Obama Makes a Point of Speaking of the People, to the People

"Turning the weekly radio address from audio to video and making it on-demand has turned the radio address from a blip on the radar to something that can be a major newsmaking event any Saturday we choose," Pfeiffer added.

The roots of this digital communication strategy can be found in Obama's campaign for his party's nomination for president. Faced with the prospect of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's financial juggernaut during the Democratic primaries, Obama and his team made a series of early investments in building a direct-to-voter contact operation that relied heavily on the use of Web video. That helped to reaffirm the idea that each and every supporter had a hand in any successes the campaign enjoyed, and to forge a firsthand connection.

Obama announced his intent to seek the presidency via Web video, and throughout the primaries and general-election campaign, he used the medium to sidestep mainstream media and to speak directly with voters. Campaign manager David Plouffe became something of a cult hero to Democrats around the country, thanks to a series of purposely rudimentary video messages shot in his office and sent to supporters.

And some Obama videos have become YouTube phenomena: His speech on the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and race in America has been viewed more than 5.5 million times, while his victory speech in Grant Park on Nov. 4 is nearing 4 million views.

"Through their new-age communications brilliance and their resultant electronic fundraising, they have changed politics forever," said Fred Davis, a Republican media consultant and the lead ad man for Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. "They have given the Democrats a major advantage in presidential politics long into the future."

Making the success of that communication strategy work equally well from the Oval Office is the task of the coming weeks and months. Obama's decision to use the weekly address as a platform from which to make news represents the leading edge of that effort.

Now, instead of asking backers to register friends to vote, Obama will aim to use technological advances to build grass-roots support for policy initiatives, according to Joe Trippi, who managed former Vermont governor Howard Dean's 2004 Democratic presidential bid.

"Obama will be more directly connected to millions of Americans than any president who has come before him, and he will be able to communicate directly to people using the social networking and Web-based tools such as YouTube that his campaign mastered," Trippi said. "Obama's could become the most powerful presidency that we have ever seen."