The Irish Green Party just don’t get it!
The Green Party is calling on student and emerging filmmakers and animators to harness their creativity and take part in a competition to create vivid viral spots to promote the green message.
This has to be one of the worst examples of attempting to use social media I have ever seen. I mean it’s total car crash stuff, I am by no means an expert on social media but even a person off the street could see where they have gone wrong. But it sounds like a good idea I hear you say, what have they done that could be so bad? Well the competition is a good idea but it has been terribly implemented.
First mistake; Promotion! The Green Party “Communications Manger” did take the time find out who a few of the top Irish Tech Bloggers were, he even took the time to find their email addresses. Then, instead of taking the time to send them each a personal note to see would they be interested in blogging about the competition, which he admitted he knew he should have, he suddenly had no time, so he just spammed them all with a press release.
Michele and Alexia rightly called them out on this as spam. They also both noted had he taken the time to address them personally, that they would have not been so annoyed and that they were not journalists whom you could just spam with press releases but, they were in fact, just private individuals. To add insult to injury here, he replies to Michele’s blog insulting him by saying “I apologise for your perception of my email as spam. I mistook you for a tech-focused blogger with interests in marketing, Ireland, etc.” So instead of apologising himself, he condescends to one of Ireland’s most influential Tech Bloggers and recent winner of the Irish Internet Associations Internet Marketer and Best Business Blogger of the Year 2008.
Photo owned by S.o.L.e (cc) Some Green Party cakes for @LinziMG.
Mistake number two; Execution. This one really takes the biscuit. So they are running a “viral” video competition, and they say “The clips will then be let loose on the web via the Green Party’s YouTube channel … The two videos with the most views will be shortlisted and …”. Sounds cool yeah? So how do you think you enter? Upload your video to YouTube yeah? Maybe tag it #GreenPartyComp? Just be sure maybe drop a comment on their blog (where there’s no mention of it) or better yet blog about yourself and linkback yeah? I’m sure they’ll say further down. Oh yeah here it is, “In order to submit your video to the competition, please send your clip (on DVD) to: Viral Competition, The Green Party… “
What? Post it on a DVD! You want to have a viral competition and the first method of entry you provide is by POST! In fairness though, they are not all bad, you can also email it, so long as it’s less than 20MB. Ok so email entry isn’t too bad, but limited to 20MB means there is going to be no chance of sending through a nice HD video, so you have to post it. I really can’t understand the rational for this at all. I understand they may have limits on their email boxes but why would you do anything with the video other than upload it in HD to YouTube, it’s just common sense.
It’s no surprise though really, Alexia and some members of the Creative Ireland Forum also pointed out a while back that they aren’t the best with online job specs either. If you are looking for examples of politicians who do get it right, check out Tom Watson’s Twitter or Blog, he is the West Bromwich East Labour MP and regularly attends Tech and Social Media events in London. Anyone have any other good examples of Politicians/Political Parties who get it aside from the obvious Obama Campaign?
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January 7th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Some fair comments. Some not. As I explained on Alexia’s post, I would like to have taken the time to tailor an introductory email to the 22 bloggers and tech journos that I contacted, then follow up with another mail. But promoting the competition is one of about 50 different things I had to do yesterday so I cut corners… with disastrous results.
Re the execution, thanks for the ideas, but centralising the receipt and uploading of the clips was the only way we could think of doing this while retaining control.
There are plenty of politically motivated and generally malevolent people out who would love to hijack something like this and link all sorts of crap to our competition. They still might give it a go. Allowing entrants to post their clips to their own YouYube channel would also let them take the video offline, which could potentially scupper this whole enterprise for us. And finally, we’re going to be showing the clips on big screens in March, so we will likely need a DVD - if not HD - version for that purpose in any case.
Thanks for the feedback, though; I will go back and edit the entry page to allow people to suggest other ways to submit their entries that may be more convenient and new media-friendly than DVDs and the postal system.
January 7th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
The initial email needed to be tailored to the recipients. In my case, I have around 20 illustrators, animators and short-form video students who are interested in this Green Party competition. But the email caused me pause, instead of engaging me. I put that down to some of the hesitation I have about getting unsolicited email to my phone–would the originator want unsolicitied text to his phone? When someone talks to my weblog, they get directly to my phone. And that top-drawer presence is why I’m a little sensitive when people take liberties by sending me mass-market emails.
That said, I’m still interested in pointing out the competition to students.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Might I plug my own Political Blog, Youtube Channel here? I regularly update my blog with info and comments and have started my own Youtube channel to keep my constituents informed. I could probably do with more opinion pieces and less press releases but its a good effort for a town councillor in the west of Ireland, is it not?
What improvments or addittions could I make?
January 20th, 2009 at 10:00 am
I just like to say that in general as far as I’ve seen, Irish political parties have more or less ignored social media and the opportunity that lies there, at least the green party are making an effort. It may not be the best attempt ever but it’s a start.
I think I’ll look back on this day with a sense of nostalgia, similsr to getting my first text message from my ma “How r u? I’m fine TG”