Both major candidates for governor have begun using a tactic pioneered by the Barack Obama campaign back in 2008 that seeks to use major news announcements as a tool for gathering data about potential supporters.

Some might remember back in 2008 when speculation was swirling about whom Obama would name to be his vice presidential running mate. While many speculated — correctly, as it turned out — that it would be Sen. Joe Biden, there was strong pressure to name then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had finished a close second in the race for the nomination.

So, instead of simply announcing his pick, the Obama campaign invited people to sign up and be the first to learn the news via text messages to their cellphones. Most people forget that the plan didn’t actually work. Word of the veep pick leaked out long before anyone got a text message. But the bigger achievement was that in the process the Obama campaign gained the names and cellphone numbers of tens of thousands of potential voters and supporters.

Last week, Democrat Paul Davis replicated the experiment by inviting people to sign up and get email alerts about his big announcement: that more than 100 Republicans, mostly former officeholders, had formed a group to endorse him for governor.

Then, over the weekend, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s re-election campaign followed suit, inviting his followers to sign up to be the first to hear news about its “big announcement” on Monday, which was that one of the 104 people on Davis’ list is actually endorsing him.

People can judge for themselves whether the announcements themselves lived up to their pre-announcement hype. But there is more behind the strategy than just delivering an unfiltered message straight to supporters.

“Certainly it’s a tool we can use to build data about supporters who are interested in the campaign,” said Brownback campaign spokesman John Milburn. “These are people who may be interested in being a volunteer to get out and work for us. It’s a great tool for that. And you don’t get that from a television ad.”

According to Brownback’s own campaign website, the event had attracted 655 people to sign up and provide their email addresses by the time the announcement came out at 1:51 p.m. That was well short of the campaign’s own stated goal of getting 1,000 people to sign up, and it’s certain that at least a handful of those who did sign up were news reporters who have no intention of donating or volunteering for the campaign.

Davis campaign spokesman Chris Pumpelly wouldn’t comment on the Davis campaign’s strategy or its relative success.

“It’s not our policy to discuss campaign strategy,” Pumpelly said in an email. “We’re focused on building a bipartisan coalition of commonsense Kansans who want to get our state back on track. That includes all forms of communication and grassroots organizing.”

But the strategy also comes with built-in pitfalls, which both campaigns experienced almost immediately. The first of which is that when you try to amplify the impact of your message, you run the danger of amplifying your mistakes.

For Brownback, the immediate reaction was that he had over-sold an announcement which turned out to be marginally newsworthy at best. The news that Meyers hadn’t endorsed Davis and, if given a choice, would endorse Brownback, had already been reported days earlier.

For Davis, the problem was that he got part of the story wrong. Meyers hadn’t endorsed him. And, as it later turned out, at least three of the Republicans on his list actually were no longer registered Republicans.

But in that regard, both the Brownback and Davis campaigns are in good company. In 2008, when the Obama campaign used the strategy to announce its veep pick, the plan didn’t work. There were leaks, and several reporters got the heads-up long before the mass text announcement. And the mass texts turned out not to work very well either, and some of those who signed up never got the texts until several hours later.