MMS "Tell-a-Friend" Political Advertising
Another interesting aspect of the future of mobile communications covered in the Economist survey is multimedia messaging (MMS). While hardly something that will revolutionize the face of political advertising as we know it, it seems that this protocol could offer a serious improvement in at least one area.
The "Tell-a-Friend" type function on a candidate website is something that I've been harping on a bit in this space, as I think it represents one of the best ways to use a candidate site for persuasion. MMS messaging could provide a new avenue for such word-of-mouth elements. Instead of sending an e-mail to a friend with a link to the specific page or video, an individual could send an MMS version to a friend. The format is industry standard (or at least will be), and the PC-to-Mobile ability makes it possible to send the message directly to a friend's phone when browsing the website.
Obviously, there are possible pay application for this technology as well, but I certainly think it would certainly be an improvement over the current system for tell-a-friend functions. No more connectivity problems, no needing to download the latest media player, no need to be at your computer (or even own one!). Like current tell-a-friend functions, the message is ostensibly from your friend and not the campaign, so the possibility for backlash is much lower than with an unsolicited message. Specialists would be enlisted to take full advantage of the medium, and the end result would ultimately be more exposure to the candidate or issue campaign.
I'm sure there are also some potential downsides (one that comes to mind is the fact that the recipient won't be able to hang around and see the rest of the website after viewing the video or issue page her friend directed her to), but it certainly seems like something worth exploring.
POSTSCRIPT: though I didn't delve too deeply into the pay side of using this format for political communications, I think it's pretty obvious that it could be very effective; certainly more so than banner ads...
The "Tell-a-Friend" type function on a candidate website is something that I've been harping on a bit in this space, as I think it represents one of the best ways to use a candidate site for persuasion. MMS messaging could provide a new avenue for such word-of-mouth elements. Instead of sending an e-mail to a friend with a link to the specific page or video, an individual could send an MMS version to a friend. The format is industry standard (or at least will be), and the PC-to-Mobile ability makes it possible to send the message directly to a friend's phone when browsing the website.
Obviously, there are possible pay application for this technology as well, but I certainly think it would certainly be an improvement over the current system for tell-a-friend functions. No more connectivity problems, no needing to download the latest media player, no need to be at your computer (or even own one!). Like current tell-a-friend functions, the message is ostensibly from your friend and not the campaign, so the possibility for backlash is much lower than with an unsolicited message. Specialists would be enlisted to take full advantage of the medium, and the end result would ultimately be more exposure to the candidate or issue campaign.
I'm sure there are also some potential downsides (one that comes to mind is the fact that the recipient won't be able to hang around and see the rest of the website after viewing the video or issue page her friend directed her to), but it certainly seems like something worth exploring.
POSTSCRIPT: though I didn't delve too deeply into the pay side of using this format for political communications, I think it's pretty obvious that it could be very effective; certainly more so than banner ads...
posted by Mike D at
6/09/2005 06:05:00 PM
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