With the well documented demise of traditional media such as TV, press and outdoor, and the increasing emphasis on social/online media plus the famous success of Barrack Obama’s social media campaign in the US Presidential election, surely it was on the cards for the UK to follow suit and for us to expect a seismic shift in marketing activity via the web for the 2010 general election.
There have been a few reasonable attempts by the various political parties to create some meaningful online activity in a bid to reach young voters, including discussion forums, Facebook fan pages, Sam Cam video diaries and well meaning video appeals via YouTube for the young generation to vote – see this example from Darwen Council called Save the Day. But to be honest, for the average young person or avid user of social media, this content is fairly boring and irrelevant, and has probably been ignored for the most part. For example, the ‘Save the Day’ video, though nicely shot, has had 486 views to date!
I am sure a lot of the candidates (or more likely their assistants!) have jumped on the Twitter band wagon and have been tweeting away furiously. However, potentially powerful weapons in inexperienced hands have a tendency to back fire – remember the recent case of the Bristol candidate who now faces possible prosecution for illegally tweeting out the results of postal votes to the public causing no end of negative PR.
Back in the offline world, outdoor activity has as usual been very prominent during the election; it gets to a wide cross-section of the population quickly, and with its ‘par for the course’ negative and antagonising tactics – e.g. using the photo of Gordon and his awful smile – it has been relatively successful in amplifying its effectiveness with loads of extra column inches.
However, the real game changer for me in the 2010 election has come from the good old world of TV – in the form of the three party leader TV debates which seem to have captured the imagination of the public with large audiences and endless additional debate and coverage. This clearly highlights that it is content that is king, and not the new forms of media.
It was refreshing to see the three leaders up there in the debates with an equal billing and opportunity to put their cases across. (Come on, be honest – who knew much about Nick Clegg beforehand?) It gave us an opportunity to see the leaders in a much clearer light, get to know them and their policies – for better or worse – whatever your political persuasion. It added some excitement and drama when they squared up to each other and it generated further debate in the wider community and hopefully stimulated a few otherwise apathetic voters to join in. What’s more, this TV generated content has been cut up, dissected and disseminated widely across the digital landscape in the form of YouTube videos and on discussion forums – so in essence, TV derived content has been the driving force for the majority of the effective online activity.
So back to the question: has this been an online election? On reflection, I would say not – but who knows what the future holds for our next election?
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