned to leverage this event to help expand its movement in the future.

Obama Movement: The seating chart

The majority of attendees were standing behind the press barricade.  A select few were in front of the press barriaced and right next to the stage, and the luckiest ones actually got to sit up on the stage with Obama.  Why would they create such an elaborate arrangement?  Why put the press in the middle of the crowd?  Why place spectators so they could only see Obama’s back?

The answer to all these questions is better press.  Events are perfect opportunities to gain free news publicity for your movement, and structuring the event to benefit the press will make good news articles all the more likely.  By weaving the press area through the crowd, the Obama campaign made it easy for reporters to interview members of the crowd and to comfortably obtain close-up photos.  By placing spectators on stage, the campaign provides the press with more interesting photos — as well as giving themselves an opportunity to visually establish the broad base of support their movement enjoys.  Planning your events with the media in mind will help your movement to successfully leverage free news publicity as well.

Obama Movement: Time for shopping

If you took the time to talk with vendors at the event, you found that many of them came from around the country, following the campaign trail.  The strength of this one movement sustains many companies manufacturing products, shipping them back and forth across the US, and hiring vendors to staff their tables at political events.

This is a valuable lesson for the great number of businesses which feel that movement building isn’t relevant to their market.   A movement can energize, rally, and attract people to new products or services.  It can even create new markets, as having a cause is more powerful than simply having a product.

Obama Movement: Additional lessons

The recent Obama rally highlighted some best practices for movement building, including the importance of collecting contact info (even when that entails creating fake tickets), how you can build press coverage and photo opportunities into an event, and even the relevance of movements to many businesses.  If you have attended recent campaign events, what other lessons have you found for effective movement building?  Leave them in the comments below.