English eCampaigning Archive

Just surfing the blogosphere - and caught two posts: one at Simon Says discussing a new article talking about the Tories (the Conservatives) getting ready to launch a Social Networking Site to
“allow users to engage with - and help develop -Tory policies on issues such as poverty, climate change and volunteering.”. The second, by David Wilcox, talks about the
potential for another “digital divide“:

This does, of course, raise yet another form of the digital divide. If social networking is a sphere of influence those with networking skills may become disproportionately influential. Of course, it was always thus … just the nature of the clubs is changing.

David brings up the need for the connection between offline and online - which is always the challenge about any networking or organizational development. Sticking in one medium will limit the pool of involvement - better to extend across the space and find involvement tactics that involve and incorporate in multiple ways.

Back when BBSes were the vogue thing - there was the Rising Sun where I used to socialize on a very small Apple II+ whih had an Apple Cat modem. The best thing about the community was not the 300 baud speed printing of the content on the screen, but the monthly breakfasts with other members of the BBS cemented the relationships between us. It is the reinforcement of the interactions that will help politics develop the online outreach beyond the assumed myopic view of online community members.

Funny thing, 100M+ MySpace members, close to 1M SecondLifers and the explosion of social networking sites is a ripe space to grow involvement. I think that the Tories action, while interesting, is again trying to create another space that they control. Better to go where the voters are (like, say, SoFlow or A Small World) and build from within, rather than from the outside. Use the community within and develop the community - and then grow the space for the community to be involved in. Do you need features that are not already available in the sites today? And if they are not there, could you find ways of meeting the needs without software development (like a forum or a mailing list)? Give it some thought and see what can happen.

Tags: English eCampaigning, political social networking, Tories

Last election in England, the three parties tried to use the lessons from the US in their communications. All of the parties revamped their websites, began an email communications campaign, and leveraged databases (to various effects) to get-out-the-vote. A year later, what has changed?

To be truthful, the reason for this post comes more from cleaning my Yahoo! account than a recent article in the NYTimes (”Politics Faces Sweeping Change via the Web“). As I went to clean out the thousands of emails, I took a glance at my emails from the three parties. And what I found is summed up as this: nothing has changed from a year ago. Well, almost nothing.

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This morning, Matt Carter sent the last email from the Labour Party 2005 campaign - thanking me for my support and hard work this campaign. And, as suggested, the Labour Party sent two emails on Election Day - one from my good friend John O’Farrell and one from John Prescott. Again, it was focused on the goal - get-out-the-vote. The question is - did it work?

How do you measure the effectiveness of a campaign
Funny thing, the Internet. In the Valley, the world revolves around the perception that the Internet is a separate world (World Wide Web, blogosphere) - having its own dimensions, rules, mores and constraints.

In dotcom version 1, the understanding of the offline/online mix was torn between total takeover (read: The Internet will completely destroy the offline world with efficiencies not possible in the physical realm) to physical redemption (offline brands takeover online successes) to successful synergies (read: Dell, Walmart, online banking, etcera). But politics - this is another effort. This is an effort of brand persuasion that, based on the actions of the “company” over the past period, you have to overcome perception with messaging either positive for the company or negative for the competitor. Im political terms, this is called increasing the positives, or increasing the negatives.

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After watching the campaign emails all this time, I now am intrigued to post that the campaigns have steps up their efforts - at least from the Internet point-of-view.

Labour - Tony and Gordon communicate
As anticipated, the Labour Party sent out two emails - one for fundraising on Tuesday (since Monday was a Bank Holiday) and today, a communique from the two men who run 10 Downing Street. Interestingly enough, the campaign seems to be following the wisdom of the consultants - if the populace thinks that Labour will win comfortably, their supporters will not consider the vote important and ignore the polls. So, while staying clear of communicating action statements (”Labour will…”), they are using the threat of a Conservative government if people do not come out to the polls. Interestingly enough, Labour hit upon the true nature of the email campaign methodology once again - communicate to the audience (Labour supporters) a problem (potential voter apathy), outlined the potential bad outcome (Conservative government) and how the reader could help (get to the polls). All designed to play to the individuals who have been reading the emails - and to get them to act.

Conservatives - someone learned KISS
After watching the continuation of the Conservative email campaign, this afternoon (2pm GMT) the Conservatives sent one of their best emails - from Michael Howard with a more compelling subject line and using video communicating the tactics of Labour (using the fear of a Conservative government) versus the party of action which the Conservatives are positioning themselves. Attached to these video links are a eight-point plan as to what a Conservative government would do in power in the first two years. Keeping it Simple and easy to read.

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Funny - after the Presidential election in the US - I was expecting a very spirited online campaign effort in the UK - especially with a six-month build-up to the anticipated May 5th election date. And, as an interested party and a spectator - I have been watching the websites and on the three major party websites for the past month - ever since PM Blair dissolved Parliament. So, have the parties and campaigns leveraged the vantage point from across the pond to communicate to the masses via the Internet?

Basic Principles
Initially, the question is what does the campaign wish to accomplish with the Internet effort? In the Dean Campaign, it was (my assumption) to build the mailing list and then drive actions by the supporters to help the campaign in various forms (volunteer, donate, gather supporters). In the Kerry campaign, we refined this act by building the list, requesting support (first in terms of fundraising and then in terms of house parties and volunteer efforts). MoveOn.org originated a lot of these concepts - derived directly from fundraising tactics - and took what many of the dotcommers said about the Internet: it is a way to get a distributed group of people to act in a unifed fashion. The best analogy I can derive is watching a swarm of bees - each individual one is moving in its own fashion, but the group looks like they are moving in a unified direction. By focusing on the desire of the group, the swarm can be generally lead in a direction that is along the gradient of their desire.

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