Will McCain Announce His VP Online?

Tonight, as I was tapping away on my phone, a text message interrupted me. It said:

Barack will announce his VP candidate choice through txt msg between now & the Conv. Tell everyone to text VP to 62262 to be the first to know! Please forward.

I was expecting something like this from Obama. After all, this is the cycle that saw his candidacy (and Hillary Clinton's) announced online. I've written before how candidates can use a Big Moments Strategy to aggregate supporters on their website, collecting email addresses and the prospect of future money. Announcing the VP pick online is the next logical step in this progression. It's a piece of long-anticipated and prized information that the campaign has a complete monopoly over and can release on its own terms.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a similar idea for how McCain could capitalize on his VP selection. It wasn't text-driven, but it was a different use of email -- with the objective of maximizing e-mail address capture before, during, and after the announcement.

The premise is that the campaign would release the name of the VP nominee one hour in advance to 100 supporters selected at random from those who signed up for McCain e-mail list as a result of this campaign. This truly would have been "hearing it first" because no more than a few dozen ordinary people would actually "hear it first." 

An hour later, the announcement would be webcast on JohnMcCain.com, with a big fat e-mail signup field and donate button next to the video.

Sure, if you sign up for Obama's text messages, you'll get the news first -- along with a million other people, including the press. But what if a campaign could use technology to simulate the feel being a real insider -- with a closed loop of 100 people, who would instantaneously pick up the phone and tell their spouses or siblings the news. If nothing else, it would be an interesting experiment in how fast word spreads in a networked age.

Who wouldn't want to sign up to be a part of that?