under strict embargo

Are the digerati and those inside the Westminster bubble unduly obsessed by the role that social media will play in the forthcoming UK General Election? The answer from Weber Shandwick CEO and former Labour spinmeister Colin Byrne appears to be ‘yes’. Weber released the findings of a consumer survey to the Guardian over the weekend which show that when it comes to influencing voting intention, traditional media reigns supreme.

According to 1,000 respondents, national and regional print and broadcast media were selected as influencing them most by 59% of people, political advertising and party broadcasts scored 10% and social media sites scored just 5%. While few would dispute the role that the traditional media plays in influencing voters, Byrne is perhaps rather myopic in advocating that we should all now agree with Hazel Blears’ dictum of “YouTube if you want to”.

Integration

The fundamental truth which the conclusion drawn from this research overlooks is that traditional media doesn’t sit in a silo from social media, nor political advertising for that matter. While mainstream channels may be where most news and views are consumed, they are no longer where content is exclusively being created and shared. Byrne cites the McBride affair in his Guardian letter, a perfect example of a story broken on a political blog which then received substantial and sustained mainstream media coverage.  Look at how the smears over the PM’s mental state in the blogosphere influenced Andrew Marr to ask Gordon Brown ‘that question’. Or how about the ‘We love the NHS’ campaign which similarly made the jump from online to offline. Are we really to believe that none of these stories have had an “impact on voters” and that their digital roots are of little importance as Byrne seems to infer?

Amplification

Let’s take a look at political advertising, the mainstream media and the internet.  On Friday the Labour Party used that well worn tactic of ‘leaking’ details of an upcoming advertising campaign to the press. The images from their ‘Jedward’ billboard graced the pages of the Mirror and were quickly followed-up with a woeful YouTube attack-ad on the same X Factor theme.  It was pretty obvious that the offline campaign would never see the light of day – Labour doesn’t have the money to buy the advertising space for one thing. The aim of this exercise was clear - use the images and YouTube video to generate coverage and awareness via the mainstream press.

As a strategy it was one which has been repeatedly shown to work. Unlike Labour’s ‘Davorge’ video below, the Obama campaign and its supporters were able to create quality content such as the Will.i.am ‘Yes We Can’ music video or the Hillary 1984 Apple parody. Both were watched directly by millions of voters, but this was dwarfed by the millions who read about them or watched them via the mainstream media.

In the forthcoming election, neither party will be limiting themselves to expensive outdoor or print advertising campaigns. Political advertising is the form of online video and virals which can reach people directly, but which are also powerful enough to generate mainstream media attention will be key. It was very telling that the very first thing that ConservativeHome did after being bought was to advertise for a team of online video producers.

Past performance is no guide to the future….

In many ways the fact that Weber’s survey shows social media so low down the scale in shaping how people will vote is hardly surprising.  I’m sure if you’d have got a similar response if you’d asked people about the influence of TV advertising on their shopping habits in 1956 before most brands started using the medium.  While our friends in the US have had two electoral cycles where digital has played a major role, for UK voters the next election will be the first. While consumption may not always necessarily correlate with influence, the statistics from the Obama election make for interesting reading.

According to research from Pew Internet, the 2008 campaign saw 45% of US internet users watching political videos online, one in five creating original content online via blogs, forums and social networks and a third of internet users forwarded information about the campaign to friends and family. I can see few reasons why UK voters would not be equally open to consuming and sharing political content in this way.

If Weber Shandwick’s survey results tell us anything, it’s that there is a huge potential for digital to play a bigger role in the UK as part of an integrated political campaign strategy. Mainstream media will be a top priority but as the few examples above illustrate, digital can’t be divorced from the coverage that voters could read in The Sun or watch on News at Ten. While ordinary consumers may be unfamiliar with the intricacies of how different media channels fit together, those of us in the PR industry should know better.

Perhaps there was an irresistible temptation to use these results to offer a few crumbs of comfort to political parties who are lagging behind online? I don’t know, but it would be wrongheaded for any political party to use these statistics as an excuse to rest on their laurels.

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Technorati Tags: Andrew Marr, Colin Byrne, Hazel Blears, Jedward, Labour Party, McBride, Pew Interent, Politics, UK General Election 2010, Weber Shandwick

The first afternoon of the Labour Party conference has been themed Operation Fightback. A succession of senior figures have been delivering their rallying calls, including Douglas Alexandar, outlining the party’s election campaign strategy. His pep talk climaxed with the (re)announcement of a national phonebank and an online network for party members. I’m sure news of these developments will have re-energised Labour campaigners up and down the country and will result in some sleepless nights over at CCHQ.

Despite the recent appointment of Kerry McCarthy MP as Labour’s so called Twitter Tsar, the accepted wisdom is that Labour will be unable to catch-up with the Tories without some hard-hitting external expertise.  Especially if Labour really believe their own spin, that they’re doing better than the opposition online.

Blue State Digital, the firm which led Obama’s online campaigning was widely believed to be the agency that Labour would turn to.  However, in a recent interview with PR Week Thomas Gensemer, founder of BSD criticised Labour’s online operation to date – leading many to assume that BSD would not be working with Labour after all. That said, this rather tetchy and fawning blog post from Gensemer responding to PR Week’s coverage perhaps indicates that discussions with Labour may still be ongoing?

It appears to be an issue not so much of Labour being unwilling to work with BSD, but being unable to afford them – for the moment at least.  With so many ex-Labour HQ staffers now working at BSD’s UK operation, it seems unlikely that some at least will not be seconded back to help with the party’s election effort.

All this contrasts heavily with some big investments by the Tories in the past seven days. Firstly we had the announcement that an external agency has been retained to handle online advertising and web development for the party in the run up to the election.  The deal includes building a series of online fundraising tools set be unveiled at the Conservative Party conference next week.

Secondly, the major seven-figure investment by Conservative Party deputy chair Lord Ashcroft in ConservativeHome has opened up a major second front in the Tories online election campaign. The announcement that the site is looking to recruit a team to develop video ads and virals is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

Ray Collins, Labour’s general secretary claimed in his conference speech today that, “We may be outspent by the Tories, but we will never be outgunned” – based on what we’ve see so far, this seems like wishful thinking.

Technorati Tags: Blue State Digital, Conservative Party, Kerry McCarthy, Labour Conference 09, Labour Party, Operation Fightback

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.

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

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.

Firstly I’d like to say thanks for the comments in response to my last post on Phorm. It’s clear there is a growing sense of public anger which is being articulated through a motivated and well organised grass roots campaign. From reading the 36 comments so far, I don’t think the same can be said of Phorm’s PR effort to date.

I think there are a couple of immediate observations that will be of interest for those of us working in Social Media relations. Firstly the tactic of instant-rebuttal, responding to every single negative blog post or forum posting written about Phorm has done little to endear the company to its critics. As Paul C puts it,”What an utter PR disaster. Trying to slashdot their way out of a storm, not realising how cynical an exercise responding to individual blog posts will appear to the community.”

There is also the perception that rule No.1 of blogger relations - be authentic and honest – has been broken. The backlash against Phorm began in the tech community in response to articles on sites like The Register. This prompted a series of postings, credited to the ‘Phorm Tech Team’ which were not seen by these communities as coming from genuine techies. As M. Bishop puts it, “In a dissertation about how not to run a PR campaign, pretending to be a tech bod from a company and engaging in a technical debate with experts, only to eventually have to admit you really aren’t a tech bod, or even a Phorm employee at all, because you got so out of your depth, is probably pretty high on the list of don’t do’s.”

If Phorm wanted to engage in a ‘Geek vs. Geek’ debate, why didn’t they get the CTO or a named member of the Tech team to respond? As the ‘Phorm Comms Team’ point out in a comment today, these spokespeople were used in ‘traditional’ press interviews but apparently not at the start when engaging with forums and blogs. I think these initial mistakes and the approach of hiding behind ‘Tech Team’ or ‘Comms Team’ umbrellas only reinforced the growing lack of trust in Phorm and did little to emphasise the key message that company had “nothing to hide”.

Taking a step back, the emphasis being placed on the technology powering Phorm is symptomatic in my mind of the fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of both Phorm’s proposition and its wider communication strategy. Phorm sees itself as offering a B2B product when in fact its service is profoundly B2B2C. There seems to have been a scenario underpinning the business model where ISPs around the world would quietly adopt the service with the hope that the majority of their customers wouldn’t care or notice, everyone would be happy and could rake in their share of the advertising cash. That was never going to happen.

The issue isn’t about Phorm’s technology and the long list of safeguards that are in place. It’s about the benefits of the service to the ultimate end customer, ordinary internet users. Basically ‘better targeted online advertising’ is not a benefit to the average person, most would be happier if there was no online advertising at all. It certainly isn’t such a life changing development that consumers would be willing to enter into a Faustian pact for it, through giving up their internet privacy (real or perceived). Phorm seem to have understood this in part, hence the red-herring focus on phishing.

It’s basically all about perception. I have no reason to doubt Phorm’s privacy claims, and having worked in online technology for a decade I can understand their technology arguments, but the average internet user isn’t going to give a toss about the intricacies of IP address tracking, selective cookies etc. They will simply distill everything down to the Costs vs. Benefits proposition being presented by Phorm and their ISP and most will say NO.

CEO web chats, sharing the code, having one to one meetings with Ged Carroll and other members of the great and the good or (ahem) re-educating Tim Berners-Lee on internet technology is going to do nothing to address the fundamental scepticism of mainstream public opinion.

If Phorm were hoping that the ISPs would take on that mammoth task for them, they are delusional. So far BT has arguably not confronted the issue head on, presenting the service which its is calling BT Webwise, with a heavy emphasis on online fraud prevention. BT is currently planning to make the system opt-out, whereas Talk Talk has succumbed to customer pressure and has been forced to make the service opt-in. Online advertising is a numbers game and the Phorm business model is not based on millions being able to escape the system.

The real PR danger now shifts to the ISPs. For players like Virgin Media the problems could be acute, with disgruntled internet users not only shifting their monthly broadband subscriptions to other providers but their TV and telephone subs as well. In an increasingly commoditised broadband market, being able to claim that we don’t invade your internet privacy and sell your personal data on to advertisers would be a rather strong USP. I can see why Sky and Tiscali have had the foresight to keep their hands clean at this point.

How many different PR outfits should you hire in crisis? Well the answer seems to be three if you are Phorm, which according to PR Week has taken on Freuds, Citigate Dewe Rogerson and crisis guru John Stonborough to rescue its business.

For those of you who have missed the wave of negative coverage, Phorm is essentially an ad-serving company which has signed deals with leading ISPs including BT, Virgin and Talk Talk which allows it to track the browsing behaviour of customers and display better targeted ads - with the ISPs collecting a share of the ad revenues.

The current national media storm was triggered by claims from Cambridge academics at the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), that Phorm’s activities are ‘illegal’, as gathering information about site visits without a user’s consent could be considered to be in contravention of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which prevents unlawful interception of communication. The FIPR has called on the Information Commissioner to investigate and his report on the service is due in the next few weeks. Phorm’s immediate fate rests on his verdict.

Hindsight in PR as in everything else is a wonderful thing. Given the scale of the controversy surrounding Facebook’s introduction of its Beacon platform last year, it was however entirely predictable that similar concerns about Phorm would be vigorously voiced by consumers and privacy groups in the UK. Good crisis comms is as much about prevention as effective cure - having the Information Commissioner on side before going public seems like such a no brainer. It would have given the service legal credibility and helped reassure the ISPs, publishers and advertisers on which the service depends.

Ultimately though Phorm’s fate rests with the ordinary consumer, the internet users clicking those banner ads. Taking the national ID card debate as an example, I doubt there is any amount of official reassurance from government and regulators which could overturn the deep scepticism of the British public towards having their online behaviour tracked in such an all pervasive way. The near 8,000 strong Downing St petition calling on Phorm to be shut down and the growing volume of customer complaints directed to the ISPs supporting the service could just be the start.

Let’s see what Freuds, Citigate and Stonborough can do…