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What a Brand Consultant Might Say About Obama’s Bin Laden Speech Ratings
Barack Obama’s ratings are in, and he’s a bona fide television sensation. Approximately 56.5 million viewers watched the president’s last-minute press conference on Sunday—“more television viewers than either of his two State of the Union addresses,” according to The Hill. The announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death handily outperformed its competitors in the Sunday 11:30 p.m. slot, which included some local news programs, sitcom reruns, and presumably some so-so movies on the premium stations.
Leading up to the speech, the Obama administration embarked on an edgy viral marketing campaign to pique maximum interest in the mystery announcement.
Presidential assistant Dan Pfeiffer used Twitter, a popular “social-media site,” to reveal Obama’s intentions to address the nation later that night. Note that Pfeiffer did not say what, specifically, the president would be discussing—a clever but risky move that ultimately generated a groundswell of grassroots interest. The New York Times reports that “Twitter saw the highest sustained rate of posts ever, with an average of 3,440 per second from 10:45 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Eastern time.” Obama then delayed his announcement nearly an hour, which encourage “users” to “tweet” about why he might have done so.