By now, the story is legend.  We’ve written it a few times ourself.  “Join now.”  “Meet Barack Obama.” “Elect Barack Obama President of the United States.” Sign up for local campaign events.” Barack Obama’s methodically consistent online campaign featured haiku-simple display ads carefully calibrated for click-through magic, leading millions to donate to his campaign, again and again and again. When it came to making online work as an ad medium, he had “it.”  Romney tried, with biography and family photos.  He got no love.  McCain bio always worked, plus Hillary in a crystal ball, Hillary as a hippy, bear jokes, and peanuts popping out of capitol domes.  Funny stuff.  Not Obama’s style.  From the beginning, his motto was all Al Davis, if the owner of the Raiders had been a multi-level marketer:  “Just join, baby.”  And so they did.  Biography and issues and policy engagement were for the web site.  The display ad - the gateway - was carefully crafted vanilla.  Cha-ching!

Once, there was more. 

Before the Great Font Discussion of ’08 and his ad buyers’ long, happy relationship with the readers of Rollingstone.com (we hear they have agreed to see other people), the Obama online campaign started with a different look and feel than the one now on display.  It was based on his biography. His display ads told more about the candidate than “Join my headshot.”

Oppo researchers do this for a living, but if a fellow civilian wants to check out “Meet Barack Obama” from summer and fall 2007 and see how he stands up with the candidate who’s introducing himself today, who am I to get in the way? Two of the ads are .jpg only because we couldn’t find the flash. We’re also missing a killer ad with video in it from his declaration of candidacy in icy Springfield, Illinois.  The rest of his early ads, aimed at Iowans and New Hampshire, are below.  Dig in!