“We find DC extremely attractive, we used the net to go interactive.” ‘Cameron Girls’ Saskia and Hayley say they’ve created this video to help the Tory cause. Sure, it’s a talking point, but looks unlikely Simon Cowell is going to be on the phone to them any time soon.
As it starts to become something of a YouTube hit, Tory HQ apparently denies any involvement. So does it help the Cameron campaign or is it just excruciating? What do you think?
Glad to be back in the office after a one day work trip turned into an epic four day journey across Europe. It has all been because of the other big story — the erupting volcano — so here’s an interesting trend to have a look at.
The chart here shows relative search volumes on Google, and sure enough there are around twice as many searches for the volcano right now in the UK than for the election. But while the fiery Icelandic monster continues to spew ash into Europe’s airspace, there’s another digital trend developing elsewhere: ever more people are searching online for “Liberal Democrats”, in fact the trend suggests that imminently Nick Clegg’s party will see a higher volume of searches than Labour currently do (see green and purple lines meeting).
Given that the majority of internet journeys begin at a search engine, this kind of analysis can indicate what’s on people’s minds. So when the ash finally clears it’ll be interesting to see how the LibDems emerge and whether search trends are an opinion poll in their own right. I’ll be checking this one again after the next TV debate.
This week sees the start of the televised election debate series, as the three main party leaders go head-to-head on the airwaves.
The BBC, Sky and ITV, together with the party leaders, have agreed 19 key principles about how the shows will work and another 76 points around the structure of the programme, the set, what camera shots are acceptable and to confirm that the leaders will shake hands at the end of the programme. It has all been worked out to precision.
Millions of voters may well tune in — but I suspect it’ll be the clip of a gaffe, a moment of triumph, or something that wasn’t even noticed on TV that will be played and replayed online, emailed around, voted and commented on. It’s this kind of online video that might be what’s remembered; using the internet to share and comment on it could turn out to be what really fires up the debate.
We’ve published our Weber Shandwick guide to the election — you can read it below. There’s lots more also on our “Inside the Election Blog” at http://election.webershandwick.co.uk
Does the amount of Twitter buzz around a party/candidate have any correlation with whether they’ll get elected? It’s a question that’s being hotly debated and you can follow one experiment in this kind of “predictive modelling” at Tweetminster.
Right now the site is predicting an outcome of 36% for the Tories, 33% for Labour and 22% for the Lib Dems. That’s pretty close to the latest YouGov poll which puts Conservatives on 37% and Labour on 32% — doesn’t do quite so well with Lib Dems on 19%.
Clearly there are lots of questions you could ask about how valid it all is, but, given Twitter is one of the many digital tools that simply haven’t been available to voters before, this will certainly be an interesting one to follow.
OK, so this video is a bit geeky but if you are a child of the mid 70s then you’ll get it!
So the nation’s worst kept secret is officially out. But while the battlebuses rev up their engines, the internet is well and truly bringing soapboxes to the 21st century.
Type the word “election” into Google this afternoon and suprisingly there’s no mention of Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems on the first page of the non-paid for results. Meanwhile, the BNP does feature. Search is incredibly important in communications because it’s the way so many internet users discover stories and content. This particular search doesn’t look great for the main three parties.
Impressive feature improvements coming to Photoshop — makes you wonder just how many pictures are ‘originals’…
So we’ve seen and heard lots about augmented reality but, in reality (excuse the pun), you may well need a paper cutout, etc, to activate it, which can be a bit of a barrier. What’s cool about this is that the virtual creation can detect and interact with a real-life surface — in this case the cat on the keyboard.
Potentially lots of creative opportunities for brands here. All making augemented reality a reality.
Incredible video– but so good the song rather passed over me!