Michigan's Coalition for Progress Engages Young Voters with Mobile

Maine is not the only state that is taking advantage of the youth medium we call the cell phone this election. Last Monday Michigan's Coalition For Progress unveiled their mobile "My Future" campaign which harnesses the power of this cutting edge technology to engage young voters in the upcoming election.

While the the coalition using the medium to push out messages like "Did you know that Republicans in the Legislature want to make it legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions? Vote Nov 7 - Move MI forward!" like the Lamarche campaign, the coalition also looks beyond SMS as simply a push-out message tool.

The coalition is also holding a contest where someone can text VOTE1 or VOTE2, all the way to 5, to 388873 and they'll receive a trivia question about Republican Governor nominee Dick Devos. The trivia questions are silly and a little funny. Each of the questions are multiple choice. If you answer correctly you get one message back and, of course, if you answer incorrectly, you get a different one. The really cool thing is that the questions and answers are phrased in such a way to educate and reinforce the coalition's message. And, because they are not officially a campaign, the SMS trivia will enter you into a sweepstakes in which two people will receive a 30g video iPod with the Coalition For Progress' logo emblazoned on the back.

I would imagine that on election day a Get Out The Vote message will also be sent and somehow made viral.

With that all set up the only problem is making people aware of the mobile campaign, a real challenge when its launched only a week before the election. They have a television ad. The ad focuses on an instant message conversation with a young woman encouraging her friends to join "MyFuture," a coalition project that centers on young voters. The television ad is probably one of the best shortcode placements in a television ad I have ever seen.

The spot is airing on cable systems across Michigan during the final weeks of the campaign, giving voters information on key issues and motivating them to get out and vote on Election Day. It also will be airing statewide on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The coalition has also purchased AdWords to drive folks to sign up. I do not know anything about signs and what not... a week before the election its probably hard to put the Text: Join To 388873 on lawn signs but signs in universities and youth hangouts help as do radio and newspaper placements.

The coalition also has ringtones which can be downloaded here. They are pretty good.

This is also one of the first campaigns to work directly with an aggregator to create its campaign, in this case DC based Singlepoint (also the sponsor of Mobile Monday DC).

Reprinted from Personal Democracy Forum.