The Pit - IMI Trust

The old tradition of political marketing was all about direct media advertising, with carefully designed ad placement and a whole lot of kissing babies. TV, Radio, and Newspaper photo ops. Media organisations love nothing more than an election year for marketing budgets to open up.

Whilst this platform is still very relevant, there is an entirely new landscape that has opened up and both parties are feeling their way through new media.

The new platforms being adopted are Social Networking sites, Wiki’s, Online Video and Blogs. The main sites the politicians are looking to utilise are Myspace (which now has it’s own political section), YouTube, and Wikipedia.

This new media offer more power and opportunity then ever before to sell their promises… but on the flipside it makes the public acutely aware of the potential pitfalls.

TV, Radio and Newspaper have all the same features. They are expensive, can only provide short messages, and only provide generic messages.

New media is different. Inexpensive, gets instant media coverage, can provide long or short messages, can target specific groups, they can provide interaction with voters and it allows the parties to respond to comments from their opponents.

This is Political Marketing the Web 2.0 way. In the US, YouTube created national Online debates, where Youtube users ask the questions, and viewers can watch the debates live. Australia is looking to follow this lead.

It is now common in the US for candidates to spend more time with influential bloggers, than with journalists. If you look at the websites of Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama, the have embraced the Web 2.0 medium completely. The have blogs, online videos, user profiles and offers to ability for supporters to unite and communicate their message.

Whilst elections can be won this way, they can also be very quickly lost. Just ask John Edwards. The Democrat politician was doing what he called “The Poverty Tour.” His entire campaign was about helping people out of poverty and getting back to basics.
His campaign was ruined when footage of him appeared on YouTube, getting a US$400 haircut. The YouTube footage, made its way to all the blogs, other video sites and then into the mainstream media. His popularity has never been the same since.

It will be interesting to see how John Howard, Kevin Rudd and fringe parties like the Greens use this new media when the election date is announced.