Throughout 2007, I've had the chance to see Barack Obama, by far the most accessible candidate here in California, three times, two of which were public events that utilized the massive crowds he attracted in different ways.
The first event I attended was his Oakland rally back in March. It was early in the campaign and he was still building his list, so they set it up so that every person who came to see him, for free by the way, filled out a form with contact information. Annoying for those in a long line, but a smart way to build an online list through an offline event.
The next public rally I attended was Obama's Santa Barbara event the afternoon of his Oprah fundraiser in early September. Here, while list building was still in full effect, there was more of a sense that anyone attending the event was probably already on board and were considered potential activists rather than mere e-mail addresses; here, the crowd was used as a campaign organizing tool. As I wrote then:
Obama's California state campaign director as well as his CA field director spoke to motivate the crowd to join the Santa Barbara area local campaigns. Their goal is to create 53 cd teams, within which they will have a city team within which they will have community teams and then finally precinct teams. This is about engaging the people on the ground to spread the word about Obama, wear your buttons and stickers, they urged us, e-mail your friends. They're banking on the peer to peer method of communicating as being the most effective to win in such a huge state as California.
As the campaign began to ramp up in California and actually open offices and organize on-the-ground staffs, this was a smart way to spread the word about the local opportunities to help Barack's candidacy and I suspect more effective than simply e-mailing the information. By virtue of the crowd's having come out to see Barack in the first place, the attendants essentially identified themselves as among the more active in the community and, no doubt, the political opinionmakers in their circles and the Obama campaign was smart to tap into that.
Now today, I read an account of Obama's South Carolina Oprah rally and was impressed by the further innovation of how the campaign is continuing to exploit his crowds. This strikes me as rather brilliant.
The campaign attempted to organize that enthusiasm by asking the crowd to text their cell phone numbers to the campaign. Jeremy Bird and Anton Gunn, the campaign's field and political directors took the stage to ask the crowd to text their phone numbers to Obama's campaign. They also broke a Guinness World Record by conducting the world's largest phone bank, 36,426 people in the audience called four names of South Carolinian voters listed on the back of their tickets and asked them to support Barack Obama.
Here, we see his campaign collecting supporters' cell phone numbers rather than e-mail addresses for more immediate access to them, and has taken the exploitation of the crowds as activists one step further by actually having them make calls right there.
I'll be interested to see if it's replicated when I see him at an event tomorrow here in L.A. It's a small dollar fundraiser ($50/$25 students) that also features a performance by the Goo Goo Dolls among other bands. The event is clearly targeted to young people, so I will be shocked if there isn't some sort of cell phone # harvesting activity. Look for my report on that event tomorrow night.
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