Tuesday, August 26, 2008

But did it matter?


It is reported that 2.9 million people received/signed up for Obama's VP announcement via SMS. That's pretty impressive, however, if you look closely at the news, you see that the 2.9 million subscribers received the txt message over "Friday, Saturday and Sunday".

If you get "breaking news" 12, 24 or 48 hours later - just how "breaking" is it? While I'm impressed with the campaign's collection of 2.9 million SMS subscribers, is SMS really the method to distribute time sensitive information to a mass audience? Don't get me wrong here, the 2.9 million SMS capability is HUGE - when used to its advantage. In this case getting a txt message on Sunday about the VP pick would be kinda annoying. Heck, getting it 12 hours late would annoy me.

In general, I think the Obama campaign is being super smart with the use of internet and mobile technologies in their campaign and I think savvy marketers should pay close attention to how its utilized and the effects on the subscribers.

I think the GOP is missing the boat on this on, big time. Not that I'm surprised by this - its amazing to see how poorly they run their campaigns every election - and YES, I'm a conservative. (Note - I'm not a "republican", but more of a constitutional conservative.)

(image from GigOm's original posting)

UPDATE - An employee who signed up for the SMS alert never received it - so, how many others didn't as well? Not receiving it had a negative effect on her and I'd bet it did to others as well.

1 comment:

Drew said...

3 cheers for constitutional conservatives. I'd wholeheartedly agree with your statements about Obama's campaign management - very savvy.