The Wall Street Journal-20080205-The Twist- Texting for Votes- In Unusual Radio Ads- Obama Asks Listeners To Send Text Messages- Online edition

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The Twist: Texting for Votes; In Unusual Radio Ads, Obama Asks Listeners To Send Text Messages; Online edition

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Many young consumers have grown accustomed to ordering cellphone ringtones via text message. Text a certain keyword to a specific number, and the transaction begins. Barack Obama is reaching out to potential voters in the same demographic with a different message: "Text HOPE."

Obama advertisements broadcast on youth-oriented radio stations in most of the states holding caucus-style elections on Super Tuesday highlight the campaign's unorthodox approach to voter outreach and mobilization. And the ads underscore one of the campaign's overarching strategies: the belief that increased voter turnout redounds to the Illinois senator's benefit.

The radio ads start out ordinarily enough, extolling Mr. Obama's antiwar credentials and "ability to bring people together" in a series of voiceovers. Midway through, however, the 60-second spot becomes unusually instructional.

The announcer rattles off the date and time of the state's caucus, provides detailed information on voter-registration requirements and concludes by inviting listeners to contact the Obama campaign via text message. A version of the radio ad broadcast in Minnesota instructs listeners to "text HOPE to 62262 . . . to learn more." The date of today's caucus is repeated three times, and listeners are told to arrive by 8 p.m. in order to vote.

Similar radio ads, which campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor describes as "youth focused," have also aired in New Mexico and Idaho, and were deployed in Iowa and Nevada before those states' caucuses.

"They are speaking to voters who have never attended a caucus before," explains Steve Murphy, a former campaign strategist for New Mexico's Bill Richardson and partner in Murphy Putnam Media Inc. "It's like getting a colonoscopy for the first time -- you don't know whether it will hurt or not."

These instructional radio ads are a departure from the norm, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. "That's usually information carried in print," she says. "You don't want to train anyone else's caucus goers."

Direct mail and person-to-person contact through a field operation are the traditional means for issuing instructions to voters, according to Larry Rasky, a former media strategist with Joe Biden's presidential campaign and chairman of Rasky Baerlin Strategic Communications. "The general rule of thumb is that you can't use broadcast advertising to educate people," Mr. Rasky said.

The Obama campaign is using the new medium of text message as way to establish more conventional contact with would-be voters. After texting "HOPE" to the campaign, respondents receive a follow up message seeking their ZIP Code, which is then used to send local information to potential voters.

In Idaho, those responding to the text-message radio ads are invited to twice-weekly training sessions held at a field office in Boise. There, potential voters are put through the rigors of a mock caucus -- but are not prodded to support anyone in particular.

"We use superheroes as the candidates because we know that independents and Republicans are coming in for our training," explains Channi Wiggins, an Idaho for Obama staffer. "We don't want to make them uncomfortable." Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman have stood for election in Idaho's mock caucuses, she says.

The strategy, at bottom, is to increase the number of people who turn up to vote. "We think a larger turnout helps us," says Mr. Vietor, the Obama spokesman.

Will text messages work as a mean to turn out young voters? A study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Princeton University, using data from the 2006 election, found that text messages to newly registered voters increased the likelihood of voting by 4.2 percentage points.