under strict embargo

Nobody would accuse me of underestimating the importance of online media and digital platforms, but I would never be naive enough to assume that when it comes to political campaigning that national newspapers no longer matter. This seems to be the agreed attack line adopted this morning by Labour.

Everyone from Lord Mandelson to Charlie Wheelan to the Guardian’s Michael White have been on the TV and radio claiming that The Sun’s explosive decision to back the Tories doesn’t matter in today’s internet age with falling newspaper circulations.  Even Alistair Campbell who likes to give the pretence of now being a bit more objective, is trying to convice us on his blog that the Sun’s defection could actually be a good thing.

Labour’s Kerry McCarthy showed the naivety of this response with her ridiculous tweet last night that “Labour doesn’t need The Sun. We’ve got Twitter.” As wonderful as Twitter is, it won’t have been read by close to 8 million people this morning, alongside a full-colour pull-out poster helpfully detailing Labour’s failures.

There were some interesting sentiment analysis from the guys at Tweetminster yesterday in response to Brown’s speech, which classed 53% of tweets as positive with 21% negative. The analysis is great to see but I don’t think it tells us anything more than lots of delegates at the Labour Party conference and supporters were on Twitter yesterday afternoon.  I don’t think Twitter is significantly Labour supporting, so again McCarthy’s claim of ownership over the platform for Labour is doubly misguided.

The pure online impact of The Sun shouldn’t be underestimated either. This morning it’s launched a Google Adwords campaign (see below) bidding on keywords including ‘Gordon Brown’ and ‘Labour Party’ which state  “The Sun endorses The Conservative Party for the next general election.” The paper’s FeelingBlue campaign has already translated onto Twitter within hours.

Ultimately lets not forget the 23 million plus unique users per month to Sun Online. Beyond pure news coverage The Sun’s website will be a key battle ground for seeding video attack ads and virals during the election campaign - following today’s switch it’s a battle which Labour’s online team will struggle to win.

Technorati Tags: Gordon Brown, Kerry McCarthy, Labour Party, The Sun, Tweetminister, Twitter

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