Obama and Mobile Marketing

If the way that Barack Obama is handling his marketing is any indication of how he'll run the country, he definitely has my vote. I love to see how his campaign is embracing the new. He's harnessed the power of social marketing. He's reaching the Millenial generation (see my recent post on same topic) and hopefully galvanizing young adults to vote. Now, he's pulled off a mobile marketing coup.

See this Washington Post article about the much-touted announcement of Obama's Vice President, done via text messaging.

What a smart move--publicize way ahead of time that you're going to announce your VP choice via a text message to those constituents who've signed up on your website. I can only imagine how many people signed up and relinquished their cell phone numbers, just so that they could be first to hear the big news. Kudos to Barack Obama for his data collection victory!

According to this Fox Business article, Obama, through his use of text messaging, is truly setting the stage to mobilize the vote come November.

"Allison Dale, a University of Michigan graduate student who has studied the impact of text messages on voting, said Obama's campaign was shrewd to give prospective voters a juicy piece of information -- the vice presidential pick -- in exchange for their cell phone number.

Cell phone numbers can't be obtained in a directory, she noted, and the Obama campaign should be able to collect tens of thousands of numbers this way. But she said it was unclear whether the database will be heavy with political junkies or people who would be inclined to vote under any circumstances.

"We're still sort of at the beginning of figuring out what you can do with the text messaging," Dale said."

I think that most marketers can learn a lot from the Obama campaign. So smart to keep an open mind about channels, media and technology. Lessoned learned: maximize all opportunities to reach, connect and sell to your core clients.