(This post originally appeared on Forbes)
It seems that every Presidential election cycle brings with it the “coming out” of some new technology.  Back in 2000 the big tech story was how the Gore/Lieberman campaign was leveraging Blackberrys for communications.  The next two elections were full of stories about mobile devices, e-mail and instant messaging.  President Obama’s campaign in 2008 highlighted the power of social media.  Presidential campaigns are nothing but a much bigger version of a business like mine. They employ people.  They bring in revenues (donations) and they have to target their spending effectively.  They are marketing machines, doing everything possible to generate attention for their candidate (the product) and convince people to vote (buy) for him.   So what’s the big technology story of this year’s Presidential election?  What’s the killer app?

It’s a kid named Andrew.

Yes, there’s e-mail.  And voice.  And text.   There’s video, and direct mail and social media.  But in 2012, there is no one technology that’s dominating.  It’s a convergence of technologies.  Marketing your candidate (or your product) isn’t easy today.  It’s no longer about hiring Don Draper to craft a national image.  Well…it still is if you’re running for President.  But your audience is more fragmented now more than ever.  We’re not sitting in front of the TV watching “Dallas.”  We’re Tivo-ing “Game of Thrones”, or watching it live, or catching it two days later online or discussing it on Facebook or reading about some particularly steamy scene on Gawker.  We’re all broken up into hundreds of communities and getting information from dozens of places.  How does the candidate find us?  How do you find your customers?  It’s not easy.  But people are doing it.  It’s a combination of the convergence of low cost technologies…and a kid named Andrew.

Are you getting the robo-calls?  Of course you are.  They usually come during the day and leave a message on your home voicemail.  Mass voice calling is mainstream and, sadly, we’re getting used to it.   If you live in a cold weather area you’re already getting these from your school district.  And now we’re getting them all the time from our candidates.  Produced the right way, a quick voice message can be informative and helpful without being intrusive.  Small companies like mine now have the ability to take advantage of the same technology.  Voiceshot is a service that sends out mass voice message as does DialMyCalls.  And there’s nothing wrong with this.  Many of my clients are using these services to get their messages out to customers who opt-in to receive their information by phone.  I wish I could say the same about our political candidates (no one asked for my opt-in yet) but that time will come too.

I’m starting to get political text messages too.  I know…it sounds awful.  And it is.  That’s because I didn’t ask to get political messages sent to my smart phone.  I get enough text messages from my teenage kids asking for money.  The last thing I need is a text message from a politician asking for money.  But this is 2012 and mass texting services are inexpensive and if used the right way, can be a great way to keep in touch with your prospective voters…or customers.  I like Tatango, a service that will enable you to build your own opt-in list of customers, partners and prospects who want to get certain updates from you and prefer to get them by text.  We have to face reality:  a whole new generation of business people are emerging from high schools and universities around the country and these kids have grown up communicating with each other via text messaging.  This is a marketing tool that will grow in influence over time.

Of course there’s email.  But email communications are changing too.  People really don’t like to be spammed.  But for those that want information about Governor Romney’s latest addition to his iPhone playlist (Really?  Kid Rock?)  or President Obama’s performance in Sunday’s pickup basketball game they’re getting it via email from their national party or local representatives.   The cost of today’s email services are negligible.  Sending thousands of messages to your base can be done for $50-$100 a month using tools from Constant Contact,Campaigner or MailChimp for example.

And please don’t count out direct mail.  Of course the number of direct mail pieces have declined substantially since the days of Gore/Lieberman.  But it’s still an effective means of communication.  I read the newspaper every day.  Many of us still sift through that day’s mail looking for letters and magazines.   And as we get closer and closer to the big day, we’re all finding more and more postcards and letters from our candidates in the pile.  There’s a reason for that:  many of us look at this stuff, even if for a moment or two.  But it lingers in our minds.  And who knows if that one message, that one photo of the candidate kissing a baby, will continue to linger in our minds at the moment we’re in the voting box?  Small businesses are using services like PrintPlaceand Vistaprint in an effort to stay in their customers’ minds too.  They’re inexpensive and effective.

The media loves to talk about social media.  And that makes sense too.  There are millions of us who get much of our daily information from our favorite social media sites.  Our favorite clips on You Tube, updates from the people we follow on Twitter, customized news delivered daily to us on LinkedIn and conversations we’re having on Facebook.   And of course all the searching we’re doing on Google too.  So the candidates are investing heavily in all of those services.  They have social media teams engaging potential voters and search engine optimization experts looking to place the right ads for the right eyeballs.  They’re producing campaign videos to watch online.

Which brings me to Andrew.

He showed up at my door a few weeks ago campaigning for President Obama.  He’s one of thousands of high school and college kids blanketing the country this year volunteering for either the President or Governor Romney.  And there are thousands of more workers:  older, retired, passionate, political…whatever.  These people are busy collecting data.  And much of it is the old fashioned way.  Sure, the campaigns are gathering more information us filling out forms on their websites.  But their volunteers are also knocking on doors.  They’re making phone calls.  And they’re asking different questions.  They’re asking where we’re leaning.  They’re asking us for permission to communicate with us (except in my case!).  And now because there are so many choices in this converging world of technology, they’re asking us how we’d like to receive our information.

Guys like Andrew are spending hours upon hours segmenting our responses.  He’s doing this so that the campaign’s marketers can use all of these converging technologies to communicate with those that matter, like the party faithful and swing voters, while limiting communications with those that are out of their reach.

All these great technologies are now available to help the candidate win an election or enable a business to grow.  They’re inexpensive, easy to use and available in so many choices.  But without actual human people like Andrew  they’re not very effective.   That’s because for the 2012 election it’s not about a particular technology anymore.  There is no killer app.  It’s how your people are collecting the data, segmenting the data and using a convergence of available technologies to get your message out.  This is how smart candidates are winning elections.  And how smart business people are growing their companies.

Besides Forbes, Gene Marks writes weekly for The New York Times andInc.com.