Obama VP Text Hit Late But Still Hit Hard

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By: Matt Clark

Two weeks ago I praised Obama’s social media and digital marketing savvy after finding out about his plans to announce his VP pick via text messaging and e-mails. Obama promised that his supporters would be the first to know his pick if they opted into his marketing efforts.

The text message and e-mail announcing Biden as Obama’s pick went out at 3:02 a.m. EDT on Saturday. Most people were already asleep, luckily I’m a work-a-holic and sleep with my crackberry in hand and woke up when it came through. By then, however, mainstream media already broke the story by two hours and it was old news.
I’m not going to break down Obama’s mobile marketing efforts; you can read the Wired article for that. But a lot of people are claiming this to be a big failure. I disagree 100%

This is the first time in American Politics that a candidate has launched such an effort on a national scale. Just for that, this was a success. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has been trumped by social media so often lately, they needed to fight back and prove that they were still the best source for news. They couldn’t just let Obam’as mobile plans go without trying to fight back, and they won.

This forced Obama’s hand; he had to sent the text message out so late at night. And I’m sure most people found out via the text message rather than the news. I know that I check my phone when I wake up before I read the paper.

As I stated before, the Obama Camp, lead by Joe Rospars, has found a new way to connect with their audience. I felt more connected to the campaign by finding out his VP pick at 3:30am, then in the newspaper the next day. The e-mail I received later that day, for Obama and from Biden, made me feel even more connected, as I was invited to watch a joint video on Obama’s Web site.

Apparently, Obama’s Web site traffic hit an all-time high Saturday. The Obama campaign said more than 48,000 people watched the live stream of Obama and Biden’s first joint appearance from their Web site. By about mid-afternoon, more than $1.8 million had been contributed online.

This contribution total is a direct result of Obama’s mobile marketing efforts. So the GOP and mobile marketing naysayers can claim failure all they want. The results are not only in the numbers, they are in the groundbreaking efforts the Obama Camp has taken over the past few months. This is one more way that Obama is proving to be a new kind of politician. I have a feeling McCain can’t even text.