Mobile Marketing and the Presidential Race

If you've been tuning in to the already almost year-long Presidential race, you know that this one has been very different -- on many levels. Not only have we had a longer head-start to understand the various contenders, but we have also seen an unprecedented number of debates and other "media moments" thus far. And we still have almost 9 months to go before the election!

Direct marketers have definitely been involved in this process. And this time around, it's gone further than direct mail and telemarketing campaigns. Case in point . . . according to DM News today, mobile services firm, Mogreet, is jumping on the election bandwagon with a new free video text service. According to the article, “It's all about empowering young voters with a voice through the channel that they know best,” said James Citron, CEO of Mogreet. “The youth vote is very important in this election and using new media channels is the best way to reach a younger demographic.”

And, as we've seen thus far in the primary's and caucuses so far, there has been an unprecedented amount of involvement from America's youth. Mogreet has seized this opportunity by sending a mobile phone to each of the major presidential candi­date's new media managers. Those interested in the candidates viewpoints can go to http://www.mogreetthevote.com/, and "select from a series of 10- to 15-second videos, deemed Mogreets, on topics that include the economy, gay marriage, the Iraq War and global warming and send them to a candidate's mobile phone, with a personalized text message, for free. General consumer-to-consumer Mogreets cost 99 cents."

As you can imagine, Mogreet is doing this for more than just educating kids about the voting process. They are also educating them on their platform, and hope to create more awareness nationwide about their services. Since texting is most widely embraced by the youth market, this is a brilliant idea!

Results so far show that Barack Obama has received the most texts (37.5% of the 4,000 messages sent so far). Hillary Clinton has received 22.5%. The area of most interest so far is global warming.

What a wonderful idea! This is where creating awareness through social media and mobile marketing can come together to create a direct marketing success story. It will be fun to see how widely used this campaign becomes as we get closer to the election.