So after months spent campaigning, 30 million votes cast and a LOT of money spent, the General Election is finally over. Well, sort of. There’s still days and days to come of haggling over who gets to be the winner and then, inevitably, a big rematch within a year. Nevertheless, we thought it would be a good idea to cast our eyes back over the campaign to examine the role Digital Media played in it.
This was supposed to be ‘The Digital Election’. Strategists on all sides spent months studying the grassroots social media campaigns that helped sweep Obama into office a year and a half ago. The Democrats employed the services of pioneering agencies like Droga 5 and Blue State Digital to help marshal an army of young engaged supporters who organised over 200,000 campaign events and donated more than $500 million.
The Great Schlep campaign helped bring the crucial state of Florida over to Obama and duly won a slew of awards including the Black Pencil at D&AD. The Democrats even had their own travel agency, Obamatravel, which helped volunteers club together to get themselves out to the key swing states where their services could make the most difference.
When it came to the British election, the battle was going to be waged not just between Red and Blue (and yellow, a bit) but between Old and New media; with expensive billboard campaigns and newspaper endorsements on one side and Social Networks, Youtube clips and Crowd Sourcing on the other.
In that battle at least, it seems that the forces of Good have triumphed. Despite spending millions on a billboards featuring David Cameron’s massive earnest face, the Conservatives saw their campaign backfire when these started to be ruthlessly graffittied and websites popped up enabling people to create their own spoof versions (if nothing else, Art Directors will have learned not to leave any white space in political posters in future..)
Equally, when the rightwing press launched a vicious attack on Nick Clegg after his impressive performance in the TV debates, these were quickly lampooned on Twitter via the #nickcleggsfault hashtag.
However, the key feature of these and other online highlights, is that they were all created by ordinary members of the public. Nothing digital the parties did themselves seems to have had any impact whatsoever.
One the one hand, this is incredibly refreshing showing that we’ve finally moved on from the ‘Sun wot won it’ days when powerful newspapers told us what to do and then claimed all the credit. This was the election of ‘User Generated Comment’ (tm!) with actual real-life people getting a say and setting the agenda.
On the other hand, it’s noticeable that, where-as the digital campaigns in the American election were positive, inspirational and helped bring about a change for the better, the British equivalents were mainly just about taking the piss.
Maybe this is just indicative of our national tendency towards cynicism and ironic humour – they get The West Wing, we get The Thick of It. However, the fact the results of this election haven’t ended up being as transformational as was initially predicated, suggests that a digital campaign needs to have positive and uplifting message if it’s actually going to have any electoral impact.
Then again, it obviously helps if you have inspirational candidates to vote for…
