Lifestyle PR and the Obama Campaign

Environmentalists have used some very innovative media methods in major newspapers across the States and Canada to win over President Barack Obama to express their point about the Alberta’s oil sands. They have used romantic advertisements in the personals and compiled very cleverly worded messages in the 'In Search Of' sections to attract and draw public attention to the environmental issues in Canada.

One such message published in the personal was very deliberate in its choice of words, giving the public a very timely and poignant reminder of Obama’s words: "Patriotic, busy, Chicago-Hawaiian man, must like basketball and know how to do the fist bump. I saw you on TV. You said 'Yes, we can' and talked about a clean energy future. Meet me in Canada and we'll sweep aside the world's dirtiest oil, the Tar Sands, and make sweet climate-change solutions together."

Other ads brought home the point of Obama's pre-election promises to building a clean energy future for America, as they were aware that energy and climate change issues were to be discussed with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during his visit to Canada.

The Craiglist websites were running similar ads across North America, with a further full page advertisement in USA Today imploring Obama to look at clean-energy sources, rather than fossil fuels.

By making these ads 'personal' and yet undeniably directed at Obama and the government, the environmentalists are hoping to woo him over by taking a positive approach to looking at renewable energy sources and away from fossil fuels, in particular the tar sands in Alberto during discussions with the Canadian Prime Minister.

Canadians are also trying to make the point that although through Obama’s leadership North America will strive towards a new energy economy, Canada will be left behind.

Public figures and celebrities use lifestyle pubic relations as a way of appealing to the pubic interest and drawing themselves to the public’s attention. Portraying them as living within the manifestos they proclaim, their wishes and ambitions to change the way they are either perceived or would like to be perceived by the general public is frequently and effectively used by public relations representatives.

By combining both traditional public relations methods such as full page print ads and using the Internet as an effective media communication tool, these messages have reached millions of people across America and Canada in a very short space of time. Showing how lifestyle PR can be most effectively and successfully used to get messages out to wide audience targets.

Shrewd lifestyle PR agencies will take onboard the impact of successful strategies and tactics these innovative public relations methods can produce, by reminding the public of the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Direct communication lifestyle PR is also becoming an increasingly popular way of grabbing the public’s attention. Obama has a Twitter account and other celebrities such as Stephen Fry are also joining the masses and using Twitter to communicate with his fans. And whilst it could be argued that Obama himself does not spend time responding to his Twitter community, Stephen Fry declares he does!