Text-Ed for Political Candidates

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Last night, The Hill posted this little item, setting out some interesting tidbits about Louisiana Sen. David Vitter’s text/mobile/SMS program, on its website for all to see.  Per The Hill:

a political operative recently received a text message from the campaign of Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), he of Deborah Jeane Palfrey fame. Vitter’s camp went with a cheap service, and his message included an ad for ... what else? A dating service.

“Is it true love?” asks the ad. The accompanying link guides users to a website where they can find out if their “crush” feels the same way about them…

This is probably not what the Vitter campaign was banking on when it deployed what is seen as the cutting edge in the world of US political eCampaigns these days, and The Hill’s reporting on this has probably caused some poor campaign staffer a bit of a headache.  But the good news is, this little incident may in time be proven to have been an effective lesson where political use of new media tools is concerned.  More and more, campaigns are looking to text as the future, enabling them to track who attended what event and communicate often very specific messages to them—“make sure you attend the caucus tomorrow night at Lincoln High School in Des Moines” or “Can you bring a friend along to help us get the word out this Saturday?” thus ensuring a greater probability that the recipient of the text will, in fact, do what the campaign wants and not forget or unwittingly spend time doing something else.  But with text, as with many things in life, it’s not so much whether you have something as whether it’s right for the job at hand.  Back in the day, some would have said that Geo Metros provided good value for money.  But the US Army was hardly going to use them in a combat zone.

The Hill is right that the basic takeaway from Vitter’s experience should be “Don’t buy your text messaging service on the cheap.” Or, to paraphrase one mobile expert I spoke with earlier, pay the extra money not to have “find your true love” ads show up at the bottom of your texts.

But another important rule is, “Get a dedicated short code.”  Veterans of the 2008 presidential campaign (so, yours truly) remember this story detailing how apparent use of a shared short code resulted in a communication glitch between Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her supporters:

When Justin Oberman, a consultant in the field of marrying cellphones and politics, texted his Zip code to 70077, the reply he got was the address of a community clinic.

The campaign moved swiftly to get a new, dedicated short code—clearly the right move, and one that other campaigns should bear in mind before getting going on text.  Setting aside that in maintaining a dedicated short code, you preserve the right to use whatever keywords you want (which helps with tracking those signing up to receive texts, for example by asking attendees of an event at the University of Louisiana in Monroe to text “ULM” to the relevant short code), and avoid the possibility of people attempting to connect with your campaign reaching a local bar that has also implemented a text program using a shared (with you) code, using a dedicated short code can be just plain smart branding or, perhaps more relevantly, brand reinforcement.  President Obama used “62262”—OBAMA—during his campaign last year, an easily memorable code for the thousands of young, text-reliant voters he was targeting and building an almost celebrity-like fan base with.

Obama’s team, and countless political candidates, are now cognizant of that success and studies like the one described here by the Direct Marketing Association, which found that “Of the 800 U.S. mobile phone users surveyed, 70% said they had responded to a marketing text message whereas just 41% had responded to a survey and 30% to email offers.”  But if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and that’s a lesson that’s increasingly being learned by political candidates looking to engage via text.