Long live the sandwich board (and EDM)

 

Jo Cole

 

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Traditional methods work best in generating policy-focused debate among key decision-makers says Jo Cole

 

 

 

 

Waiting for a colleague outside the St Stephen's entrance to Parliament recently, there was a man wearing a sandwich board asking MPs to sponsor him for the London to Southend bike ride.

 

The man was comedian Steve Trister; you may have heard of his campaign to raise £1m for the British Heart Foundation by asking a million people to sponsor him £1 each. He has a website, a blog and a Twitter campaign all frantically generating interest and raising sponsorship funds across cyberspace.

 

He has posted videos of celebrities pledging their support to him on YouTube. Indeed, he seems to have all standard modern digital aspects covered. Yet when it came to raising awareness from parliamentarians, he opted for the sandwich board technique. Of course, communicating to parliamentarians has moved on from sandwich boards alone, but knowing your parliamentary procedure is no longer enough to run a political campaign; you need to know your Facebook from your Twitter. While the benefits of modern digital campaigning are clear, there are certain campaign aims that are still best achieved through 'traditional' techniques. The trick is getting the right balance and knowing which method to use and when.

 

There is still a place for tried and tested methods, such as Early Day Motions (EDM), parliamentary questions and petitions. Digital methods tend to work for generating awareness quickly among certain targeted consumer groups. Traditional methods work best in generating policy-focused debate among key decision makers. Therefore a pincer movement using the two together can often work well and cover all angles.

 

The humble Early Day Motion is often neglected by political campaigners but the full potential of an EDM shouldn't be so readily dismissed. An EDM is an effective platform for raising awareness of an issue among MPs and those in the political arena. It is also a useful hook for PR opportunities, particularly among local and regional media. A recent EDM highlighting a client's project picked up just shy of 100 signatures. This allowed us to PR this in the regional media as a Westminster campaign backed by almost 100 MPs. Even EDMs require work, though. Tabling it is not enough - an email or letter to MPs explaining the EDM and asking for their signature (with a copy ready for them to sign) should also follow in order to generate signatures. The key is to make it as easy as possible for busy MPs to pledge support.

 

Photocalls sit nicely alongside this. It may seem a bit old fashioned to organise a photoshoot in front of Big Ben with a relevant prop, but every picture tells a story and, if you've secured a good photo, you've secured good coverage and therefore awareness of your campaign.

 

Digital methods are best used to generate the interest and build a broader support base, while traditional methods are used in the execution of the campaign and in delivering the message to parliamentarians. A good example of this successful marrying of digital and traditional communications is the use of a petition. An online petition can rapidly generate hundreds of signatures and supporters. The physical delivery of the petition then provides subsequent opportunities for photocalls.

 

This leads to the most basic method of campaigning, and one that is often overlooked and underestimated. Your Facebook page may have hundreds of members, your Twitter community might be tweeting daily to one another at the speed of light, but very few techniques can be more effective than an MP stopping a minister in the lobby and urging them to listen to a campaign that's targeted towards their department. To secure this, you'll need to obtain significant parliamentary backbench support, which is largely done through the most traditional of communication channels: face to face conversation.

 

Tabling oral and written questions has a similar effect, as pressure mounts on policy officials and special advisers in a department to find answers, and to consider why so many questions are being asked on a particular issue. Persistence is key. It may be tempting to secure senior parliamentary support for an issue, but from a campaigning perspective it is often better to build strong cross-party links among backbenchers as they are better able to table questions and put on pressure.

 

Controlling the message is an important factor in all this. New social media routes make many politicians and campaigners wary, as messages cannot be controlled and opinions cannot be contained. And while social media provides a wealth of opportunities in the development of communications, it is risky and more difficult to manage the message. American political campaigners use the term 'astroturfing' to describe campaigns that are created to look like spontaneous grassroots protests but that are in fact highly orchestrated, usually with significant financial backing. The practice is thought to be quite common, though it's prohibited by the Public Relations Society of America's code of ethics. Campaigners use social media tools to give the impression that the public have created a campaign themselves. This is not to suggest that modern techniques are fuelling immoral practices, but traditional campaigning can provide a stronger feeling of transparency and, therefore, parliamentarians often feel more comfortable participating in such methods.

 

Developments in technology mean that, for consumer campaigns, digital techniques are an excellent tool. However, political campaigns need to involve a wider variety of mediums to be effective in terms of influencing and persuading policy makers.

 

It's not that digital campaign methods aren't useful, just that traditional methods can still prove exceptionally effective. So next time you're planning a political campaign, don't automatically dismiss the humble sandwich board.

 

 

 

Jo Cole is an account manager at Mandate Communications