Engagement Marketing the Obama way - free tickets to rap concerts for your phone number

The fundamental principle in engagement marketing, is that there is a bargain, an honest exchange, between the target customer and the brand. Not just interruptive advertising (to annoy and interrupt us) but rather an enticing reason to make our target customer want to interact with us; to engage with us.

So.. seems like the Obama campaign is reading our book and blog ha-ha.. We reported earlier how they are collecting mobile phone numbers of voters and interacting with them via SMS text messaging, so that they can then use SMS text message based alerts and reminders to get their voters to the polls in November.

Fine. Where is the engagement? Here is a good example. In Florida the Obama campaign has spent 2 million dollars in a new voter registration campaign with Project Vote, which has signed up 145,000 new voters. The story was reported by the Palm Beach Post on 4 October, 2008. They have used celebrities such as athletes like Alonzo Mourning of the Miami Heat, and the actress Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City etc in the Project Vote campaign.

The total new registered voter number in Florida is about 430,000 so far (and in 2004, approx 7.5 million people voted in Florida). If we assume the "normal" new voter registrations split about evenly between Democrats and Republicans (the state has voted slightly more Republican than Democrat, but is almost evenly split, and considered a "battleground state" where both parties have a good chance of winning, rather than say the state of New York where Democrats always win, and the state of Texas where Republicans always win). But back to the math.. So if 285,000 were "normal" sign-ups, and we assign them evenly, its almost 143,000 new voters for both sides, but very likely most - not of course all - of the Obama campaign to get new voters, the 145,000 will be strongly leaning Obama's way rather than McCain. So this gives new voter registrations on a rough basis balanced 2:1 in favour of Obama.

Now, where is the engagement marketing.. What the Obama campaign has offered to new registered voters in Florida - and bearing in mind, many of the registration drives were young adult voter -oriented, and held for example at university campuses - is now a series of free rap music concerts with Jay-Z and Wyclef Jean (yeah! rap music again, no wonder Tomi blogs about this...)  And here comes the engagement marketing bargain. If you are a new voter in Florida, and want the free tickets, you only need to give the Obama campaign your mobile phone number. And you will be told, that you will be contacted on election day with a reminder.

This is engagement marketing. It is interacting with the target customer (prospective voter in this case), and having a dialogue, a give-and-take, an honest bargain. We ask for something (your support, your phone number) and we give you something in exchange (free rap concert). This is brilliant.

Now, when we remember that there was a USA based study of how much SMS reminders will increase voting (adding 4% to the vote), and think of these new voters..  The 2004 election within the state of Florida was decided by 380,000. And if John Kerry had won in Florida - because of the size of the state in "electoral college" votes, Kerry would be President today, not George W Bush. The Obama campaign is aggressively seeking to shift the balance of the voter base in Florida to be more friendly to his campaign (and the Democratic party) which in itself will help him close the gap in the state. And coupled with that, he has powerful incentives to new voters to give their phone numbers - and with SMS text message reminders, the campaign can boost the actual voting behaviour of their side.

The Obama campaign is certainly adopting radical new technologies and methods in activating their supporter base. The McCain campaign now has two serious problems if it wanted to try to copy this. Its almost too late to alter either campaign's projects to sign up new voters - Monday is the deadline in Florida for new registrations - but worse than that, Obama's campaign has consistently seeked to collect mobile phone numbers. The news article reported it costs on average 14 dollars for a campaign to sign up a new voter on average. Its a lot of hard leg-work, going from door-to-door, having staff at shopping malls, arranging events at college campuses, etc. If at that point the voter is not asked for the phone number, it would be a very heavy effort to try to get back to them later, and try to get their mobile phone number.

Also, McCain has a very severe age barrier in Florida. Florida is one of America's retirement states, and has a very large population of retired people - part of McCain's core constituency. As we've reported here, American senior citizens are still very unfamiliar with SMS text messaging, and are only very recently getting oboard with mobile phones as such. Meanwhile, the youth of America splits about 2:1 in favour of Obama, so in a state where the age divide is particularly strong, it means Obama's campaign has a particularly strong advantage in using the "youth method" of communicating - SMS text messaging..  Yes, very clever campaigning by Obama, once again using technology - and yes, engagement marketing methods - to appeal to his constituency. Oh, and a final point, Obama has moved ahead of McCain in the Florida polls over the past two weeks or so. The hard work seems also to be paying off. Now lets see if the new voters turn up on election day.

Comments

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