Are you ready for the client that wants the “Obama approach?” Wondering if I’d be ready, I started dissecting articles about Barack Obama’s marketing campaign. Next, I started a list of all the interactive tools on Obama’s website. Soon, the list was over 45 items long, including partner websites, the way he’d made speeches available on iTunes, and the mesmerizing, story-telling photos on Flickr.

Obama’s seamless integration of so many interactive tools makes his approach look simple and easy. For the most part, it is. Consensus among writers from Fortune Magazine, CNN.com, Fast Company and more is that what made it work was Obama’s clear sense of knowing what his key messages and strategy would be from the beginning.

In an election-night interview with “60 Minutes,” Obama’s staff said that they knew from day one what their messages and strategy would be. They stuck to it and never wavered.

One of the biggest pressures marketers face is the pressure to second-guess. How do you get to be so confident about your point of view? Research helps. Knowing yourself helps. Can we help our clients with that? Absolutely.

As clients ask, we can point out Obama’s consistency throughout all 45 (and more) tools. Fonts, colors and images are the same regardless of whether they’re on Facebook or Obama’s site. Obama’s key strategy? Focus on the “buyer.” Use “We and you” language. In contrast, Hilary Clinton’s campaign was “seller” focused, using phrases like “I, me, and my experience.”

It’s all too easy for clients to see the Twittering, text messaging and Flickr photos and want to embrace them for their own brands. That’s exactly the spot where we can encourage them to start with the “big rocks.” Well-defined strategy, key messages, and carefully selected analytics allowed the campaign to be flexible and agile. When it made sense to use Twitter, they did. When it made sense to use a different medium, they fluidly moved to the other medium.

Incidentally, Obama’s staff was clear on what analytics would drive their next moves. Reports say that it wasn’t hits, or time on the site, but engagement that mattered most. If people went to the site, that was just the start. If they went to the site and clicked-through to send a message to the VP pick, the campaign knew it was on the right track.

You can see how the desire for engagement drove site design. Every part of it is simple and user-friendly. Each click-through opportunity was low-risk and often associated with a reward; if users forwarded a message to a friend, for example, the campaign would follow-up with a free a sticker for the sender.

Many of the articles I came across cited Obama’s mastery of database micromarketing. If you haven’t seen one of the personalized videos that voters could send to friends to encourage voting, track down an Obama fan. The videos are compelling and entertaining. They make the sender appear to be fun, savvy and affectionate, and give the receiver something they can’t turn away from. How can you turn away from a video that has YOUR NAME embedded in nearly every frame?

The bottom line is that if your clients want the “Obama approach,” you’ve got the perfect opportunity to talk about strategy, consistency, and how to put the customer first. The roadmap for how to integrate the latest online tools will fall into place from there.

Have you seen the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) Get Out the Vote posters?

This is a powerful collection of non-partisan persuasion, definitely worth perusing.

There are over 300 posters, many quite extraordinary, to download, print, and post as part of AIGA’s public service initiative, Design for Democracy. You can also view a juried set of 24 Get Out the Vote posters.

I looked through the entire collection (as I happily ignored two robocalls), and I’m casting my vote for these top three candidates:

From Matt and Karen Davis, AIGA Toledo
The large vertical word “veto” sits directly atop the word “vote,” as if to say, don’t veto your right to vote. This is effective wordplay, highlighting two similarly spelled political words, both of which involve the exercise of power.

From Ellen Lupton, AIGA Baltimore
A flashlight illuminates four letters, v-o-t-e, found within four apathetic phrases, “Whatever,” “So What,” “Why Bother,” and “Nevermind.”

From Andrew Smith, AIGA Central Pennsylvania
A strong typographic treatment of a word within a word: s(elect). Even though this “inherent word” concept is becoming overly popular since the Gap (PRODUCT) RED ™ campaign, this poster is still refreshingly effective.

I also want to mention a clean, effective design submitted by Ali Guinn, one of my colleagues at Larsen. Ali’s headline “Where do you draw the line?” appears above a simple graphic of two boxes, followed by the subhead “Vote Nov. 4.” See it here, the fifth thumbnail on the top row.

If clicking through thumbnails is not for you, you could watch this video of 50 selected Get Out the Vote posters, curated by Darrin Alfred of the Denver Art Museum in partnership with the Walker Art Center.

See you at the polls…