Marketing Blog: FootPrints

by Mike Santoro, on January 28, 2010, filed under: Branding, Public Relations, Trends

What did President Obama say last night? I decided to do a quick word cloud to see what the President focused on. It becomes quickly obvious that the focus of the night was on jobs and the economy. Once you get past the standard fare of Americans and people, there are a number of words related to the current economic situation. You see jobs, work, businesses, economy and family are heavily featured.

You also saw Obama focused on the politics of Washington. Government, Washington, reform, act, and bill are prominently noted. This was both for the desire to move some specific bills through Congress as well as Obama’s frequent calls to break the politics as usual of Washington. You also see security and energy pop out, but definetely not as prominent as jobs/economy.

Just for fun I took a look at this speech word cloud as compared to Obama’s acceptance speech on November 4, back when he was just the President – Elect.

2010 State of the Union Word Cloud

President Elect Obama's Acceptance Speech from Chicago November 4, 2008

It would be expected, but still important to note that the State of the Union is much more action focused while the acceptance speech remains very much focused on change and a new time. Much more aspirational. That’s probably a very good thing that now in office the speech is much more focused on action, but the hopefulness isn’t completely gone. You still see change pop up in yesterday’s speech. It’s just much smaller than it is a year ago.

Both clouds were created by a cool online tool called Wordle. Text from the State of the Union came from this source while the acceptance speech came from here.

Any interesting observations you can draw from these word clouds?

About this contributor:  Mike Santoro is President of Walker Sands Communications. He works to define integrated marketing and media communications strategy and oversees the tactical execution of marketing campaigns, communications pieces, web development, and PR outreach for the firm's top clients. Read more from this author