Nielsen Mobile estimates that 2.9 million US mobile subscribers received a text message from the Obama campaign over the course of Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The VP message was sent in the late hours of Friday night and is, by many accounts, the single largest mobile marketing event in the US., to date. From a mobile perspective, it makes sense that the campaign chose to use text-messages. Today, 116 million US mobile subscribers (52 percent of subscribers) actively use text messaging, making it a new mass medium for marketing efforts.
Some additional, on the record thoughts from Nic Covey, director of insights at Nielsen Mobile:
While much has been said of the timing and the scoop by news outlets, Obama’s VP text message still ranks as one of the most important text messages even sent and one of the most successful brand engagements using mobile media
The value of the message goes far beyond the 26 words and 2.9 million recipients. Here, Obama branded himself as cutting edge, inflated the already enormous press attention paid to his VP pick and further established a list of supporters’ most coveted form of contact: their cell phone numbers.
The success of this text-campaign has Madison Avenue thinking even more about how they too can interact with a universe of 116 million text-message users in the US