In case you missed it, something very interesting happened in December at Barack Obama's rally in Columbia, SC. A viral marketing event broke out.

The 30,000 people who half-filled a football stadium to see Obama and queen of all media Oprah Winfrey were asked to text their cell phone numbers to the campaign and sign up for mobile messages. They were then instructed to turn over the tickets they'd received at the door and look for four first names and phone numbers of registered Democrats in the state. Would they take 10 minutes right now to call those four people and urge them to vote for Obama in the South Carolina primary in January?

They would and did, in large numbers. In other words, Obama's campaign found a way to data-mine a live event and then got people to make up to 120,000 campaign calls. And charge the calls to their own bills.

“It was brilliant,” says Jim Calhoun, CEO of viral marketing platform company PopularMedia. “With that tactic [requesting phone numbers], he's getting around the government restrictions on making election calls to mobile phones. They're finding really ingenious ways to leverage technology and get people started advocating to others like them. It's an instantaneous phone bank, and it wouldn't have been possible four years ago.”

Welcome to “brand politics” in the 21st century. The same way that Kennedy and Nixon hired ad agencies in 1960 for slick commercials when voters were still getting used to television in their living rooms, today's crop of candidates are embracing digital-era marketing techniques.

Mark Newsome, senior vice president of marketing communications firm Chernoff Newman, says his company's research has found strong similarities between product image and political image. “A political brand is no different from the consumer products we prefer,” he says. “It's a voting decision, not a buying decision. Nevertheless, we're expressing a preference for a product based on what we think it represents and on what we think we need at that time.”

Candidate promotion is particularly crucial in this election because the field is so broad and the primary schedule so tight. At press time, the presidential pack consisted of five Democrats and seven Republicans. But that won't last. By the end of balloting on Feb. 5 — Super Tuesday, when 22 states hold their primaries — Democrats will have elected more than 66% of their party delegates and Republicans almost 57%. Many — probably most of the current candidates — will have dropped out.

Faced with the need to differentiate themselves and build voter support in a very short time, candidates are tapping into best branding and online marketing practices to forge quick, lasting connections with their core supporters and persuade undecided voters. Many of these are the same tactics that Sony, Apple or McDonald's use to keep consumers engaged and buying.

In 2000, most of the nation still had dial-up Internet service, so candidates could get away with Web sites that were the political equivalent of brochureware. And in 2004 Facebook, YouTube and other online communities were either nascent or nonexistent.

But today's presidential hopefuls have flocked to the Web like a second home. Just as product marketers have found the value of integrating online and offline campaigns, most candidates are using the Internet to spin their speeches and appearances in near-real time. Hillary Clinton introduced the “Fact Hub” rapid-response page of her Web site just in time to defuse a story that her campaign had stiffed a Boone, IA, diner waitress.

Both parties also have embraced social networks, Democrats more so than Republicans. By mid-December, Barack Obama had joined every social net from MySpace and Facebook to LinkedIn (for business professionals) and niche sites such as BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com (for Hispanics), AsianAve.com, GLEE.com (for gays and lesbians) and Faithbase.com (for non-denominational Christians). Last February his campaign also launched its own social net, MyBarackObama.com, to help early supporters find each other and to raise cash.

Many campaigns are staying in close touch with bloggers, treating them as “influentials” among their audiences, briefing them on statements and policies and answering their questions in person. Mike Huckabee currently numbers more than 600 bloggers on his outreach list, and John McCain has conducted teleconferences with 40 or 50 bloggers at a time from his campaign bus, the “Straight Talk Express.”

One question still open is whether all this connectivity can drive voters to the polls. “This will be the first election where the new media have reached critical mass,” Calhoun says. “The core 18- to-34-year-old group increasingly doesn't pick a restaurant or buy a camera without consulting their always-on network of contacts. It's reasonable to think that in politics, too, they're influenced by the echo chamber of their social network.”

Even before December's Oprah tour, Obama event attendees were asked to fill out contact information. In the case of the Oprah rallies in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, those phone numbers were added to the candidate's house list immediately. Attendees got a call from a staffer within 48 hours of the event thanking them for their support and asking for a pledge to vote for Obama in the upcoming primary.

“This was a smart way to spread the word about the local opportunities to help Barack's candidacy and I suspect more effective than simply e-mailing the information,” political watcher Todd Beeton blogs in My Digital Democracy. “By virtue of having come out to see Barack in the first place, the attendees essentially identified themselves as among the more active in the community and, no doubt, the political opinion makers in their circles.”

It also extended the candidate's brand into new markets, so to speak. The Obama campaign reported that 68% of those who signed up to get online tickets for the South Carolina gathering had never contacted his organization before, and more than 9,600 attendees signed support cards for the first time.

Obviously, incumbent presidential candidates have long had a way to motivate big-ticket donors for the ultimate in experiential political marketing: Lincoln Bedroom overnights. But this is the first election since 1952 with no sitting president or vice president involved, so such VIP perks are off the table, at least until the ambassadorships start getting handed out.

Instead, the contenders have rolled out contests targeting small contributors. A flurry of these launched last September. The prize? More often than not, plain old face time with the candidate.