Hello and Happy Friday! US presidential hopeful – and moose stew fan – John McCain recently said that he didn’t know how to get on the internet. Considering that e-commerce contributes significant and growing revenues to the (shrinking) economy, this is indeed a gaff and a half. But his failure to embrace mobile technology may well cost him the election.

His opponent, Barak Obama, has taken ideas started by Hillary Clinton and John Edwards about using the reach and data generating qualities of mobile and added a commercial element and, as such, can claim to speak to – as well as segmenting – a potential mobile audience that comprises 60 per cent of the US population.

McCain has no mobile offering.

As Anthony Wayne, content manager at Advanced Telecom Services in the US –  who is planning to vote for Obama in part because of his text message platform – says, this is essential to election. “Text messaging today is as important to the American public as the fireside chats of the FDR era that targeted radio listeners. In fact, statistically, text messaging is more important than radio was in the 1930’s…by far.”

But more than that, Obama is also using mobile as a revenue generating opportunity, offering ringtone sound bites of his speeches, wall paper and even a voter Q&A service.

But Chris Lennartz, vice president of product marketing at Airwide Solutions, believes that it is only the start of a new role for mobile in politics. “The example of the US Presidential race is just one example of the many ways in which text messaging is being used across the world to offer consumers a way of interacting with political parties and good causes. In some countries text is used to remind people where and when to vote. In others they are used to give people a voice through the formation of protest groups. However, these examples are just the beginning of the power of text messaging.  The potential for even larger scale and more strategic deployments is right in front of us,” he says.
 
For example, savvy campaign managers will be using embedded links in SMS messages to their candidate’s mobile internet page with more information about the platform, position on key issues, scheduled appearances and so on.

“The Obama campaign sent out 2.9 million text messages announcing his vice presidential choice,” says Bob Bentz, director of marketing at Advanced Telecoms Services. “In an election that is projected to go down to the wire, Obama’s text message marketing just might be the difference. And you can bet that Obama will be sending out a lot of text reminders to vote on election day.”
 
MMS also carries huge potential for political campaigns, offering video captures of photogenic political candidates delivering messages directly to their supporters, or audio reminders to ‘rock the vote’ much as the MTV medium was able to do in the past.
 
Furthermore, operators are now able to tap into demographic information, which means these messages could be tailored to a subscriber’s specific and identified interests or even their location to ensure that the message has a personal impact that only the mobile phone can offer.

You may, as telemedia execs, wonder what this means for you. Well, if nothing else it makes what we do all the more mainstream and plays a role in reshaping the world. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

NB: No moose were shot in the writing of this article.