I don’t pretend to know what the result will be tomorrow, although I predict a win for the No camp (full disclosure: I have voted no). But putting the issues to one side for the moment, it’s clear that the Yes campaign, who were already trailing in the polls, have undermined their chances of victory by failing to run a full-spectrum campaign.
The area where this failure makes itself most readily apparent is online. Over the last few todays (and today as well) the only ads I’ve seen on any website I’ve visited have been No to AV ads. The Yes ads are nowhere to be seen.
Now you might say to yourself that online advertising isn’t that important. And for sure, it isn’t a silver bullet; online alone won’t win you a campaign. But any sizeable modern campaign, and certainly a national one is playing with fire if it chooses not to engage in the full spectrum of arenas available.
When the analysis of the referendum is written in the days, weeks and months ahead, I predict the failure of the Yes campaign on a mechanical level (rather than an ideological one) will come under a lot of fire. And rightly so.
UPDATE: No to AV's Jag Singh has revealed on Twitter that his campaign "has bought biggest 1-day-blitz online ad buy in UK political history 2day. Tens of millions of GOTV ads FB, Goog, blogs." You can read Amber's interview with Jag about the campaign here.
Comments
Vince Graff / May 05 2011 3:47pm
Even fuller disclosure: it's in your interest to beat the drum for online advertising....
(though, to be fair, that does not take everything away from your argument)
Karl Hungus / May 05 2011 3:51pm
The yes campaign have been poor. They've been too focused on daft analogies and spurious claims about making MPs work harder.
The message they should have been banging home is that, in the constituencies where the voting system would effect the result, the majority of voters would prefer the candidate who'd have won under AV to the one who'd have won under FPTP.
That's a fairly simple point, it makes AV sound fairer and more democratic, and it's difficult to argue against. Can you imagine Cameron on the Today programme trying to claim that an MP has much legitimacy when most of their constituents would prefer someone else?
Mikey Smith / May 05 2011 3:51pm
Measuring a campaign's online presence by size of its static ad buy displays a staggering lack of understanding of how the internet works.
A frightfully "old media" point of view.
Lurker Researcher / May 05 2011 3:55pm
The thing I don't get is why they didn't do much on Facebook or Google to GOTV? Also the Labour blogs were a key swing audience, surely they should have done some flag waving on them? Labour had a lot of undecided opinion leaders.
Paul Hutchings / May 05 2011 4:23pm
'Yes' seems to be doing well online, I think you need to look elsewhere for reasons for them losing (if they do):
http://labs.nixmc.com/~steve/yestoav/
http://www.brandwatch.com/2011/05/social-media-says-yes-to-av/
Ken Hall / May 05 2011 5:31pm
I remember reading the NO campaign's strategy a few weeks ago, when all I could find online was YES to AV ads.
They knew the royal wedding would blitz everything else giving a couple of days after the extended weekend for an advertising blitz, so they decided that with the wedding effectively neutralising the campaign, that they would then try to own the airwaves in the two days prior to the vote.
Logan Shearer / May 05 2011 5:51pm
It was the failure to put across a coherent reason - all that guff about making MPs work harder - demonstrably rubbish. Only Mandy had the cojones to be spell it out - AV meant a likely semi-permanent leftie alliance to keep the Tories out, giving the Lib Dems rather than the public the opportunity to choose which policies got implemented - as they apparently are in the coalition now. People - unsurprisingly - weren't convinced. Go figure.