Latino Website Promoting Barack Obama Attracts Over 50,000 Hits and Thousands of MP3 downloads

July 5, 2007
Via WebWire

The website www.amigosdeobama.com was launched a month ago as part of a Latino outreach campaign to promote Presidential candidate Barack Obama and motivate Latinos to vote in key primary states. Because 50% of all Latinos have no opinion of Barack Obama, the website provides information on Senator Obama and his support of key Latino issues. The campaign’s slogan, “¿Cómo Se Dice… Cómo Se Llama? Obama, Obama” is provided as a free downloadable MP3 song and ringtone on the website.

Created to fill a void in media outreach to Latinos, the website has attracted a large following among Latinos as well as non-Latinos. “Although the campaign’s signature song, ‘Obama Reggaeton’, is in Spanish, approximately 30% of the emails and downloads are by non-Latinos,” says Miguel Orozco of Nueva Vista Media, Inc. In addition, with no paid advertising, Amigos de Obama has been mainly promoted by bloggers and news articles, and was even featured on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The first phase of the outreach campaign was to launch the website and attract a large audience. The next phase will include developing multimedia resources that can be used at Latino events, churches and community centers to encourage Latino voter registration and promote Barack Obama. “Once Latinos are presented with Barack Obama’s message of hope, his ability to unify people and his commitment to Latino issues and values, Latino support for Barack Obama’s candidacy will increase,” says Miguel Orozco.

The outreach campaign also seeks to use the recent immigration debate and negative portrayal of Latinos as a reminder to the thousands that have marched in support of immigrants that they will continue to be labeled as “second class” citizens until they exercise their right to vote. The website emphasizes that over 13 million eligible Latino voters live in states with primary elections on or before February 5th – many of these Latinos will be voting for the first time.

Amigos de Obama is inspired by Barack Obama, but not funded by the Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign.