Whats the deal with the Obama SMS text messaging notification of his VP choice - is very clever campaigning

I caught CNN's Larry King Live on Friday with a panel discussing the US Presidential elections and Barack Obama's upcoming announcement of his Vice Presidential pick. They had a four person panel discuss the matter for example about using the SMS text messaging alert. The panel had somewhat predictable and valid view points, mostly. While the Democratic pundit and the two neutral pundits were generally favourable to the idea, the oldest panelist, the one Republican party representative pundit - I'm sorry I didn't get his name - said that he had found the choice of SMS text messaging as surprising, because to his mind he felt that SMS text messages are used only for the "most inconsequential messages". He then gave examples of frivolous youth messaging examples. He clearly felt that SMS was inappropriate for "proper" communciations..

NEW IDEA - TO AMERICANS

I knew I had to write this blog today. First, I think it is not surprising that this year - 2008 - the American elections are adapting to SMS text messaging, because last year we passed the point where more than half of all Americans had started to use SMS text messaging on their cellphones. What many American elections pundits don't know - as America lags in mobile telecoms, and lags drastically in SMS text messaging adoption - and until very recently SMS texting was a techie-nerdy bizarre cryptic messaging option; is that SMS text messages are used in elections all the world over, have been for many years and several election cycles already in the advanced markets. For most, especially non-telecoms experts today in America, SMS texting can easily seem like the dumb and simple variant of the wireless email on a Blackberry.

Secondly, it is not surprising that it is Obama's campaign which has been most innovative and active in using SMS. There is a clear division between McCain and Obama this year, that older voters tend to favour McCain and younger voters tend to favour Obama. And funnily enough, the same division held well earlier this year with the Democratic primaries, where Hillary Clinton supporters tended to be older Democrats, and Obama supporters were younger Democrats. And SMS texting is definitely in every country adopted by the youth first, before their parents, teachers, bosses, and grandparents subsequently catch the SMS text messaging bug.

So, we now know that the Obama campaign collected millions of cellphone numbers from interested voters (and media) and promised to send the official announcement of the Vice Presidential pick first to those voters. Sounds like a clever bit of using high tech, a gimmicky PR campaign to increase attention and interest in the VP pick, and to create suspense and anticipation to the selection (and dominate the news cycle prior to the announcement)

That is all good and well. But there is FAR more to SMS than being a gimmicky youth messaging method. It is the world's most widely used data application (globally twice as many people are active users of SMS text messaging on their phones, than the total number of internet users). It has been proven to be addictive - far MORE addictive than the Blackberry. And for comparison, there are 160 times more people sending short messages from cellphones using SMS, than all users of Blackberry devices. 160 times more! And consider the recepients. If you send an SMS, rather than an email - you can reach a total population that is 220 times larger with cellphones that can receive an SMS, than all Blackberries in use around the world....

Yes, so what is the real point to this strange obsession that the Obama campaign has with SMS?

TEXTING RESULTS IN MORE ACTIVE VOTERS

They can influence voter behaviour through SMS !  A study by the University of Michigan and Princeton University, covering 4,000 cellphone users in America, found that when a prospective voter is contacted via SMS text messaging alert/reminder on election day, the likelihood of voting increases by 4.2%. And the cost to generate an additional vote, was 1.56 dollars per vote achieved, through SMS reminders. Considering that we're looking at an election costing hundreds of millions of dollars per party, this is incredibly cost-effective. The study was reported at Wireless and Mobile News in August of 2008.

USA 195 MILLION TEXTING TODAY

So, you think 4% is not really very much..  Well, think again. First, the USA has passed the 50% per capita point of SMS text messaging use last year. The latest number I have were reported in SMS Text News in April, on USA statistics by Wirefly, that 65% of Americans are now active users of SMS texting. That is not against cellphone owners, or the "adult population" or some other such stat. It is per capita, ie measured against all living Americans, including babies etc. That is 195 million people.

USA 221 MILLION VOTING AGE

So lets map it against the voting age population. Of the 300 million USA citizens, the latest count I found was by George Mason University, based on USA Census data and individual state voting data, that there were 221 million voting age people. 79 million are too young to vote. Some of these do have cellphones, and as SMS starts with teenagers, of those 79 million we have perhaps 30 million who are active SMS users. So lets deduct these from the active user base, and we have about 165 million active users of SMS texting who are also of voting age.

AGE DIVIDE

Then lets make an adjustment of the voting block for Obama and for McCain. There is a clear preference for under 40 year old Americans to prefer Obama, for over 65 year olds to prefer McCain, and for the mid-ground to split somewhat evenly. Older people are far more active and reliable voters than young people, so while on demographic data, Obama's base of support is far bigger, McCain's age group is more reliable in voting, bringing this to such a close election at this point. I don't have actual preferences, but if we say the under 40 age group is 2.1 in favour of Obama, and conversely the over 65 group is 2:1 in favour of McCain, I'm sure we're in the ballpark.

So, is there a related age gap in SMS texting use. Not in the advanced markets, in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark etc it is totally normal for retired people to be active users of SMS text messaging. We've reported that here on this blogsite many times.

But when countries start to adopt SMS, it is a youth thing, gradually spreading up the age curve. And it is quite clear, that in America today, the core McCain voter base - the over 65 year olds - are still quite dubious of SMS. Even the mid-range aged voters, 40-65 year olds are only recent converts.

SIMPLE MODEL

So I did a quick spread of the numbers according to the USA age pyramid, and find that out of the 165 million voters who are active SMS users, 100 million would be in the Obama voters, and 65 million with McCain (note that the more severely the age breaks split, the greater this difference would be).

Now it gets intersting. Lets say that Obama manages during the election season 2008 to get half of his voter base to give their cellphone numbers. That is 50 million numbers. This is similar in scale to for example voters in the latest run of American Idol, so this is not an unreasonable assumption. Then lets plug in the 4.2% numbers. We get 2.1 million extra votes for Obama - which cost his campaign about 3 million dollars (a trivial number when his campaign will spend hundreds of millions during the next 70 days in the campaign).

COMPARE TO 2004 ELECTION

And is this relevant.. The last election with Bush and Kerry, had 121 million votes cast. Because of the US Presidential election vote counting system of "Electoral College" votes, allocated to states, it always is a count of states and their respective Electoral College votes that determine who wins the election (Al Gore won more popular votes than George W Bush in 2000 but Bush won; similarly Richard Nixon won more popular votes than John F Kennedy in 1960). So in 2004 the battle was won or lost in the three most close states - Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa.

If we assume that this year November, McCain wins exactly the same votes and states as George W Bush in 2004; and Obama wins exactly the same states and votes as Kerry did in 2004, and we then add the 4.2% added votes effect to half of the Obama votes (ie 2.1% effect to all of his votes) - guess what. That would shift those three states, Ohio, New Mexico and Iowa - to the Democrats.

OBAMA WOULD WIN SAME ELECTION THAT KERRY LOST

So if McCain keeps improving just like Bush Jr did four years ago, all the way to Election Day, and pulls off what many consider a major upset right now - and duplicates Bush's vote count. And Obama would get the same result as Kerry did four years ago - but Obama now adds an SMS text messaging influence - as his ONLY gain - that would turn three states to the Democrats, and the election would be won by Obama, with 284 Electoral College votes (270 is needed to win). Bush Jr won with 286 last time and Kerry lost with 252.

THAT is what SMS text messaging can do for a campaign. This is yet another example of what Generation C (Community Generation) do with their lives, and how critical both the cellphone, and specifically SMS text messaging is to them. This is yet another example of the radical new services on the 7th Mass Media channel. And a brilliant example of shrewd use of the world's most counter-intuitive service - and what is not obvious at first glance, but definitely true - also the world's fastest form of communication (when measured wholistically by throughput of the communication activity - far faster than email, voicemail, direct voice call, etc; even faster than using wireless email on a Blackberry)

YOU NEED TO BE YOUNG OR YOUTHFUL TO UNDERSTAND

So yes, clever by Obama. And yes, poor McCain. He is still trying to get to grips with the sixth mass media - the internet. He is clueless about the 7th mass media (mobile). His team consists of far older people than Obama's and they are saddled with the kind of faulty opinions about cellphone based communciations, from SMS to twitter. Like the pundit on CNN said "inconsequential messages" ha-ha. How totally wrong he is. The MDA (Mobile Data Association) measured preferences of communication tools of UK business execs and five years ago already found that UK execs number one preference was SMS text messaging. The classic London City investment bankers and Fleet Street journalists and all other traditional business execs in Britain - yes, they prefer using SMS to voice calls or emails (or voice mail). Same for governments the world over - the Finnish Prime Minister says on his voicemail greeting, don't leave me voicemail, send me SMS...

For those who don't fully understand SMS text messaging, I've got a great (and free) two page Thought Piece for you on the topic of SMS. Send me an email to tomi at tomiahonen dot com and I'll send you the Thought Piece in return email.

UPDATE Sept 2 - also please note I've just had my sixth book released a couple of days after this blog entry was made. The book - Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media (subtitle cellphone, cameraphone, iPhone, smartphone) has a chapter on SMS, and another chapter on how society is now changing with ever smarter cellphones and their users. I have a two-chapter excerpt from the book including its foreword. If you send me an email to the above address, I'll send it to you. And you don't need to request it separately from the SMS Thought Piece, I'm adding the book excerpt to all who request the Thought Piece as well.

Comments

[Alan Moore]

Tomi,

What are the lessons for UK Politicians?

Alan

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Alan

Well, I think most of the lessons of this have already been filtering to, or at least near to the UK politicians. They've been using SMS and mobile phones in their campaigns and cabinet meetings and political events for much of this decade; but perhaps not very obviously and pro-actively. So there Obama's campaign and in particular this VP annoucement gimmick, is a good clarion call to the UK politicians, that they can still use mobile phones (and SMS) much more in their campaigns.

I do recall that it was around the year 2000 that the Estonian government surprised the world by circulating cabinet meetings via SMS prior to the meetings. Since then we've seen all kinds of uses such as the Singapore government decreeing that all e-government initiatives have to be made accessable also via mobile phones. So we've had a lot of innovation in this space for much of this decade, and the UK has been right there in the mix for quite a while as well.

But I like the fact that the Obama VP selection announcement by SMS got such wide media attention, it hopefully helped remind older decision-makers that SMS is the world's most widely used data application and can reach 3.5 billion people on the planet - literally over half of the planet - today.. So rather than McCain learning to use email, he should perhaps skip that and go directly to SMS ha-ha..

Tomi :-)

[John]

Hi Alan, I have just been looking at the Twitter Vote Report for the US Elections and notice that reports via the iPhone client by far outnumber those by Android client which in turn outnumber SMS reports.

I know this is a self-selecting sample but is there not the prospect that the USA could perhaps bypass SMS and just use the familiar paradigms of internet and email but on a wireless bearer technology?

I see many advantages of SMS (not just for the youth or underpriveleged) but does middle America grasp these advantages?