How the media should vote tomorrow

What a mixed bag for the media this election has been.

It's demonstrated dramatically how style can triumph over substance, how poor presentation can lose audiences and how the most persuasive messages are simple and positive.  It’s also shown that social media may not be able to deliver knock out blows, but is vital in creating advocacy for campaigns.

All good news for us marketing disciples.

But less documented is the damaging impact a Conservative government could have on the industry itself.

Let me explain…

It was to be the social media election.  We would all decide our votes based on Twitter, Facebook and maybe even Foursquare.

Well not quite but it has been influential.

Social media has been more of a bystander and commentator rather than leaders of the news or advocacy, but it hasn’t lost its purpose. 

DemocracyUK, the Slapometer and even #labourcakepuns have all helped engage voters and the social media sphere has done what it does best – enabling people to have conversations.

So while it will be interesting to see the outcome of planned research into how social media (or rather what you and your friends discussed on social media) influenced voting behaviour, I personally hope that the more campaigning side to social media returns.

In fact, there have been a couple of examples of where social media has (at least tried to) set the agenda. Kerry4MP’s blunder and #phlipastroud have been notable examples.

Which brings me onto how I’ll be voting…

As a colleague pointed out, one example doesn’t make a whole party nasty.  But, sadly for every Margot James, there is a Philipa Stroud.

Similarly, for every Dianne Abbot or Tom Watson there is a Bob Blizzard (i.e. an MP who will trudge through the voting lobbies on behalf of his party). And for every hard working Lib Dem, like Lynne Featherstone, there is a quirky colleague – Lembit Opik or Anna Arrowsmith for your MP anyone?!

There is no substitute for a good local candidate.  But, in many, many constituencies less than 50 per cent of the electorate vote for the winning candidate.  This is unfair. And the expenses scandal has shown just what our politicians can get up to if not held in check – and simply saying people have a right to recall MPs just isn’t enough.

Simply put, the politicians are more accountable if every vote counts. And the best way to ensure better, more accountable candidates is voting reform.  The list system is not the way forward, as we do need to protect the need for local candidates linked to their constituency – which makes me favour single transferable vote or alternative vote systems.

And the best way to guarantee this reform is a hung parliament.

I don’t buy the fact that Britain’s economy will suffer with a hung Parliament – credit agencies don’t have a problem with it, nor does the City and, according to the FT, neither should it impact on sterling.  In fact, people now seem to be lining up to say it will benefit everyone from young people to the Scots.

So my decision comes down to which sort of coalition government would I prefer? And let’s be clear, a deal struck between parties to ensure a stable coalition will need to happen – a minority government would not be a good idea.

Well, my own fears about what the Tories would do for gay rights and civil liberties aside, the decision has to be fundamentally economic.  How far do I want the cuts to go – and when?

Which brings me back to marketing.

Set aside the disturbing impact that immediate, savage spending cuts will make on the lives of everyday families, not to mention the deflating impact on our economy, the marketing sector – now a significant slice of UK plc – is simply not ready to see cuts of 40 per cent in public sector spending on marketing and communications in 2010/20111. 

When the Conservatives make fun of government waste, they include marketing budgets in this.

The Conservative pledge is to reduce Central Office of Information spending alone back to 1997 levels.  While marketing agencies need to continue to make strides in evaluating their work, proving the impact of their campaigns and reducing their reliance on the public sector overall, the replacement for his government spending from the private sector isn’t there yet.

The reality of implementing such cuts is that they are applied with a blanket approach – every £1 of marketing spend should be reduced to 60p (and just because one segment of the industry says it is more effective than another won’t mean it is safe).

This won’t just affect agencies and mean job losses in public sector communications departments, but it will have an impact on the wider media industry. 

With an annual budget of £208m spent on advertising space by the government, cutting this to £124m will leave huge holes in newspaper, online and TV advertising schedules – and the latest Institute of Practitioners in Advertising report showed a very mixed picture for the industry in 2010, with almost as many marketing directors saying they will cut budgets as will increase them. 

With the majority of any increased advertising spend likely to be online and a reapportioning of budgets away from TV and print, it is ironic that those media outlets who celebrate cutting waste are in many ways turkeys voting for Christmas.

The private sector just isn’t ready to fill the hole which would be left by 40% cuts in public sector spending this year – the cuts need to be made, but need to be less severe and less immediate than the Conservatives propose.

It really is the economy that matters – the country can’t take a chance with the recovery and I can’t vote for cuts now.

Vote Labour (or Lib Dem depending where you live).

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 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.

A chance for the obesity makers to repent

The UK's biggest advertising spender, the Central Office of Information, has started a process to find the biggest brains in behavioural change to join a new panel of experts who will advise the Government on how to get people to act differently.

Rather than taking us on a further step towards an Orwellian distopia, this is actually a pretty sensible idea.

Delivering real and sustained positive behavioural change is the holy-grail of marketing and over the last few years PR campaigns have demonstrated how effective they can be at helping deliver this change.

The public sector often leads the way in developing new theories and techniques for influencing and effecting behavioural change so it's welcome that the COI is now looking to bring the best academics and practitioners together to help inform and improve future campaigns.

But as I commented in PR Week, the biggest challenge for this panel will be to overcome the limits of behavioural models - which are deliberately kept simple and theoretical. Therefore, it's crucial that the roster has fair representation from senior professionals who represent current practitioners and that it also recognises wider, non public sector, insight and expertise.

After all, the peddlers of 'fast moving consumer goods' (FMCG brands in marketing speak, or selling sweets to kiddies in common parlance) have caused obseity rates to rocket - let's use their expertise to help us address these trends!

Papers and the BNP

Earlier today journalism.co.uk highlighted that some regional press are now accepting advertising from the fascist BNP. It seems just to be Newsquest's online titles, but as Jon Slattery points out, given they have bans on adult sex advertising, you'd think they'd take a moral stand on this!

So earlier on I suggested a boycott of Newsquest titles... if people threaten to boycott all their titles maybe the management will take notice.

Shame I don't have any control over ad budgets, but it will be interesting to see if brands look to pull other advertising like they did to Facebook a few months ago.