Sunday, November 2, 2008

Using text messaging to get out the vote

In August we learned in the article "Enticing Text Messages in a Get-Out-the-Vote Push" in the New York Times that the Obama campaign was going to use text messaging as a means to build its contact list. How did they get you on their list? By appealing to those interested in learning of Obama's VP running mate before it was to be announced in the media. This wasn't the first time use of this technology had been used.

"The Obama campaign has sent text messages to subscribers to alert them about speeches to be shown on television. But, said Todd Zeigler, a senior vice president at the Bivings Group, an Internet consulting firm that has advised Republican candidates, the technology is still in its infancy as a political mobilization tool."

Included in the article, we are told:

"Researchers are only beginning to study the effects of text messaging on get-out-the-vote efforts. A study of 4,000 people released last September found that those who received a reminder in a text message one day before an election were 4.2 percent more likely to vote, said a co-author of the study, Allison Dale, a graduate student at the University of Michigan."

In the Obama-VP model, citizens were added to the list by initiating a message to the Obama campaign. Once a poll tells politicians that voters (i.e., citizens) don't mind this approach, you can be sure the method will be widely used. Calendars on our cell phone and in our email packages already allow us to to get this reminder by entering the information and asking for a notification alert. Will voters want their politicians to take the initiative to do that for them?



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is very clear that consumers are driven by promotions in the physical world to use the mobile device as a RESPONSE MECHANISM TO INTERACT WITH BRANDS!

At Adheadz.com, we continue to see Mobile Response rates higher than 15% when Brands run radio, TV and traditional advertising with their Mobile Tag like "Text BMW to 95613 for More Information".

The increase of Mobile Tagging, where marketers add their brands’ Keyword and Short Code (like 'BMW to 95613 for More Information") onto their brochures, collateral and marketing outreach, is similar to the use of URL tagging which happened at the onset of the Internet.

All the best - Scott

Scott Kline
scott@adheadz.com

Aaron Fahrmann said...

I was impressed with President Elect Obama's Campaign's usage of the text to get out the vote and stoke its list. There were several technologies that were used with great success. On the other side, there was also the viral text message that was used as a tactic to try to get under-informed voters to miss the election day by telling them that democrats were supposed to vote on November 5th due to long poll lines. While this was a rather inane criminal attempt at duplicating a letter version that was circulating, it still shows that while these technologies can be used for mobilization, there are still some willing to use it to deny the act of democracy in order to gain their own subversion of the majority preference.