Advercation = Advertising + Education

I just recieved a twitter msg from Barack Obama that reads:

twitter: BarackObama: Launching Obama Mobile text messaging; text ‘GO’ to OBAMA (62262) to get a free bumper sticker.

Clearly I texted and got back:

Thanks for joining Obama Mobile. To get a free Obama sticker reply STKR & type your complete mailing address. Txt HELP for help, STOP to quit. Std rates apply.

Lastly, I recieved this text:

Thank you for ordering your Obama sticker & joining Obama Mobile. For more info & ringtones visit http://www.barackobama.com/mobile

Twitter + Mobile + Direct Mail…I like that!

Asking for a full postal address via text is quite a request. I wounder how many folks will opt into this. Maybe there could have been a wallpaper for your handset instead. Updated: Wow. Yeah, there are more than a wallpapers @ Barack Obama’s Mobile Campaign home.

Obama’s twitter has 3320 followers. My guess is that about 20% max will text ‘GO’, which means 640 cell #’s will be added to the database. Another 30% might send their full address, leaving us with 96 folks getting stickers from this twitter interaction. The campaign will be touting this promotion elsewhere (I’m surprised I haven’t gotten an email about it yet) just got the email to “Take the Movement Offline”, 12 hours after the Twitter msg.  I like the fact that Twitter friends of Obama are in the know faster than the general audience.

My favorite feature is the ringtone download. I’m not a ‘big ringtone guy’ but “2004 DNC Speech Rock” ringtone is pretty cool. I justed downloaded/enabled it. I’m going to see what my friends’ reactions are when they hear my phone go off.

Othern notes: Looks like the campaign used Jeroen Wijering’s flash media player for the ringtone previews.

Frank Gruber of TECH Cocktail has sent out a little sneak preview of what he’s been work on at his new gig at AOL.

From the look of the video, myAOL’s new interface may be a little sexier than iGoogle and MyYahoo! I’m looking forward to seeing this in action.

I posted a little while ago about my co-authorship of www.allfacebook.com.

Since its launch two weeks ago, we’ve seen huge traffic to the site and have received a ton of great feedback.

We were especially happy when Facebook emailed us to give us props for the work.

Today we got a nice endorsement from www.wallstrip.com, which was recently acquired by CBS for $5million.

Howard Lindzon said:

“I like allfacebook.com as a blog for keeping up to date on Facebook. I have been spending some time there after my friend Mike mentioned it this morning. Please recommend others. Everybody in the Facebook pool “

Many thanks to our readers, and especially Nick O’Neill for all his hard work setting up the site, and blogging until his fingers go numb!

I’ve been struggling to find a case study on how a brand has used Twitter to truly engage their audience.

Thank you Palm Pictures for finally providing me with a great case study on how a brand can use this social media tool.

Here’s what they did:

0) Palm Pictures is an independent studio focused on the acquisition, production and distribution of innovative music and independent film projects.

1) Palm Pictures created a twitter: http://twitter.com/palmpictures

2) They diligently tweet’d away, providing a running commentary on the films and music they were interested at the time. They provided 155 updates in about 2 months time….which was almost too much…and I almost stopped following their updates.

3) However, one day I received a direct twitter message from a Palm Pictures twitterer Rosalie:

“Hey!!! Thanks for supporting Palm on twitter!!! If you are interested in receiving some screeners mail me on xxxxxxx@palmpictures.com”

4) So as an avid indie film/music fan I was overjoyed to see that Palm Pictures was going to hook me up with some cool merchandise…so i naturally replied and basically said “sweet, hook me up with whatever you’ve got. I LOVE 1 Giant Leap so whatever you think I might like based on that is cool with me.” (I also HIGHLY recommend Sex and Lucia and Bomb the System BTW…actually…anything made by these guys is more than likely worth taking a look at)

5) The payoff came in the mail 3 days later:

Now I’ve got some really awesome films and music to check out this week. Not only that, but when my clients ask me “Peter, how can we use twitter to engage our target audiences?” I’ll be able to point to this case study for a really good example of how to do just that. Great job Palm!

I’ve co-authored a book called “Age of Conversation” which will be releasing at the end of June.  All proceeds from book sales will go to Variety, the Children’s Charity.

Many thanks to my fellow co-authors and especially Gavin Heaton and Drew Mclellan for pulling this together.

Say tuned for a link to purchase a copy!

I’m happy to report that I’ve begun co-authoring the All Facebook Blog.

Check out my first post about desired Facebook Applications here.