Mobile Commons

There’s been good coverage of Obama’s Vice Presidential announcement all over the web (particularly GigaOM and the NY Times). While there has been some grumbling about the announcement coming a little late because CNN got the scoop, overall the Obama campaign is being lauded for their marketing savvy. At Mobile Commons, we think they are not being lauded highly enough for what they managed to pull off. Here’s why: the Obama campaign may have just pulled off the most cost-effective Get Out the Vote (GOTV) program in history!

In 2006, Mobile Commons’ platform was used in a study conducted by the New Voter’s Project, Princeton, and the University of Michigan. The results of the study were a wonderful surprise to us. In the table below, you can see cost per vote compared between various media:

Elections pivot on turnout and voter engagement. The main conclusion to be drawn from the table above: the more personal the communication, the more effective. The most personal form of communication, face to face interaction, has the highest mobilization effect. Text messaging is something mainly done with friends and—terse as it is—highly personal. For campaigns, mobile messaging provides one the most cost effective ways of engaging constituents with highly personal and interactive messaging. The Obama Campaign realized this and constructed the VP announcement to help them build critical mass with their mobile list.

Most elections are won by narrow margins and the game is finding the right population to help you swing the election. Mobile messaging has shown its ability to activate large numbers of people and populations that are often unreachable. The Obama Campaign has shown great ability to reach and excite younger voters. If you’ve ever watched young people text message, you know the possibilities for engagement and interaction are very high. Although all ages send mobile messages, the Obama Campaign may be aiming at the youth vote as its swing contingent.

What the Obama Campaign has done is secure a massive Get Out the Vote list that will be a more cost effective solution than anything else. Thus far, I’ve received a few broadcast messages and requests for my zipcode, which they’ve already collected. I’m anticipating locally targeted messages. The unknown is if the Obama Campaign will use their enlarged mobile list to also reach out more personally for increased voter engagement. As more and more campaigns embrace mobile, it will be thrilling to see the effect of even more personal correspondence and conversation that really take advantage of the usage patterns of mobile messaging.