e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Have Romney Robo-Call Your Friends

January 3rd, 2008

Slate’s Trailhead column picked up a very fun feature on Mitt Romney’s site on Wednesday afternoon — enter your name and a friend’s name, and this interesting Flash application will record a phone message for him or her. The site lets you pick issues — hmmmm, American Values or Radical Jihad? So hard to decide! — and you can choose to have the message sent as an actual phone call or via email. Though unfortunately it wouldn’t let me call myself after 9 pm, so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning to test that “feature.” Of course, the system’s also limited to names that Mitt has pre-recorded, so “Colin” was off-limits, and when I tried to use “Pat” for a message to my father, it came out as “Patricia” (sorry about that sex change, Dad). You can also have Mitt record your outgoing voicemail message, which is sure to be a big hit among those willing to part with $25 for the privilege.

Yep, we’re taking robo-calling to a whole new level — I can’t wait until the message from Mitt finally arrives in my inbox. And just think of the various ways in which this tool (the technology, not the candidate) could be used to amuse your friends or torment your enemies. Let’s hope it’s not a violation of the extensive Terms of Use that users have to agree to for me to post the audio file here….

Update: After three hours, the message still hasn’t arrived, filling me with great sadness and a profound sense of loss. Fortunately there are dirty tricks to read about, including the nasty use of REAL robo-calls to mislead voters or maybe just “educate” them about certain candidates.

– cpd

Robot-Selected "Related" Articles:

5 Comments Add your own

1. Henry Coppola | January 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm

This reminds me of the call I got from Samuel L. Jackson urging me, in his now signature style, to go see Snakes On A Plane.

Not politics, I Know but a great robo-call promotional campaign nonetheless. And any name could be used, granted the names were interjected in a computer voice and not Sam’s. Still, it was pretty freakin’ cool. Probably the best thing about the movie, then again I never saw it, which was probably a good thing as well.
2. Shaun Dakin | January 3rd, 2008 at 1:10 pm

Nice to have $$. Bottom line, however, is that this is spam, pure and simple.

Another cool site is http://www.earfl.com, register, call from your cell phone, record a story, and there your story is on the internet.

Shaun Dakin
CEO
StopPoliticalCalls.org
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
3. Ryan Alexander | January 3rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm

The service being used by Mitt Romney is the same service that was being used by Snakes on a Plane.

Senator Evan Bayh’s All America PAC and short lived Presidential was actually the first campaign to inquire about using it.
4. Ryan Alexander | January 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 pm

I also think that Romney has done a really poor job of using this. What made the Snakes on a Plane thing fun was all of the different options that you could string together to make a really personal message.

No matter which issues you select you get more or less the same message from Romney.
5. tim it | February 4th, 2009 at 8:52 am

Grand emplacement - le bon travail ! ! !

Help build e.politics

Make a comment, correct my errors, suggest more tools and tactics, leave a case study, or otherwise make this page a better resource.

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed