The 2016 presidential campaign is well under way now that Hillary Clinton and Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio have all announced their candidacy. Even though there’s 500+ days until the election, news coverage is already a bit ridiculous (cue Hillary Clinton at Chipotle news cycle).
We are still pretty early in the election cycle so exact details on each of the candidates’ platforms are still minimal – especially since it’s expected that about 20 more candidates will jump into the race. This includes your Donald Trumps and Waka Flocka Flames. Jokes aside, I am a co-founder in a mobile consulting firm, so I’m naturally curious to see which candidates are going to leverage mobile technology in their run for our highest office.
It seems like each election brings another innovation or piece of technology that candidates can use to reach the American people. We’ve gone from radio, to television, to internet and most recently social media. These have been platforms that candidates have leveraged to set themselves apart. Now that Grandma is on Instagram, being clever on social media or having a “social media” strategy is par for the course.
Considering that presidential campaigns raise (and spend) more than a billion dollars in less than two years, they seem more like Silicon Valley start-ups. Given the amount of resources and visibility that candidates have, I wonder if there is more in mobile that campaigns could be doing to gain that slim advantage.
Let’s first take inventory of what the current candidates are up to: