Archives for posts with tag: politics

Why opposition should really be the prize

May 11, 10 //
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We are living through an unprecedented period of political history in the UK. All three of the major political parties are doing their very best to form some sort of coalition government with the Lib Dems operating as the all important missing link.

As a (relatively) loyal Labour voter (who actually voted Lib Dem this time round due to the tactical voting niceties of the first past the post system), I’m fascinated by the apparent eagerness for the Labour party to try and hold onto some sort of power.

I’ll admit that constitutionally, there is no reason why they shouldn’t. In this country, we don’t vote for our prime minister, we vote for the party in government, so arguments to the contrary by the Tories are just plain stupid.

However, there are a number of reasons in my mind, why a Lab/Lib coalition is a bad move for the Labour party:

  • Lab/Lib would be doomed to fail - the numbers just don’t add up and, even if the Queens Speech and Budget were passed, it wouldn’t be long before the backbenchers started to revolt, let alone the DUP or SNP
  • Public sentiment – whilst it wouldn’t lead to a demise of the government directly, a Lab/Lib Dem coalition is likely to be very unpopular for a number of reasons. This wouldn’t put Labour in a very good position at a future election
  • Time to regroup – the Labour party has suffered greatly at this election (OK, perhaps not as much as was feared, but still not great) and it needs time to rebuild and select a leader that can make a clean break with the past and move forwards
  • Unpopular decisions – whoever enters into government next will have to make a number of really unpopular decisions in what is likely to be a very weak position, not matter what colour the coalition takes
  • Imminent election – again, whoever is in power will not survive very long. Another election is round the corner and the opposition party is likely to be in a stronger position next time round

I have a lot of time for Lib Dem policies and genuinely believe we absolutely need voting reform. But that is not really enough to justify a cobbled together government (at least from Labour’s standpoint) that wouldn’t really survive in any case.

I firmly believe that the best bet for Labour is to enter into opposition, choose a charismatic leader that can really take the party forward, put in place strong opposition to what are likely to be unpopular moves by the tories (and Lib Dems) and get ready to take a running jump at the next election, which is likely to occur in the near to mid future.

Technological ignorance and the digital economy bill

April 12, 10 //
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I watched with interest the progress of the digital economy bill last week. If you missed the news about it, the Government succeeded in pushing through the bill in the ‘wash-up’ period – the days before parliament is dissolved in preperation for the election.

The DEB brings about a range of new laws and legislations, but the most controversial are the actions that ISPs can now take against illegal file-sharers. ISPs must now send a series of letters to any internet account holder whose line has been used for illegal activities. If the activities still occur, the ISP will be permitted to terminate the account for a certain period.

For me, the bill is a great example of how badly technology is still understood and how difficult this issue is to solve. This bill is clearly intended to root out the worst file-sharers and stop the downloading and sharing of illegal material; but it will do nothing of the sort.

File-sharers will always find ways round the system – the use of VPNs or FTPs have already been touted by many as a way of encrypting the flow of content.

The people this bill will potentially hurt is those who don’t know that illegal activity is happening on their account – parents, small businesses, hotels etc.

Could this even see the end of free Wifi?

For me, this is an incredibly short-sighted bill. One that has come about through intense lobbying by a body that is shit scared of what will happen to it in the future – the music and film industry. And both of the main parties (excluding of course Tom Watson and a few others) are equally to blame.

I have much sympathy for content creators, indeed I used to work in the music industry so know the problems inside out. This is just not the way to deal with it.

When technology is concerned, there is often no quick fix, but there is often plenty of ignorance.

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Why social media won’t but could win the election: #LEWISSMS

March 10, 10 //
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Last night I attended a debate on social media and the election hosted by our frenemies, Lewis PR, over at the very flashy Lewis media centre.

Alas it was, I regret to report, mainly a dull affair with the highlights for me being a delightful little montage of ‘thoughts from the general public’ fronted by the very smartly dressed Eb Adeyeri and some entertaining shenanigans with the Twitter wall.

Despite these amusements, in a great example of how not to chair a focused seminar, the event started thirty minutes late, the four speakers (Evening Standard Editor Paul Waugh, Tory MP Jeremy Hunt, Labour ex-minister Tom Watson and Dan Burton from Salesforce who apparently didn’t have a Twitter profile) were given a ludicrous 40 minutes to pitch (it was advertised as 5 minutes each) their pretty mundane and predictable thoughts (including a tedious sales pitch from the sponsor, Dan from Salesforce, on cloud computing of all things! A guy who I hasten to add didn’t then contribute anything further and had to leave halfway through to catch a train! – ouch #whydidyousponsor), leaving very limited time for questions.

The unfocused discussions crawled their way through the predictable traditional versus social media quagmire and much to and froing about whether MPs should be tweeting at all.

The advertised title of can “social media make or break and election” was largely ignored.

So I regret to inform that it therefore falls to me to use the obligatory ‘report on an event I’ve been to’ blog post to give some of my thoughts on the theme of “the impact of social media on the general election”.

TV is going to play a big role

As Tom Watson quite rightly observed, the TV debates will have the biggest effect on this election. Business Zone editor Dan Martin made a good point (on Twitter) when he questioned why it’s taken us so long to even get to this point. And with this in mind, it’s hardly surprising that social media usage by the main political parties is at such a base level.

Social media is not enough on it’s own

Many forget that social media wasn’t really what won the election for Obama. It played a part, but a relatively small one. That’s not to say it couldn’t be a winning formula, but just ‘doing it’ isn’t enough. What Obama did teach us, was that a carefully thought out and executed strategy from day one (take note Mr Cameron) is vital.

Don’t forget Facebook

The debate raged limped around the various merits or not of tweeting and blogging but, as anyone who knows their stuff will tell you, Facebook is where the war can be won or lost. Twitter is the media’s shiny new plaything, but Facebook is where the majority of voters are to be found.

If social media has an impact on the election, it will be from the grassroots

So in the absence of any real strategic planning in terms of social media from any of the main political parties so far (happy to be proved wrong about this), any innovative social media action in terms of the election is likely to come from ‘below’. We’ve already seen Mydavidcameron.com and I expect more grassroots movements like Invincecable before May 6th has been and gone.

If this event taught me anything…

…it’s that the traditional media, despite the valiant efforts of the Paul Waughs and Rory Cellan-Jones of this world, still don’t ‘get’ social media. And similarly, the vast majority of politicians, despite the valiant efforts of the Tom Watsons and Jeremy Hunts of this world, still don’t ‘get’ social media.

If they did, they would realise exactly why spending time using social tools wouldn’t be better spent dreaming up policies that no one knows about.

Winning elections is all about winning the hearts and minds of the punters on the street. And, despite the fact that the Tories are intent spending more of Ashcrofts money on it, billboard ads are no longer cutting the mustard.

What do politicians need to get over the crisis of the expenses scandal?

They need to start engaging with the voters again. And I just wonder whether arming MPs with (cheap) laptops with Tweetdeck (other desktop apps are available) and iPhones, might just be a good starting point and the wake-up call many of them need.

That’s how I’d use social media to win the election. Simple really.

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Mydavidcameron.com – the social election starts

January 14, 10 //
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If there was any doubt about whether social media would play a big part in the forthcoming general election then mydavidcameron.com is proof.

Last week some spoof images of the Tory’s latest campaign posters started appearing on the Go Fourth Labour blog. This led to Clifford Singer – a creative director at Sparkloop graphic design agency and creator of the Other TaxPayer’s Alliance website – to build mydavidcameron.com (itself a play on the myconservatives.com site) to encourage grassroots supporters to create and upload their own spoof posters.

And today, the Labour party has officially adopted some of the posters as part of their election campaigning by posting them on their website.

This move has got some Tory bloggers up in arms, but as Gordon Macmillan points out, they are all largely missing the point!

What this demonstrates is good engagement with the grassroots of the party and driving engagement from the bottom up – a strategy that is very effective in all forms of social media marketing, but in particular in political campaigning as a certain Mr Obama clearly demonstrated.

Yes, it’s pretty negative, but unfortunately that is UK politics for you and at the moment you feel the Labour party has to play hard to even stand any chance of changing the polls…

How the (online) general election will be fought?

September 16, 09 //
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With a general election in the UK less than a year away, I’m fascinated to see how it will play out online, with digital media and social media at a vastly advanced stage compared to 2005, and with Obama’s ‘social media victory’ still fresh in our minds.

As Jon Bernstein points out “remember that when the 2005 General Election campaign kicked off, YouTube was barely a month old.”

So, it was interesting to see the above video as a taste of things to come. It’s going to be an interesting 10 months…

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When politics goes viral

March 27, 09 //
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Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has been making headlines this week following his controversial anti-Brown outburst at the European parliament (video below). The headlines didn’t appear in traditional media outlets however. Rather, they appeared online and were spread via social media.

Maybe the traditional news believe that the speech, in purely political terms, was fairly inconsequential no matter what was said. As Daniel himself says: “I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.”

But the public disagrees. With over 80,000 hits, the rant quickly became the most viewed video on YouTube, in the world – quite a feat!

This raises a few interesting questions: Is the mainstream media out of touch with public sentiment? Is it relying on traditional stories released or issued from the same old sources? Does this (again) merely demonstrate that social media has the potential to become a fundamental news distribution services that resonates very powerfully with consumers because it is driven by consumers?

I am perhaps being too tough on the traditional media. The old ‘quality control’ argument surely stands up. This wasn’t front page news, but the comments raised do seem to have resonated very powerfully with a public that is disillusioned and fed up with the dreary, bland news we are getting day in, day out.

Its also worth pointing out, as the Guardian mentions, that the speech itself is perfect for the Internet. A short video, with easy to follow arguments, delivered in a passionate way, not to mention the money-shot of Brown at the end. Succinct, to the point and engaging.

Whatever your politics, the democratisation of news is well and truly upon us.

Barack: the ultimate marketing case study?

January 23, 09 //
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Tuesday was a great day. We sat in the office, in awe of an undoubtedly great man. We were transfixed.

As Paul Carr said in his weekly column, the usual British cynicism that so often comes to the fore when anything American is concerned disappeared like $1 Obama water offered to a million-strong crowd.

The reason: he’s a great, natural marketer.

From day one, Obama has marketed himself brilliantly. There was a great comment piece in last month’s Revolution magazine which compared some of Obama’s early speeches from before he won the nomination to the email he sent on the night he was elected. The messages were almost identical.

That’s great branding. Great messaging and great strategy. We are always telling our clients that if you get the messaging right at the start, then everything else follows and works much better. It’s true and Obama knows it. I guess from a political standpoint, it suggests that this is also a person who is true to his beliefs and his vision. A good business lesson too.

Sure, he was very different to what went before, and that certainly helps. But so is the best marketing. And Obama accentuates and plays on these differences, if subtlety. Marketing the same message in the same way as everyone else is only going to get you so far. Doing something different, something unique, gets you noticed.

David Meerman Scott has brilliantly demonstrated the linguistic differences between Obama’s inaugural address and the one Bush gave 4 years ago. It’s subtle but it seems to hit home.

As Seth Godin says: be remarkable. Obama is certainly remarkable – the person and the brand.

Politically speaking, the hard work starts now. And, at the end of the day, he is a politician, not a marketer.

But in the days when countries are hiring PR agencies, what better leader to have than one that seems to understand how to inspire, persuade and communicate effectively to his own country and globally.

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