under strict embargo

This week’s issue of PR Week takes an in-depth look at the BNP’s success at the recent European elections and asks a straightforward question - was enough done by the main political parties to prevent their breakthrough? My own view, shared by other industry colleagues, is that a communication strategy based on the premise that if we simply ignore the BNP they will just disappear has clearly failed. A new approach is now needed, based on countering BNP propaganda whenever and wherever it appears, with information from mainstream political parties. This includes online.

While I agree completely that there is no substitute for knocking on doors and talking to voters directly, the inability of the BNP to use the mainstream media as a mouthpiece, makes the internet a key component of its campaigning strategy. The online world will therefore become a key battleground in fighting extremism.

I was given the opportunity to debate these issues further with Luke Pollard, an account director at PR consultancy Edelman, as well as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. You can watch our discussion in the PR Week video podcast below.

Technorati Tags: Euro Elections, Hopi Sen, Iain Dale

The Smeargate controversy has reignited the debate about the direction of the Labour Party’s online strategy. With a general election just months away what must Labour do to get back on track? My thoughts below:

1. Drop Draper

Derek Draper’s late embrace of the blogosphere has become a text book example of exactly what not to do when devising and implementing an online strategy. From starting fabricated battles with popular bloggers in a vain attempt to drive traffic to LabourList, to his misuse of Twitter, Draper has ignored the key principles of honesty, transparency, decency and dare I say, humility, which should guide the online behaviour of a mainstream political party.

Draper’s intimate involvement in the development of the Red Flag blog is the manifestation of an ingrained command-and-control mentality, which both he and Labour Party HQ just can’t seem to shake off. The clearest lesson from Smeargate is that the media manipulation techniques of the late 90s no longer work. You can’t bully and intimidate the blogosphere into submission.

I really can’t see how Draper can continue to be editor of LabourList or have any further involvement in Labour’s online strategy. Gordon Brown needs to take John Prescott’s advice and publically signal an end to Draper’s role as a ‘new media’ adviser. Until he does, the stench of Smeargate will never be far from the Labour Party’s online activities.

2. Close LabourList

Presenting LabourList as an independent site when it was officially launched at Labour HQ in the presence of Peter Mandelson and other government ministers was farcical from the start. I said as much in a letter to PR Week, in response to which Draper “named and shamed” me as his ‘Zero of the Day’.

The fact that his ‘Hero of the Day’ was Baroness Vadera, just 24-hours after her much ridiculed remarks about “seeing the green shoots of economic recovery” confirmed to me that LabourList was modeled more on Pravda than ConservativeHome.

Mark Hanson this week makes a brave attempt at defending the future of LabourList and Draper’s involvement, despite Draper giving Hanson’s boss at Staniforth a direct lesson in his own corrosive brand of blogger relations.

The truth is that the reputation of LabourList is just too damaged through its association with Draper to have any credibility with the rest of the blogosphere, the mainstream media and most importantly with ordinary Labour Party activists. As reported in the FT, the sites trump card of access to the heart of government, with contributions from ministers is no more. A Labour Party source is quoted as saying “You won’t be seeing any of them going near it again.”

I suspect that there will be an attempt at a re-launch, but the party shoudn’t waste any more time and resources trying to flog a dead horse.

3. Let a thousand flowers bloom

It is a genuine shame that so many of the ordinary contributors to LabourList have been so let down by the people behind the site. There have been some occasional attempts to encourage real debate and kick start the process of filling the paucity of policy at the heart of the Labour movement. What should these activists do now?

My advice would be to go out there and create your own blogs and online communities. The more the merrier! You can buy some great WordPress ‘magazine style’ templates for less than £50, which are arguably more attractive and user-friendly than LabourList. There is no compulsion to pay Tangent Labs thousands to build a bespoke site running on bespoke technology.

Placing so much emphasis on one site was perhaps the biggest flaw in Labour’s online strategy. In the interests of balance there have been some successes - the metamorphosis of John Prescott into an online campaigner has been as effective as it has been surprising. Go Fourth and Alastair Campbell’s personal site have provided some variety but there hasn’t been a concerted effort to redress in both the quantity and quality of sites, the dominance of the Right-leaning blogosphere. Closing LabourList could be the catalyst this process needs.

4. Listen to good advice

The start of the year saw numerous conferences and summits called to help Labour get to grips with e-campaigning. These featured online gurus from Blue State Digital, the team behind Obama’s digital success, as well as experts from Google, MoveOn and MySociety. What Smeargate highlights is that most of this advice has gone in one ear and out the other. The Labour Party new media chief Sue Macmillan needs to demonstrate that the Labour Party is now acting on the advice of these experts and has learned the lessons from Smeargate.  Basically, don’t buy a dog and then bark yourself.

5. Promote Tom Harris MP

The Tories have benefited from placing an MP in the shape of Jeremy Hunt MP, shadow culture secretary, specifically at the forefront of their online campaigning. Labour should consider doing the same and Tom Harris MP seems to be the obvious candidate. His rapid denunciation of McBride and Draper’s activities highlights he has the moral compass necessary to drive Labour’s online activities in the right direction. His net-savvy demonstrated through his own blog and use of Twitter has gained him respect across the political divide. Harris’ position on the backbenches also gives him the necessary room to manoeuvre to question government policy and engage in open debate with party activists and ordinary voters.

There are few positives from this affair for those in the Labour movement. Perhaps one crumb of comfort is that the Red Rag blog or anything similar will now not been deployed in the forthcoming general election campaign. While all UK political parties still have much to learn from the success of Barack Obama’s online approach, the one thing nobody wants to see imported is the character assassination and innuendo which have become a routine part of the online political process in the US. What the Labour Party decides to do next will be watched very closely.

UPDATE: I would recommend reading this post from Labour activist and digital PR expert Stuart Bruce on his advice for Labour’s online strategy. Despite some stark differences with what I’ve written above, there is also some clear common ground.

Technorati Tags: Derek Draper, Labour Party, LabourList, McBridge, Online Campaigning, Politics, Smeargate

Following today’s revelations, below is a letter, an edited version of which was printed in PR Week on 16th January in response to the launch of Derek Draper’s LabourList blog…

Sir,

Labour’s new media ‘strategy’ revealed this week is arguably much like its approach to government – short-termist, gimmicky, aggressive and disconnected. Though Peter Mandelson writes on the new LabourList blog that the era of ‘command and control’ is over, it says it all that the party’s first major move online has been to create a space so clearly under the influence of Labour HQ. Would it not have been better to nurture the left-leaning blogosphere and support independent sites such as LabourHome?

The party’s piecemeal approach to rolling out a series of digital tactics betrays the lack of a real underlying strategy. Where is the focus on integrating Labour’s communication across online and offline channels or creating compelling content which can be used on multiple digital platforms? With the next election to be decided by floating voters, Labour seems obsessed with talking to itself and producing virals and widgets designed to amuse the politerati rather than inspire and engage with ordinary voters.

While Derek Draper clearly deserves points for trying, for the Labour Party this is no time for a digital novice.

Daljit Bhurji, MD, Diffusion

Technorati Tags: Derek Draper, Labour Party, LabourList, Smeargate

Today is Diffusion’s first birthday! To say that time flies when you’re having fun would be an understatement. In its first 12-months Diffusion has grown into a 9-strong team of amazing PR consultants, working with some amazing clients from exciting digital start-ups to global super brands.

There has been blood, sweat and tears along the way, though thankfully mostly confined to the day we had to build our office furniture. The hard work has only just begun but I have succumbed to the repeated nagging to give my blogging a bit more love and attention than it’s received of late.

I have given Under Strict Embargo a bit of a design revamp which I hope you like. The focus will still be on PR and Social Media, but online political campaigning is a passion of mine, so I make no apologies for the frequency of posts on that topic as we head towards a General Election in 2010.

Happy reading!

Technorati Tags: Diffusion, Politics, PR, social media

Being both a politics and digital PR junkie I’ve been rather spoiled and completely fascinated by the US Presidential elections. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to record a video podcast for PR Week on both my favourite topics last week, which you can watch here. I think it’s fair to say that we are witnessing the first Social Media Election, where online platforms have become more than just channels for raising money but central to campaign strategy for both the McCain and Obama camps.

While the US elections have no doubt showcased the scale of what the web can achieve, there is still so much more that could be done in terms of sophistication. I touch on the issue of better campaign integration in my podcast - amplifying the power of political campaigns through intelligently linking traditional media relations, Search marketing and Social Media.  This is one of the areas I highlight where political parties in the UK, particularly the Conservatives are taking a lead and have a thing or two to teach our American cousins. The Tories live-bidding on Google for keywords spoken by Alasdair Darling as he was delivering his last budget speech is just a sign of the things to come.

Another example of integration in action, which I never managed to blog about at the time was Obama’s visit to the UK in July and his private meeting with David Cameron. Though most of the actual meeting was conducted away from the cameras, the party released a video on YouTube of Cameron discussing the encounter within an hour of it ending and then pushed this out via its press office, an email marketing shot and a sustained Google PPC campaign. The video made it into the Top 10 most popular YouTube videos that weekend, with over 20,000 hits in 48 hours, helping to ensure that the Tories at least matched the coverage given to Obama’s meeting with Brown.

As with most things Social Media we have barely scratched the surface, particularly when it comes to using the two-way communication potential of online platforms to the full. Watching how the UK parties fight the next general election online is going to be compelling viewing!

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself” were the reassuring words of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 as the US faced the realities of the Great Depression. This week our own political leaders have been trying their best to reassure the financial markets and assuage the fears of ordinary voters worried about their jobs, homes, savings and pensions.

To help get his message across Gordon Brown on Thursday launched a new series of podcasts on the economic crisis - the first discussing the government’s rescue of the British banking sector.  Hosted on the new Number 10 website and on iTunes, the podcasts are part of a concerted strategy to communicate government policy directly to voters, bypassing what remains a largely hostile media.

I can see, or rather hear, why the podcast medium is attractive for Gordon Brown.  His deep Scottish brogue works far better on radio than on TV, where his visual tics invariably distract the viewer from what he is actually saying. The live interview format also usually results in Brown reverting to repetitive and robotic stock-phrases and apart from when being interrogated by Mariella Frostrop, I’ve yet to see a TV interview where he looks genuinely comfortable.

So the pre-record of a podcast works well and his delivery is relaxed and reassuring to the listener.  I would however be tempted to experiment with different formats in addition to the standard Churchillian address.  Perhaps have Brown “in conversation with…” the types of individuals he mentions at the start of his podcast - first-time buyers after a mortgage, small business owners trying to secure bank loans or a housewife trying to balance the household budget. Why not record it at the local Lidl?  The conversations wouldn’t need to be confrontational or overtly party political, but would arguably help demonstrate how the government’s £500 billion intervention will positively impact on the day to day lives of ordinary voters.

Anyway, having listened to the Prime Minister’s podcast, my iPod immediately segued into Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’, which kept me amused for the rest of Black Friday at least.

I was asked to contribute to a fascinating article in the National Journal, a leading US political magazine, on Friday in response to the initially surprising news that John McCain is actually outspending Barack Obama on Google. Figures released by Nielsen Online show that McCain’s campaign purchased just over 7 million impressions via Google AdWords in June, compared to just over 1 million for Obama.

However, the really interesting stats are for spend on traditional banner advertising, where Obama is trouncing McCain. Obama invested in over 80 million impressions compared to just 16 million for McCain. Nielsen’s analysis shows that Obama’s banners have been deployed on popular portals such as Yahoo! and MSN and news sites such as CNN. The campaign also bought almost 2 million impressions on allrecipes.com, perhaps in an attempt to reach more of the women who voted for Clinton. McCain, who is still distrusted by much of the Republican base, seems to have focussed his banner spending on conservative sites such as the National Review and Lucianne.com.

As pointed out in the article, the discrepancy in the investment between banners and search advertising by the two campaigns is most likely a result of financial expediency rather than deliberate strategy.  McCain has fewer resources and is therefore focusing these on more targeted and cheaper ads on Google. It’s difficult to tell from the outside the real degree of targeting by the Obama campaign in its use of banner advertising. It could be various ad-networks are being paid millions of dollars to simply get as many eye-balls as possible.

What is true is that the Republican campaign had had to play catch-up in effectively using the Internet as a campaigning tool and is learning fast.  McCain’s recent adverts portraying Obama as both Moses and a blonde bimbo and the now famous response by Paris Hilton, has meant McCain has overtaken Obama’s lead for YouTube viewers for the first time.

Analysis from Tubemogul.com shows McCain’s videos attracted more viewers than Obama’s for seven days in a row last week, and on 11 of the previous 14 days.  Maybe it’s time for Will.i.am to pen another ditty…perhaps featuring Paris’ much under appreciated musical talents?

So I was asked by PR Week on Monday for my views on Gordon Brown’s Ask the PM initiative on YouTube. This was the latest foray into the online world by Downing Street, following its recent embrace of Twitter. My assessment that Ask the PM “smacks of gimmickry and desperation” led the article and there was a clear consensus from other industry commentators, that this project was a typical case of ‘too little, too late’.

I had a couple of interesting conversations on Friday in response to the piece. These boiled down to the argument that as a Social Media evangelist I should have welcomed the initiative, however imperfect, as a step in the right direction. Sorry to disappoint.

I have come to a view, which has hardened in recent months, that high profile examples of digital tokenism such as Ask the PM, are actually devaluing the real potential of Social Media. They are feeding a scepticism which makes the pioneering work we are doing unnecessarily difficult.

A couple of years ago, the medium was the message when it came to organisations adopting Social Media. This was typified by those endless stories in the national press, with leading youth brands like IBM and PA Consulting opening virtual offices in Second Life. Today, the filter I always use when assessing Social Media initiatives, my own and others, is whether the communication objectives and creative approach are actually more interesting than the digital platform(s) being utilised.

Using this filter, Ask the PM just doesn’t cut it. It’s not a genuine attempt by Gordon Brown to reconnect and really start listening to a disillusioned electorate. His comment at the end of his welcome video, where he states, “I’ll be back to talk to you at some point…” betrays a total lack of understanding of the two-way conversation that Social Media enables. You may as well write a letter and stick it in the post - you’d probably get a quicker reply!

In my mind the YouTube channel, the Twitter feed and whatever online gimmick is announced next, is primarily about metaphor, the hope that some shiny digital zeitgeist will rub off on an increasingly lacklustre Prime Minister. Equally, it’s a clumsy attempt by the new Downing St communications team to ‘get with it’ and reduce the gaping void between their digital approach and that of the Opposition.

As I have been saying a lot this week in new business pitches, Social Media is not a magic wand. Ultimately whatever Stephen Carter and his team try to do, Gordon Brown at heart, will always remain an analogue politician in a digital age.