"They look like Facebook"

That statement points to one of the reasons why Hilary Clinton failed to secure the Presidential nomination for the Democratic Party in the US.

According to today's Seattle Times, it was used by Mark Penn, Burson-Marsteller CEO and for a time Hilary Clinton's chief strategist, to describe Barack Obama supporters. Given that one Obama's new media team, Chris Hughes, is in fact one of the founders of Facebook, this could be seen as something of a compliment.

An informative read, the Seattle Times piece outlines Obama's new media strategy and how the campaign instinctively 'got' social media as a means to enthuse supporters up and down the US.

The lesson for brands, is that a social media strategy is only effective if it's embraced and understood throughout the organisation, as opposed to being done for the sake of doing it or looking at it as just another outlet for your offline marketing efforts:

"Patrick Ruffini, a Republican strategist who was the Webmaster for President Bush's 2004 campaign, said that a campaign's culture largely determines its digital strategy."

So in the case of John McCain who (one assumes tongue in cheek) told an election gathering "I hate the bloggers:"

"The McCain campaign "could hire the best people, build the best technology and adopt the best tactics" on the Internet, Ruffini said. "But it would have to be in sync with the candidate and the campaign.""