Texting comes of age
As many of you may know, either because you saw it on your cell phone or in the newspaper, Barak Obama announced his choice for vice president via a text message. The Wall Street Journal described that decision as “a watershed moment” for texting in the United States. (”Obama Announcement by Text Sends a Message about Medium.”)
Because this is a communication commentary, not a political one, I would like to note a few comments the article made about texting as a communication medium:
“Sen. Obama’s embrace of text messaging reflects the groiwng popularity as a branding and marketing tool…Part of the allure: texts…have an immediacy that emails and phone calls don’t”
So, now am I going to be besieged on my cell phone with marketing messages? will it make me feel more connected to the company? If I were an employee working in a large company, would I like getting text messages from senior management?
New technologies always raise new questions. And I certainly don’t have the answers–maybe some of you do.
I do know one thing. When my son found out the gender of his first child, he did not text me. He called me to tell me that my first grandchild would be a little girl.
August 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Julie,
I have very similar thoughts. An additional thought gnawing me was the timing of the actual text message. It came around 3am Eastern time (I think) and certain pundits questioned the timing. I think it was brilliant.
If it came in the morning or afternoon then chances are news of the Biden announcement would reach you via Web, TV or radio before the text message; however, in the mornings I check my phone before turning on the TV, radio or computer. The first message to reach me comes over cell phone. I’m assuming Obama’s people realized that.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Hi Julie — your readers may be interested in what I wrote about the Obama-VP-via-text communications tactic on my personal blog.
Our PR team at Sprint (the #3 U.S. wireless carrier) thought the tactic would give us a good opportunity to tell the public how SMS can help businesses (in this case a campaign) reach the 15% of American households which are wireless-only. Your readers may not realize this, but in the U.S., mobile numbers are not listed in public directories.
The specific post can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/5k4w7a
Regards,
John Taylor
August 28th, 2008 at 11:13 am
It will be interesting to see how texting influences the outcome of the election and whether more businesses adopt texting to reach their customers.
New possibilities on the horizon!
August 28th, 2008 at 11:38 am
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