Cameron's slip means the end for pre-records

The majority of interviews for TV and radio don't happen live, but are pre-recorded. This works well for everyone - spokespeople get to do the interview at a time and place to suit them and broadcasters can line these set pieces up in advance and get content for stories in the bag.

The other benefit for PRs is that it allows us to re-assure nervous spokespeople with the line 'don't worry it's a pre-record'. The belief being that you can ask for it to be RE-recorded if it doesn't go well (or you forget a key message). This also does mean that the interview will look better when transmitted.

Of course, in this social media age and with the volatile political climate, perhaps the Tory spin doctors should have used the adage 'there's no such thing as off the record' rather than the 'don't worry, it's pre-record' line.

Yesterday we learnt that the age of the pre-record is over. And another old PR trick bites the dust. Sadly for David Cameron, he learnt this the hard way. For someone who prides himself on his media interview skills it really is awful...



Actually maybe the word 'slip' in the headline is being a bit generous...!

Education debate

As PR moves ever faster into the social media realm, it's been interesting to be part of the launch of the first election broadcast generated entirely by the public this week.

Not just this, but it's also been a massive learning pulling together a broadcast itself - for example I had no idea how long a second really was when on screen!  The results are below:


And you can have your say by debating the contents with education guru Mike Tomlinson on Monday:

Mydavidcameron more popular than leading charities

In a pretty rare, but welcome, move, mydavidcameron.com has taken to publishing web traffic to their site on a seemingly regular basis.

The latest results show site traffic of 250k in six weeks - more than double what the country's leading charities (such as British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK) will have generated despite all of their paid for advertising.

While this is a fair bit short of the likely awareness of official Tory posters (although any suggestions on how this web traffic may corresponds to actual awareness would be welcome) it's an impressive effort for the team - and for demonstrating the power of social media.

 

Twanscript: Royals and the media

Twanscript (is that a permissible Twitter-word?) from the Republic debate The Royal PR Machine with Richard Palmer, royal correspondent of the Daily Express and Emily Hill, Evening Standard journalist and Guardian commentator.

Here are the pick of the comments from the debate (all have been shortened due to Twitter use and are comments made at the debate by others).  For a full list of the Tweets I sent, search #royalmedia.

'Concerted campaign to prevent taking pictures of royals' - eve standard
 
Would people be so keen on royals if heir was a cross between Charles + Camilla?

Queen’s press officer known as Samantha the panther

Express corr never been allowed direct conversation with Charles

My right to know stops where the detectives we pay for's knowledge stops - Express

Press association under pressure corporately to toe royal line

Charles will look to set up Kings Conferences on issues

Royals using courts to deny right to know, or even release pics without approval

Abuse of civil lists makes mp expenses look like peanuts. Freedom of Information Act requests denied

9 times out of 10 royals take train to somewhere and fly back

Conservative and Labour dodging discussion on civil list

Charles will talk to his plants but won't dig them up - Emily Hill

Royals using Kate Middleton to take legal action to see how far they can push the courts
 
That it's a taboo to criticise the queen is a disgrace - @RepublicStaff

And the final subject - how advertisers would react to an anti-monarchy media will be a future blog!

Mydavidcameron vs the real thing... who wins?

The recent media storm around Tory campaign funding jogged a promise I made to try and answer a big question about the importance of social media on the outcome of the election.

Just how effective will a poster campaign be for the Tories? And is it possible that more people would see Labour’s spoofs of Tory posters than the real thing?

The news media traditionally cast outdoor advertising as almost the be all and end all of campaigns - and true enough Saatchi’s ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ campaign from the late 70s is memorable and in 1997, Labour’s attack ads on the Tories generated 60% awareness.

But how many people can the Tories claim to have reached with the latest wave of posters - and how many of those reached will be positively influenced by the posters?

Effectiveness figures on marketing campaigns are a closely guarded secret, but using industry averages we can start to come to an answer.

These industry figures suggest a 29% recall of a poster / billboard campaign (CASI via www.posterscope.co.uk). BUT given the sites chosen for political campaigns tend to be those that are more visible - but which only deliver exposure of message for 3 seconds, the recall decreases dramatically to just over 4% (based on calculations made using stats from the 2007 paper “Total Recall: advertising exposure and engagement.”)

And there is another downside to such short-term recall - the actual impact of these sites could be reduced further as 29% who saw posters for 3 seconds said it had no effect on them.

This means a real impact on just 1.2% of the population - or under three quarters of a million people.

So – to the second part of the original challenge: how many people might have seen the unofficial Labour spoof campaigns?

The popularisation of www.mydavidcameron.com, was led by Labour supporters on Twitter which has 10,355 followers. On average each Twitter user has 300 followers according to Hubspot.  Which means that if everyone of the followers Tweeted out a spoof poster it could reach 3,106,500 people.  Even allowing for a lower average Twitter following of 100 (which Hubspot seems to advocate doing), a concerted campaign by all members could reach more people than a poster campaign.

The problem with Twitter, of course, is that people tend to only follow those in similar 'crowds' so such a campaign will not reach the general public or people who don't share their views (apart from via resulting media coverage of mydavidcameron).  So instead perhaps we should look at Facebook as a medium / distribution tool.  Here Labour have 5,834 fans, but with each Facebook fan having an average of 130 friends - often established through more natural networks - a single post by all members could reach 758,420 people.

There are obviously other factors which should be taken into account, for example, not all fans/followers will join in a campaign and the coverage of the original Tory posters in the mainstream news media adds to their reach.  But hopefully this short analysis gives some backing to the argument that social media networks will be vital in the 2010 election – with the potential to generate more awareness in a few clicks by followers than would be achieved through an expensive poster campaign.

And it is also possible, that more people saw a mydavidcameron spoof than the original Conservative poster.