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.
.
.
The other question is whether people’s own assessments of what influences them is accurate.
The classic is negative campaigning. People say they don’t like it, don’t like admitting to being influenced it - but it works.
One of the benefits of social media, for example, is the ability to humanise a politician so that people react to them as a human being rather than as ‘one of those corrupt politicians’. That’s a fairly subtle influence even thought it is also powerful. I wonder how good people are at assessing the impact on themselves of such influences, especially as in part it means admitting you were in your previous views?
Good point, another reason why this research is of very limited value. Do people really compartmentalise political messages by channel and then apply some scale to which ones to accord with the most influence?
[...] a fantastic article about the influence of social media on elections on Under Strict Embargo. In it he disputes Weber Shandwick’s (leading PR agency) assertion that social media will [...]
Another connection between social and traditional media that you missed - the act of “sharing”. If I see a story in the Times, I might glance at it and give it no more thought.
But if a friend of mine - IE, someone I consider trustworthy - “shares” that same story through facebook or twitter, then I will read the article online in a different light. The fact that it was shared by a friend adds a layer of commentary which makes it more relevant to my life, and thus, more likely to be influenced by it.
In that scenario, which media format is really influencing me: the traditional news story, or the social networking site that brought it to my attention?
Hi Billy, thanks for your comment and you’re absolutely right about the power of word-of-mouth and the viral nature of strong social media content.