Comments on: The Ghost in the By-election Machine

By: Neil

Neil — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:42:47 +0000

Your are wrong about the amount of help we had in the last week and particularly on polling day.

We were knocking up extar people in the most ruban part of the seat because it was much more efficient than knocking up small numbers of people in the more rural parts – not because we had loads of people.

By: declineofthelogos

declineofthelogos — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 10:00:39 +0000

I think to a large degree we need to tailor the level of professionalism we employ with regard to our target audience. Tatty blanket tabloids do not appeal to the soft Tory vote, but are effective at squeezing soft Labour. I am not entirely convinced that all elections remain focused on local issues – indeed, I worry that one of our failures from a campaigning perspective is to frequently ignore the wider political context when planning – witness the approach we took to the London campaign, for example.

The ‘narrative’ approach I mentioned is not exclusively American – it’s more about the form of words we use to get the voters to feel a connection with our candidate, and how our messages relate to one another. It involves creating a structured and coherent campaign that develops over time. I appreciate your point about the monetary basis of American campaigning, of course.

With regard to the advertising approach, I think the suggestion mooted was that instead of spending thousands hiring advertisers, we make better use of those working in marketing within the party to supply advice to our literature designers. It costs nothing, and binds more people into activism.

By: wit and wisdom

wit and wisdom — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:32:56 +0000

I agree entirely with your analysis but I question whether we have to go wholeheartedly for the overly professional approach of the advertisers. We need a simple, straightforward campoaign as elections in this country emain very local.

I am always very wary of buying into American tactics since their election system is completely different and based overwhelmingly on money.

We certainly need to re-invent our tactics but we don’t need to spend hours (and thousands) getting advertising professionals to over-analyse. We should simply ell our core policies better.

People care about bread and buter issues, not spin, and that is where we should focus.

Anyway, great post.