Archive for the 'politics' Category

Kissing the Virtual Baby #4 - Political satire is alive and well

Published by andym November 14th, 2007 in Australia, Strategy and politics. 0 Comments

It’s just over a week to go until the election, but it’s felt like an eternity. I’m English, I can’t vote and I’ve never been particularly interested in politics. It is my second election since I arrived in Australia and to be honest the first one passed me by a bit. However, this time around things are different. Sure the policy pledges and themes are all pretty much the same and the party leaders are visiting just as many hospital wards, but this time every move they make is being scrutinized by a growing throng of online political satirists. Move over The Chaser, there’s a new kid on the block. Political humour is alive and well, and living in YouTube.

So in this week’s column I thought I would try and bring you the best (or is it the worst) of what’s out there. I appreciate that this is going to be hard if you’re reading this in print, but isn’t that the point? The medium has evolved from being flat and one dimensional to diverse and multidimensional. So hop online and check out some of these examples on either lab.netx.com.au or the B&T blog.

To make it easier I have categorised these light hearted shenanigans as follows:

The music videos

Sadly, we have not seen anything as in-your-face as Obama Girl –v- Giuliani Girl, but people have nevertheless gone to a lot of effort to mash up the exploits of Kevin and John through the magic of song. One of the best is the Kevin V Howard Rap with lines such as “Call me Kevin, cause I’ll rock you in ‘07. If we fizzle, take a snizzle, I’ll be back in ‘011.”

For some reason John Howard seems to come in for a lot more stick than Kevin Rudd, but I guess there is a rich seam of material to choose from after twelve years in power; twelve years which are summed up beautifully by the video “Bennelong Time Since I Rock and Rolled.” John Bonham would be turning in his grave.

The Ads

In this election campaign, both parties have exploited the benefits of the internet to deliver their message. They’re fast to market, topical and straight to the point. Who cares if they’re not as polished as they could be? The YouTube generation of today is less concerned about the aesthetic and more interested in the message. But if the political parties can pull these ads together overnight, then you can be confident that they can be parodied just as quickly and easily.

One of the main thrusts of the Coalition’s campaign has been focused on the fact that over 70% of the Labor front bench has been senior union officials. To takeoff such an ad has been the comic equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel and there are any number of great examples out there, but this one took my fancy highlighting the fact that “90% of the Liberal front bench will be rich old white guys.”

And in one of the strangest examples out there, who would have thought that Bob Dylan would manage to capitalize on the Australian General Election to publicise his new greatest hits album?

The games

Some of the best online campaigns in recent times have, of course, been games. Whether you are tossing penguins or trying to send Freddie flying, there is nothing like a cheeky viral game to beat the boredom in the run up to an election. And sure enough Kevin and John have not escaped the notice of the game developers.
Scumbag07 is probably one of the most popular at the moment. As the blurb that comes with the game says “As a tribute to the days when Aussie political debates were splattered with colourful epithets…choose your side and do what politicians do best ; drown your opponent in meaningless blubber!”
(http://www.subversivegames.com/portal/games/scumbag07/)

So as the politicians come out of the final corner and into the home straight of Australia’s first ‘online’ election, it is comforting to know that political humour is alive and well. You could even say that it has got a shot in the arm with the advent of YouTube and other social networks. But has all this online activity changed our perceptions of Political Brands? Or is this all just tantamount to less political science and more political satire?

Sadly, next week’s column will be the last in this series. Unless you wait eagerly at the newsagents on a Friday for B&T to arrive hot off the press, then the nation will have already decided and either Kevin or John will have been voted off. So the final edition of “Kissing the Virtual Baby” will be looking back at the campaigns of both parties and asking the question “who won the battle for the online generation?” And perhaps more importantly “was it worth it?”

Andym

Kissing the Vitual Baby #3 - It’s fast. It’s furious. It’s politics.

Published by andym November 9th, 2007 in Social Media, Australia, Strategy and politics. 0 Comments

Who’s winning the election so far? Which candidate is actually going to put his policies to practice if he’s elected Prime Minister of Australia? Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I’ll tell you what I do know – Indian is our current PM’s favourite style of cooking, the Shadow Deputy Leader Julia Gillard cannot spell ‘Woolloomooloo’ and I can single-handedly raise a party’s approval rating by digitally whacking the opposition with a wooden sledge hammer to win the 2007 federal election. I never thought politics could be this entertaining!

The YouTube election hammer
parts of picture under CC by Ben Harris-Roxas

But there is more to Politics 2.0 than a bit of light comic relief in an otherwise dull election campaign. There is a very real, very serious side to it, that both parties are learning very fast. Online is their new playing field and it’s an open space with little or no boundaries. In previous election campaigns the parties have had to put up with the limitations of traditional media channels. TV schedules and press campaigns were planned produced and locked away well in advance and campaigning could only be adjusted on the fly through hastily organized press conferences which would hopefully be covered by the TV stations in the evening news or in the morning paper. But now all that has changed.

In today’s election all of these long-established tools are still open to each party and they will certainly have their core campaign messages carefully pre-planned. However both Mr Rudd and Mr Howard have recently discovered, just as millions of consumers and brands have, that they don’t have to rely exclusively on the traditional media to get their message across. They can publish themselves. They are the media. The advent of electioneering on their own channel is enough to make any campaigning MP giddy and it’s created two significant election defining differences.

Firstly, it is immediate. No sooner had Peter Garrett burnt his bed by confessing that the Labour party would simply change their “me-too” policies once they were elected, the Coalition had posted a hastily pulled together video aiming to exploit the slip up. Who cares if the clip wasn’t beautifully polished and crafted. The aesthetic is not important. This is YouTube and it was a perfect example of how brands, including political parties, can use the immediacy of the channel to full effect. Kevin07 may have won the Facebook and MySpace fans with its trendy t-shirts and tagging, but Howard has surely caught the attention of YouTube users having already uploaded almost 30 videos whilst Rudd hasn’t even hit the double digits yet.

And secondly, by creating your own media channel you are in far more control of what you can say. Whereas previous election TVCs have often been forced to pull their punches and fall short of really saying what was on their minds, now these restrictions no longer apply. Just as brands use the online channel to post extended, often riskier versions of their adverts, so can the political parties can do the same. Just check out any of the Joe MacDonald or Kevin Reynolds videos on the Liberal’s YouTube site if you need convincing.

It’s fast. It’s furious. It’s politics 2007. The campaigning has evolved. And why are we so interested? Because the more it evolves, the more we’re involved. Behind each party there are teams of advisors, directing us towards propaganda like gossip, and we can’t get enough. It has only been a few weeks since both parties used their new online weapons in anger and it is true that you learn fast in the field of combat. Both parties may have started out a bit unsure of what all the fuss was about, but they are now as addicted as a new user on Facebook.

Cynics of these new channels and the role they play in politics will always point out the worthlessness of knowing that John likes to rustle up a prawn madras for Janette every now and then. But ask Brand Managers if they would like the use of a free media channel through which they could react in a heartbeat and say exactly what they wanted to say and I suspect they would they walk across hot coals to have it.

Other ueful blogs:

http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/onlinepolitics/
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/
http://www.pollbludger.com/

Other useful election resources:

http://www.theage.com.au/federal-election-2007/
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/
http://www.google.com.au/election2007/

Kissing the Virtual Baby # 2 - Politics 2.0

Published by andym November 5th, 2007 in Social Media, Strategy and politics. 0 Comments

There is an old saying: “A week is a long time in politics”. As Australia embarks on it’s first “online” election, this is especially true. At the time of the last election in 2004, broadband penetration was in single digits and social networking was confined to the pub. And even though broadband penetration is still woefully behind the rest of the developed world, every move Kevin and John make is examined, torn apart and laid bare by a ruthless online community of eager political satirists…you and I.

 

Welcome to Politics 2.0

 

Every brand is currently trying to understand and harness the power of the social networks. The successful brands are having conversations with their customers via community sites, review platforms, forums, video links, bulletin boards, mobile threads and podcasts. Political ‘brands’ can converse in these ways, too. Except they have to achieve success in a campaign that is tantamount to a 6 week sprint. Sure, they can’t drop their online guard once the election is over, but miss this opportunity now and there is no tomorrow. Both Howard and Rudd have taken the admirable and inevitable step of launching an online offensive. In particular the Kevin07 collection of sites has done a good job of trying to pull a lot of the conversation together under one banner. But how do they manage the conversations that are going on in the rest of the blogosphere?

None of these conversations is new. They have been going on for centuries, but the real difference is the accessibility of the information, the speed of comment, and the impact on the brand. You don’t have to wait a week for the Chaser to broadcast its latest stunt, or as it was in my younger days, eagerly staying up on a Sunday night for the UK’s Spitting Image.

The Chaser : Kevin’s facebook friends turn up at his home

It is instant and it rarely holds any prisoners. And it’s ability to influence voters should not be underestimated. And if you think this conversation is confined to political sites, think again. One of the most popular threads on the insightful www.beaututes.com is currently a lengthy debate about whether you hate or like Kevin Rudd.These external influencers can be lumped into three groups:

- The facts

- The fiction

- The fantasy

The facts

Never have we been able to get our hands on the hard nosed facts faster than we can today: from the up-to-the-minute dedicated election sites of any of the mainstream media, through to the clever little Google Trends application that tracks each candidates’ mentions in the media. The ability to stay informed, if you so desire, has never been more widespread.

The fiction

And let’s not forget the ‘fake’ sites. Just a quick scan of Facebook reveals that there were at least five facebook profiles of John Howard and four for Kevin Rudd. And then of course there are the numerous groups ranging from the popular “Kevin Rudd looks like ice-cream” to the more single minded “I hated Howard before it was trendy to do so.” I’m not too sure what we can read into that, but the fact that people have gone to a significant amount of effort surely says something.

The fantasy

Political satire is not new. In fact it is one of the richest seams of raw comedy material there is. And there are plenty of well known online examples such as www.crickey.com.au and www.thechaser.com.au. But for every “official” satirist there are 100 unofficial ones ranging from John Howard’s diary at www.johnhowardpm.blogeasy.com through to the more bizarre www.101usesforajohnhoward.com .

 

But what influence do these sites have on voters and election outcomes? Are they just a bit of fun or do they have the ability to affect the result. As with most humour there is a serious side to it. Whilst many of the online chats and debates can trivialize politics, they are more often than not based on some fact, or at least a perception of fact. Politics is a serious subject and one’s political tendencies are formed from a complicated mixture of rational facts. The explosion of the citizen journalism has got the potential to sway opinion, particularly amongst a certain demographic, based on a more emotive set of values and they should not be underestimated. In the current US primary elections the video of “I’ve got a crush on Obama” has been viewed over 100 million times around the world. Whether we like it or not that has got to influence some people. What role will the internet play in

Australia’s first online election? I’m not sure, but I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

 

Andym

 

Check out these other blogs on the subject:

http://www.freedomtodiffer.com/onlinepolitics/

http://www.tamaleaver.net/category/politics/

http://www.digitalministry.com.au/component/option,com_myblog/Itemid,142/show,403/

Kissing virtual babies - the Australian general election online

Published by andym October 26th, 2007 in Australia, Strategy and politics. 0 Comments

If the number of facebook friends you have is any indication of popularity then Kevin Rudd is going to win this election by a landslide. Whilst Kevin has reached the facebook limit of 5000 friends, with a further 5000 requests pending, John Howard has only just crept over the 1000 mark. If only it were that simple. Over the next few weeks we’re going to see our fair share of baby kissing in shopping malls, but during this election campaign there is a new voter to canvas. The online community; and their ability to influence should not be underestimated.

Kissing virtual babies
Parts of collage based on photos by PoppyW and Spike55151.

I think before I go too much further I should declare my lack of interest in this election. As a Pom who has not got round to sorting out his residency yet I don’t even get to vote. So I guess I’m in the perfect position to sit back with my laptop open and poke them both. Each week during this campaign I’ll be writing this column to bring you up to speed with interesting facts like whether George W is friends with John H, or whether Kevin is surrounded by a bunch of Zombies. But don’t just leave it up to me. Post your comments on anything that grabs your attention over the coming weeks. Funny or serious, official or unofficial it doesn’t matter, just post them here and let’s have our own election debate.

It is fair to say that up until a few months ago both parties were simply tinkering around the edge of the internet. Sure they had a variety of websites to their names, but they consisted of fairly dull news updates and the odd bit of political mud slinging. Neither party had embraced any of the ‘new, improved’ internet. But have a look now and it’s a very different story. Both parties have got a YouTube and MySpace page, and Mr Rudd has gone one further and created a facebook profile. A quick glance at John Howard’s facebook page suggests he also has taken that step, but closer inspection suggests otherwise. Apparently our PM is interested in women, and his activities include “Politics, observing polls, running fear campaigns and cunningly releasing new policies to win elections.”

Who are the real Kevins and Johns?

And here lies the challenge. If Kevin and John thought that political scapping amongst each other during Question Time was tough, just wait until they realise that the networked communities take no prisoners. You are canvassing in a constituency that has no leaders and no written rules and there is certainly not such a thing as a safe seat. It is the domain of everyone and you can be elected or stripped bare at the click of a mouse. You only need to look the current battle between “Obama Girl” and “Guiliani Girl” in the US (find clips here) to see the potential minefield. In short you have very little control, a subject I will touch on in coming weeks.

So which party is embracing this new form of political door knocking and which one is simply ticking a box because his advisors heard that this MyBook thingy was all rage. Well I have to take my hat off to the Labor team who seem to have grasped the nettle with both hands. Whilst John Howard is busy rewriting history by changing his entry in Wikipedia, Mr Rudd has created a carefully branded election portal for all things Kevin. Kevin07 is not necessarily going to win any IAB awards, principally because it is a direct rip off of any number of US election sites, but it is a solid attempt to create consistency and focus and to wrap together all the different digital channels under one umbrella. As a Labor spokesperson said “Kevin07 will encourage supporters to interact with one another, participate in blogs and stay in touch with what is happening on the campaign trail.” This was closely followed by a statement from the Liberal party stating that Mr Rudd’s approach was a “load of crap”.

I am pleased to say that neither party has gone down the “my first Sony” route of trying to indoctrinate users of Bebo. However, any party that simply makes a token effort on the web fails to understand that the social networks are not just for kids. Far from it, and dismissing these communities has got the potential to alienate the heartland for a key demographic group. What role will the web play in deciding the fate of either candidate? Well I don’t know the answer to that, but I suspect it will become a little clearer in a few weeks. And who knows, at that time, maybe one of them will need to start discovering the benefits of a network on Linkedin.

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