360DigitalInfluence

Sure, you could announce your  vice president the usual way. In the backyard of your runningmate’s home, overlooking some scenic inspiring vista with giant satellite trucks from major networks idling out front. That’d be easy.

The problem, though, is that by the time the mainstream media assembles at the site of your announcement someone will have leaked the “event” and we’ll know who it is hours before you take the stage (who’s not going to notice giant satellite trucks idling outfront someone’s home in say Richmond, Indianapolis or Nebraska?). By the time you make your announcement, it’s old news. Yawn. Where’s the surprise in that?

Everything about this presidential race is “different” and the way you choose to announce your running mate should follow suit. Surprise and delight us. Tell your family of supporters first. In short, make it personal. Then roll out your announcement the old fashioned way through a joint appearance, press release, and paddleboat journey down the Mississippi. Here’s a few ways you could do it differently:

1. Countdown to Change Clock. Register a domain like BaracksChoice.com (it’s available!) that features nothing but a countdown clock that ticks down to the hour or day of your announcement. You could offer widgetized versions that your supporters can plug into their Facebook pages, blogs and Web sites. All across the Web - tick tock, tick tock. At the appointed hour, the clock comes down and up goes streaming live video of you making your big announcement. Sure, we’ll know when it’s going to happen - you just need to keep the “who” a surprise.

2. A Tuesday Tweet. With our collective attention span, you need to communicate your joint message and rationale in 140 characters or less, anyway.  Or we’re not going to get it. You have 50,000 highly networked Americans following you  on twitter.com/barackobama, so surprise us in the middle of the day. Do it on a Tuesday or Wednesday, when Internet use is highest.

3. Live YouTube Event. Make your selection live via streaming video on the Web, using the  Barack Obama YouTube channel. While broadband access is a whole other issue the next president should address, more and more Americans access the Web through high speed connections, making this option a real possibility. In fact, you could take a $110 flip cam and start shooting clips beginning on the morning of your announcement. Tell us today’s the day. And let us experience it with you.

4. Social Press Release. You probably have millions of email addresses from Americans from every corner of the country. You could create an email announcement that contains a short letter from you and your running mate, and links to “social” content that your supporters could spread virally online - video clips on YouTube, imagery, downloadable banners and badges, widgets and more. Maybe talk John Kerry and Al Gore into forwarding your message on your behalf to their lists.

5. The Facebook Option. Ok, I probably should have listed this one first. There are more than 1.2 million supporters who have joined the Barack Obama Facebook group. You could easily make your announcement any number of ways through Facebook - by sending a message on Facebook to all of your group members, by posting a video announcing your running mate, by posting a joint photo, or by writing on your own wall.

Those are just a few suggestions of how you could introduce your vice president in a more direct way. And I should say that we’re a non-partisan bunch here on the 360 Digital Influence blog, and John McCain could use any one of these ideas. It’s just that McCain’s social media footprint is much smaller (Obama Facebook supporters = 1.2 million, McCain’s = 180,000), so Obama made the better example for this post.

What other ways could one of the nominees introduce us to his running mate, digitally?