Advertising- Coming Soon To A Phone Near You

Julie Minevich, Social Media Strategist, attended a local Mobile Monday event on the topic of the use of mobile engagement during the 2008 Presidential Election. Here, she shares her thoughts on the session.

Tonight, I attended the December MobileMonday DC meeting which focused on “Electioneering in the Mobile Age” and had an impressive speaker line-up with representatives from the Giuliani and Obama presidential campaigns as well as from Rock the Vote. The conversation centered around if/how each organization incorporated a mobile messaging component into their overall strategy this past Election season.

Here are five interesting facts I learned:

  • 77% of Americans under the age of 24 use SMS
  • Rock the Vote observed higher SMS opt-in rates among Latinos, African-Americans, women, those under 30, and those living on the coasts. (I might have had that written down incorrectly, it might just be East Coast…)
  • The Obama for President Committee found high value in texting people on Election Day to inform them of polls that were kept open late, but were unable to find a viable way to message Americans oversees, due to the variety and number of possible systems they would have to test and integrate.
  • Rock the Vote and the Obama for President Committee both had multilingual mobile campaign components – RTV had a Spanish mobile site and each was able to answer texts in a variety of languages
  • The Rudy Giuliani for President Committee did not include mobile messaging as part of their overall strategy with obstacles including the perception that SMS was not appropriate for the target demographic (older audience) and the cost was too high

In the future we’ll be seeing other entities incorporate mobile campaigns into their marketing strategies through the use of optimized websites, iPhone Apps, and SMS (text messaging). SMS is a key component of a successful mobile campaign because of its guaranteed deliverability, ease and speed of use, and the two-way interaction that it facilitates.

And as these mobile campaigns become more commonplace, we’ll see higher levels of sophistication and integration between different social media avenues – in other words, people will be texted a link to a website, they’ll view the optimized website, which perhaps has a YouTube video embedded, and will then share the video with their friends on FaceBook.

Clearly, this medium is just emerging and has huge potential as another way to engage advocates.