As the power of the teenager and the text message is becoming more and more evident, some political campaigns and non-profits are betting that this new hip mobile technology can change American politics as well, as it has already proven to do so throughout the world. This is the gist of a Newsweek article published today at least.

The major point of the article is asking whether a teen trend can be "turned into a weapon of choice for politicos hoping to energize their constituents? Some strategists are betting it can: Where 2004 saw the great blog campaign, we#039re likely to be talking about the great text-messaging campaign of 2008, says Joe Trippi, who, as Howard Deans 2004 presidential campaign manager, was a pioneer in the use of the Internet as a fundraising and organizing tool. The technology is right on the cusp of becoming very big.

The article pretty much does not cover anything new (all of the campaigns and examples it mentions (with the exception of the National Resources Defense Council#039s (NRDC) Lollapalooza SMS based petition drive) have already been covered here on my blog at Personal Democracy Forum or in my feature articles here here and here).

A good number of the examples mentioned in the article are the ingenious work of Jed Alpert (pictured above in the green shirt) and his company Politxt of which I have talked a good number about as well here on PDF. Jed was also a speaker on the "SMS and Mobile Politics" panel I moderated at the 2006 Personal Democracy Forum Conference [listen to the follow up Podcast]

Other examples are voting projects with the power of MobileVoter behind them such at this and this.

Alpert and Politxt, you may remember, is the company that had amazing success with the People For American Way "Take Back the Court" campaign in which his service on a trial basis reported that 25-30 percent of people asked to call their congressman via text message responded, as compared to the 2-3 percent success rate they had been getting with e-mail requests.

As the article points out "those kinds of numbers quickly drew the attention of other lobby groups, not to mention political candidates. "Over the course of a year, it's just exploded in popularity," says Alpert. As a number of Alpert's clients point out, the value of POLITXT lies in its ability to successfully gather information, as much as to disperse it. You can#039t send a text message unless you have a number to send it to; the trick for any political organizer, then, is getting people to hand over—or text over—their numbers."

Absent from the Newsweek conversation are companies such as MobileAccord which, like POLITXT, create SMS and mobile campaigns for political campaigns and Non-Profits (such as United EWay for example). But MobileAccord also specializes in SMS fundraising for campaigns and non-profits, a topic which was notably absent from the article.

The article also addresses some of the worries and limitations of SMS campaigns such as "spam perception" and overall cost. Interesting enough the answer to both concerns sheds some light on the positives and negatives to the net-nuetrality debate. I have often been quoted as saying that the most important thing to realize about entering the mobile marketing space is that "mobile is not the Internet." As Alpert points out, for example, "people sign up for text messages voluntarily [mobile is an opt in pull medium], and argues that spamming is unlikely, even if registries of numbers did manage to get into the wrong hands. "Phone carriers like Verizon and Cingular have ultimate control on who sends bulk messages," he says. "If someone sends a spam via text, the carriers will just shut them down." So SMS is not like email in this regard. Spam is not a problem here.

I would also add to this that one way to make your message not seem spam like to even the people that opted-in is to make them "action based." Thats what people use SMS for. They don#039t use it just to read something and thats that. They want important news to get to them wherever they are so that they can take action wherever they are. Important messages like that will not seem like spam to people. The cell phone is a personal device, so if people opt in to receive political material on their phone it better darn well be personal in nature.

So while the carriers protect your users from Spam this "protection" also comes at a cost. For example, the carriers are still taking a good 50 percent of the revenue made via SMS donations. According to Jordan Kessler the Web site manager for the National Resources Defense Council (who is doing that Lollapalooza campaign mentioned above) "Most vendors charge a setup fee and then a monthly maintenance fee. These fees have come down significantly over the past year, Kessler notes, but they aren#039t nominal. IFAW paid POLITXT $15,000 to license its software, and $500 to $1,000 a month in maintenance fees. Remember, it costs 2-3 cents to send a text message.

The viral model of the text message is something that is very important to consider, as the Newsweek article points out"

"The economics is still being worked out, particularly here in the States," says Trippi. The most successful SMS campaigns abroad, including the ones in the Philippines and Spain, were essentially word of mouth, person-to-person messaging campaigns. That is, they were not coordinated by messages blasted from a central source. It remains unclear how well a blast-model will translate, particularly given the fees.

But this should not be a barrier when you realize that it is not the same thing and does not serve the same purpose as email. The mobilizing and real time effect that SMS can bring to your campaign will be well worth it. The key is taking advantage of the power the mobile medium offers within the context of the medium itself and not to go beyond it.

With that in mind mobile and political luminaries look to the future and see a great potential for progress. The experts point out, however, that the real benefits will take a little longer to play into effect. "You're talking about an evolving technology," acknowledges Trippi. "[SMS usage] is certainly not ubiquitous." Montoya echoes this point: "In a few years, we could, for instance, send people video messages, but we're not there yet."

But for those that are getting in the game early they are at a real advantage and there is still a lot o great stuff that can be done now! So pick up your phone politico's and lets get texting :-)

[Read]

Technorati Tags: ifaw, lollapalooza, mobile, mobile accord, national resource defence council, newsweek, nrdc, pfaw, politics, politxt, sms

Campaigns & Elections | Mobile | Non-Profits
Justin Oberman's blog | email this page | delicious | digg | technorati