Posts by Julie Ask from May 20, 2008

Julie Ask | May 20, 2008, 10:23 PM
Good Uses of SMS in Presidential Campaigns

I wrote an article for RCR last summer on how Presidential Candidates were using SMS and blogged. See posts.

Overview

Barack

Poor Execution (post)

Interestingly enough, the two candidates utlizing SMS are still in the race. (Ok, they likely also raised the most money and had the bandwidth, staff, and organization necessary to use SMS)

So, their use of SMS has become more sophisticated. Frequency is down - perhaps driven by the fact that there are fewer debates. Nice relief from receiving multiple messages per day from a single candidate. They are now on to "breaking news" which is a good use of SMS.

Here are a few I've received lately:

"After tonight's tremendous victory in West Virginia, this race is far from over. Keep the momentum going at www.hillaryclinton.com. Thanks for everything."

Not viral, but succinct.

Breaking: John Edwards just endorsed Barack Obama. Spread the word & ask 5 friends to join our movement for change by texting HOPE to 62262. Forward this msg!

Typical Obama messaging - viral + breaking news. Different style from Hillary and more appropriate than a URL jammed into an SMS message. Hillary ... few cell phone users browse on their cell phones ... and I haven't looked it up, but have you registered with dot Mobi?

And from Hillary this evening ...

Tonight we won Kentucky and once again, we showed America what we're made of. Thank you so much. Keep the momentum going at www.hillaryclinton.com - Hillary

Consistent messaging. Same feedback.

Julie Ask | May 20, 2008, 02:20 AM
How much personal information does it take to earn a free cell phone?

This might be the most random collection of marketing bits I've seen stuffed together in one place.

I was in the 10th or 11th hour of my trip home from a rainy NYC last Friday evening when I came across this page in my magazine: "Win a cell phone every day in June!" Worth a look I thought. [And, thank you to the gentleman who gave me his seat in First Class so he could sit next to his three year old for seven hours, and I didn't have to do so]

I found this page:

Here are a couple pages from the web site:

I went to the site to sign up today. I was expecting a small icon or banner ad on the side of the page advertising the sweepstakes. Initially, there was. They wanted site visitors to register – no problem. All sweepstakes require this. They are buying the registration. I clicked through to the sweepstakes entry. There was little to no content from the site. There wasn’t much of a promotion of the giveaway. They required participation in a poll – personal information – that had nothing to do with the brand or the product. The sweepstakes entry was otherwise surrounded by ads. The only content seemed to be those answering the poll. How random. One must return to the site each day to click through the poll question, pages, etc. in order to enter. They’ll send daily reminders, if you’d like.

If you’re willing to walk through these steps each day, you can enter to win a free phone each day during the month of June.

Many missed opportunities – why not send reminders via SMS? Why not have content related to the products on the pages? Why just ads? Again, really random marketing. Then again, I did give them my info as I explored the experience. Might just be easier to sign up for a two-year contract. One should earn a free phone just by answering so many questions and providing so much personal information – our consumer surveys say young adults would go for it. Free cell phones top the list of give-away’s they’d like in exchange for personal information.