"Brilliant. Effective. Revolutionary."
Those are the three words I thought I'd write in response to Barack Obama's text message announcing his Vice Presidential pick. Instead, the only word that comes to mind is "Disappointing."
Let me explain...
Having upgraded recently from a BlackBerry to a white 3G iPhone I went ahead and signed up on my new line for the updates. More text messages? No worries, I had already opted for the unlimited text plan so that I could better follow about a dozen or so folks on Twitter without having to track mileage.
I ripped off the text like a pro -- tapping "VP" to 62262 and clicking send. Within seconds I received a response back from 62262 letting me know that the sign-up was a success.
Noting in my little black book of best practices that even the confirmation note had a call to action ("Please forward"), I cracked a smile in recognition of the genius of Obama online guru Joe Rospars and his team.
I thought, could the be the text that's heard around the world as it got forwarded from an initial few to many? What would the text say?
I was pumped and excited for the text. And I'm a Republican who will not vote for Barack Obama regardless of his running mate.
The promise of direct, exclusive information sent to my iPhone was a heckuva carrot to put out on a stick. Not just for me -- but for others too. In fact, last week when I was training 60 field representatives for the College Republicans (a client) I asked the room who else had signed up -- at least a quarter of the hands slowly grabbed the sky.
Days went by last week since I had signed up. I hadn't received a single text from Barack. Was this thing still working? Indeed, a Tweet would pop up reminding me that the foot was still on the pedal. I even thought it was genius that Barack's team had not sent a text to me. I had signed up for one text, at least initially -- don't break the promise or risk losing me.
So... I... Waited... For... Barack...
After a long week at work, I decided to forget about it for the night. I went out with friends, had sushi, saki, and laughs. I went to bed.
When I woke up this morning, I grabbed my iPhone to start reading through late night tweets, text messages, and emails. OMG. WTH is that? a text message from Barack at 3:04 AM? No way...
Confirmed. It was indeed from Obama's campaign -- but it wasn't from Barack -- the person. The text was from Barack Obama -- the Machine.
Using 148 of their 160-character limit the Machine wrote:
Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3 PM ET on www.BarackObama.com. Spread the word!
What were they thinking by not using Barack's voice? Didn't they realize that I'm used to getting very real, personal text messages from my friends? Didn't they know that even I thought that Barack really "got" this modern medium?
Patrick Ruffini blogged this morning that Barack's text wasn't even really worth the wait because it had leaked to the media beforehand. To quote Patrick, "What seemed like a brilliant exercise in media management devolved into a late night rearguard maneuver." Agreed.
So, if I were working for Barack, I would have suggested the following 160-character text (Leave no character behind!):
Senator Joe Biden is my VP pick. Visit www.BarackObama.com now to see a video message from us to you. You are an important part of the Team for Change. Plz fwd!
But... They didn't. Barack didn't text me anything. The Machine did.
I'm disappointed in Barack's team for missing this opportunity to communicate a direct, personal message from Barack and Joe to their people.
So points for using text messaging as a medium to communicate; however, they're just not doing a good job of using it effectively.
