The Social Election

The Social Election wrap up

Posted on August 21, 2010 by karalee

Well, it’s finally polling day. The day Australians cast their ballots and have their say in who should lead our country.

The last five weeks have been a blast, watching your opinions unfold across social media. The insights and trends have been fascinating to watch, and by all accounts the result will be close. Very close.

What’s also been great is that Amnesia Razorfish has been able to work alongside Edelman’s Matthew Gain and other social experts to present a holistic and unified analysis on how the Election has performed in social media. Matthew has summarised Edelman’s Tweet Level work here and I recommend you read it.

So, let’s look at how the three leaders and parties averaged out during the election campaign across social media:

Share of voice:

It was a close call for the winner between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. Tony just snuck in, with more conversation around him. The Greens clearly won the share of voice of conversations around their Party.

Median negative sentiment:

Again, you could split Julia and Tony with a hair in the median total of negative sentiment across Twitter. The negative sentiment is particularly pertinent as it indicated people’s voting preferences (more so than positive conversations). If we were to go purely on negative sentiment insights, Julia is the preferred PM.

Issues that matter to you:

The economy and climate change mattered most to voters in their online conversations. Surprisingly, climate change and the economy were largely forgotten by the Parties in the policy area this Election. And this led to significant negativity within voters. They wanted discussions on the issues that matter to them, and they didn’t get it. Perhaps we can reasonably assume this is a factor in the predictions that it will be a close call. Voters can’t choose because they don’t know what they stand for in the areas that matter.

And my prediction:

It will come down to marginal seats in Queensland and regional New South Wales.

Who will win? Labor, by the skin of their teeth with a 15 percent swing to the Greens. Liberals will walk out with 69 seats. Julia Gillard will be the first democratically elected female Prime Minister in Australia’s history.

The thanks:

Thank you for joining us on this ride of looking at the 2010 Federal Election’s social footprint. We have had an amazing time bringing this blog to you, and thank you for your readership and sharing your opinions every day. Also, I’d like to personally thank Rachel Beaney and Paul Cotton who have tirelessly worked to bring you this data, manually rated thousands of tweets for sentiment, and shared their expert social opinions. They truly are the dream team!

~ Karalee Evans, Social Strategy Manager x

Posted in social election | Tagged amnesia razorfish, bob brown, Federal election, julia gillard, social election, tony abbott | 4 Comments

Who’s using the digital loophole now that it’s the blackout?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by karalee

With less than 24 hours to go to until the election we have seen an increase in paid media over the past couple of days with the media blackout coming into effect.

It’s ironic that the media blackout doesn’t encompass online media but I’m sure the political parties aren’t too concerned with this fact or the media companies with the influx of cash to their online properties.

Advertisements from the major parties can currently be found across some of highest trafficked websites in Australia including; YouTube, Facebook, smh.com.au and news.com.au.

Unfortunately digital still seems like an afterthought with uninspiring creative that focuses on the negative rather than taking advantage of the range of creative executions on offer to let users know what their policies are and communicate their point of difference.

It has been widely reported that this will be a close election with a couple of marginal seats being the key decider in Labor retaining power.

My question then is why haven’t the major parties used specific creative targeted to users within these seats?

Instead both major parties have opted for high reach placements such as homepage and article buyouts which made me wonder what they could have done better in targeting voters, especially those in marginal seats.

Sure the smh.com.au or news.com.au are important due to their sheer size, but by utilising community or regional newspaper sites political parties would be able to create specific messaging for these audiences and address the issues that directly concern that particular community.

In a seat such as Swan in WA or Bennelong here in NSW the result will come down to a handful of votes, and rolling out a strategy such as this could of been the difference for either the Liberal or Labor party.

Online media advertisers able to take advantage of a number of different targeting opportunities (dependent on the site) such as geo targeting, keyword targeting in order to try to reach their target audience. The one example we were able to find was from the ALP on Facebook.

Labor Facebook targeting

The ALP used the myriad of targeting options including; age, gender and keyword available across the site to push out their message.

It’s also incidentally the only positive advertisement that we were able to find!

Meanwhile the Greens until today have veered away from the high reach placements being used by the ALP and Liberals and instead have focused their online media activity around younger, environmentally-conscious voters across youth orientated sites such as thevine.com.au. I think the Greens had a massive opportunity here to seize upon the discontent for both majority parties in people under the age of 30.

There is a large proportion of the Australian electorate who are disillusioned with the lack of vision from both major parties, and to capitalise on this the Greens should have looked at using those high reaching placements early in the campaign in order to push their agenda instead of playing to their supporter base.

It will be interesting to see the change in how online media is used in the next election with the growth of mobile advertising and increasing personalisation within the online space.

One can only hope that three years from now all three parties look at expanding their online budgets and creating advertisements that actually communicate a vision to voters, rather than the same old scare campaign.

~ Fiona Reynolds, Media Planner

(Thanks to all who sent us screen grabs of digital ads, and if you see more, post a link in the comments! ~ @karalee_)

Posted in social election | Tagged Federal election, Greens, julia gillard, Labor, liberals, paid media, social election, tony abbott | 1 Comment

Profile Pics for Politics

Posted on August 19, 2010 by rachel

This is something which has only gained momentum in the last week, and frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened sooner: changing your profile picture to the party you’re voting for.

I was surprised political parties hadn’t been encouraging people to change their profile picture (avatar) to reflect their preferred party. However, it was only this week that the Greens and Labor changed their Facebook profile picture into something which voters could use on their profile and encouraged individuals to add a twibbon to their Twitter avatar. As to who did it first, I’m unsure: but by Monday, both parties’ Twibbons were in full swing.

Their Twibbon Promos:

Labor’s Twibbon promo.

The Greens Twibbon Promo.

The Official Promos:

However, the Greens’ Twibbons have taken off a little faster – with those writing on the Greens’ page quite obviously having changed their profile pic. The Labor party is not seeing quite the same rate of pick up on Facebook.

The Greens page has users who have changed their avatar:

But Labor hasn’t:

And, I’ve noticed that people are, indeed wearing their Greens badge proudly – but I haven’t seen any Labor Twibbons on Twitter. (Admittedly, it might just be who I’m following.)

However, the Greens pics have almost created a mini-meme online, where people have put a quirky spin on the profile pics.

Here’s some of my favourites that I’ve come across online – have you noticed any other spinoffs?

I haven’t seen the Liberals using their profile picture or Twibbons as promotion – has anyone else? As far as I can see, the Liberals are taking a very different approach to encourage people in Social Media – with apps, like the “Labor Lemons” and ‘Give Labor a Whack‘ game.

~@beaney.

Posted in social election | Tagged avatar, badge, facebook, Federal election, Greens, Labor, meme, profile picture, represent, Social Network, twibbon | 6 Comments

Fast Facts about the Election to date

Posted on August 13, 2010 by rachel

We’ve been collating a lot of social data on what politicians are doing online, the top trends and what Australians really care about online. We’ve pulled together some fast facts below that highlight some of our research as of Friday 13th August.

Whose has the most Twitter followers?
Julia Gillard, with 39,979 followers. Tony Abbott has the next largest number of followers, with 18,195 followers.

Interestingly, Malcolm Turnbull has 26,264 followers and Kevin Rudd has 943,360 followers. Still, the most followed Australian by far. Continue reading →

Posted in social election | Tagged bob brown, election, facts, Federal election, Gillard, julia gillard, share of voice, social election, tony abbott, trends | Leave a comment

The social election: Week Three Insights

Posted on August 13, 2010 by rachel

It’s now week four of the 2010 Federal Election, with just over a week left before the Nation goes to the Polls on Saturday 21st August.

We thought we’d have a quick look at who is being spoken about the most, what people think and who the influencers are at this stage in the Election.

The Top Twitter Influencers: Continue reading →

Posted in social election | Tagged Federal election, influencers, insights, kevin rudd, mumbrella, social election, social media, thepunch, trends, week 2 | 1 Comment

Are we seeing the start of a new ‘digitally-savvy’ campaign?

Posted on August 12, 2010 by karalee

Yesterday was an exciting day for the team at Amnesia Razorfish with our current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, engaging with our own Creative Director Andy Pearce on Twitter. It became apparent as the day went on, that Labor and Julia are indeed in a new phase of their Election campaign – they’re breaking down the barriers and engaging online.

This increasing engagement by Julia and indeed the Labor Party is a very welcomed turn, and comes off the back of some stirling performances by Julia in the mainstream media.

Her #QandA gig garnered more than 22,000 tweets, and was largely analysed as being successful. She then appeared on the 7pm Project, again with a largely positive review.

The talk about town was that the ‘real Julia’ was standing up, and it is working. The latest Essential Research poll now has Labor at 52 ahead of Tony Abbott’s Liberals at 48. But it’s bloody close, and there are even opinion pieces emerging of what happens if it is a hung parliament.

The charm offensive is paying off, and Julia and the Labor Party are certainly getting some positive traction for this engagement. In fact, yesterday’s charity challenge has resulted in Western Chances getting on Twitter. (You should follow them @westernchances!)

Interestingly, the Liberals have quietly also increased their digital tactics with the launch of a Facebook app ‘Labor Lemons‘.

Labor Lemons Liberal Facebook App

As discussed in last week’s Gruen Nation episode, the Labor Lemons campaign of TVCs and other above-the-line advertisements, has been quite successful for the Liberals in highlighting Labor’s ‘failures’ during their term.

The Lemon videos on the Liberal Party TV YouTube channel have amassed more than 136,000 views (three videos) which is pretty good reach for Australian political content. In comparison, their ‘attack’ videos are struggling to get traction, with an average of 5,000 views each.

Now look at Labor’s new video, Time Warp that was just uploaded on the 9th August and has already had 80,000 views (helped along by being profiled on Gruen Nation last night no doubt). A great demonstration of engaging and fun video content, no? But where does it fit in Labor’s campaign brand?

Good video content has the ability to to engage your audience and tell your story in a creative way. You can glean the attention of your audience with around two minutes of messaging, using visual and language cues to persuade and motivate your target audience.

Yet, it seems most of the video content from the major parties is not leveraging this story-telling opportunity. It’s mostly their TVCs put up on their YouTube channels, with additional local candidate ads hosted in lieu of expensive media buys. This isn’t integration. This isn’t digital content either, sadly.

And, we’ve spotted what we think is the first digital media buy from either Labor and the Liberals.

Any guesses who got in first?

The Liberals with this ‘attack’ island on Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald:

The Liberals' first digital ad in the wild?

As Julielyn Gibbons said on Mashable “You want the social media [component] to be a very natural, authentic extension of the campaign and candidate or issue.”

This is something that has struck me. Neither party seem to be running a cohesive strategy across the marketing and communications platforms. The disparity between both the Liberals’ and Labor’s ATL campaigns and their digital and social efforts is phenomenal. Messaging is confused, there is not one proposition from either party and the channels seem to be chosen as a mis-matched attempt at integration.

When you consider that a political campaign is just like any other communications or marketing campaign, it’s surprising to say the least.

What do you think of their digital strategies?

Have you seen any other digital ads in the wild from any of the parties? Let us know below!

~ Karalee Evans, Social Strategy Manager x

Posted in social election | Tagged digital, engaging, Federal election, julia gillard, Labor, Liberal, media buy, tony abbott, twitter | 1 Comment

@JuliaGillard responds to @handypearce to start a charity fundraising challenge!

Posted on August 11, 2010 by rachel

Something special just happened between two of the Amnesia Razorfish team and Julia Gillard (shhh – don’t tell HR). Karalee made a joking bet with Andy that Julia Gillard wouldn’t respond on Twitter as her Twitter account hadn’t shown many signs of interaction or engagement with her followers.

However, after a couple of poems and the offer of $1000 going to charity, Julia chirped-up. At 12.06PM today Julia did the unthinkable and replied to us on Twitter. She even promised to match $1000 for Western Chances with her own money.

So, we want to set the challenge. Let’s see how much we can raise for Western Chances, a children’s charity in Victoria’s Western Suburbs. Julia’s set the bar, asking us to RT and encourage people to donate, so why don’t you pledge your money here and show people you’ve met the challenge with your pledge in the comments?

Afterall, supporting a children’s charity is a great result of getting the PM to respond on Twitter, eh?

UPDATE: We challenged @tonyabbottmhr and @senatorbobbrown to match it, and the @greensmps have!

Who’s next? If you’d like to donate to Western Chances, head to their online giving page here. Be sure to pledge your support in the comments and we’ll keep tweeting your donations.

See how it all unfolded:

Continue reading →

Posted in social election | Tagged $1000, bet, Federal election, handypearce, julia gillard, karalee, PM, politics, social election, twitter, western chances | 3 Comments

The @wendy4senate stats: the biggest trend of the Election?

Posted on August 9, 2010 by karalee

Well, I’d written about how I was bored with this Election and you seemed to agree. The lack of passion and genuine policy debate from Gillard, Abbott and the Parties was obvious and had contributed to a trend of disengagement on #ausvotes in social media.

Last night that changed with a series of Tweets by Queensland Family First Senate candidate, Wendy Francis.

A sample of @wendy4senate‘s tweets include:

: @wendy4senate’s deleted tweets

Wow, right? (13,000 people have viewed this on Twitpic.)

Ben Grubb at the Sydney Morning Herald writes about Wendy Francis’ gay slurs here, but what I’m interested in is the reach of what is set to become the most-talked about 2010 Australian Federal Election topic in social media.

Update: As at 10am Tuesday 10th August, the amount of conversation around Wendy has more than doubled (an incredible 480,000 people reached). Although, with Julia Gillard appearing on #QandA last night, Wendy Francis hasn’t been able to take the lead in the most talked about issue for the 2010 Federal Election. But, as you’ll see from this share of voice comparison, she’s right up there with Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard.

Amazing considering there were more than 20,000 tweets last night for Julia’s appearance on #QandA.

share of voice comparison

At 5pm Sunday 8th August, there were 770 tweets on the issue, and approximately 224,000 people reached in social media. Compare that to the highest overall mentions of the Election so far, which was Labor on Monday 19th July at 2482 web mentions.

A sample of 50 tweets show that nearly 16,000 people had been reached. In just 50 tweets. And the tweets are first, second and even third-person retweets which shows the motivation to share the issue:

Twitter sample

Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.

What goes on Twitter, stays on the web

After Wendy tweeted a series of quotes from a media release she had issued (now deleted from her website, but archived here), I suspect she didn’t anticipate the sheer volume of responses. In fact, she received nearly 700 mentions on Twitter alone just 60 minutes after she tweeted.

The responses were incredibly passionate, and wholeheartedly disagreed and ridiculed her and her views. Trending words contained in these responses included:

vicious
cowardly
bigot
homophobic
deleted
small-minded

Watching it unfold, I started having deja vu with the recent Greenpeace vs Nestle social media crisis. Wendy had galvanised voters in Australia (and overseas) in a massive movement of gay marriage support and general support for equality and tolerance.

This snowball was solidified when it became apparent Wendy had deleted the offensive tweets. Too late, Wendy. People had already re-tweeted them, screen-grabbed them and archived them for posterity. And the news that they had been deleted only added more fire to the issue and motivated people to share them to their social networks more.

Interestingly, just like Greenpeace vs Nestle, there was an organic movement from targeting Wendy on Twitter to targeting her Facebook page. People encouraged their friends to tell her what they think on all of her communication platforms. And it happened in droves. I wanted to show you a screen grab of the comments on her wall, but overnight Wendy has locked her Facebook profile. No matter, her ‘fan page’ has a taste:

wendy4senate Facebook page

Wendy, and indeed other candidates, you need to know: what goes on Twitter (or Facebook, your blog, your campaign site etc) is akin to publishing and can’t be deleted.

Putting the issue on the agenda

The irony is that Wendy’s five offensive tweets urging her ‘supporters’ to vote her into the Senate to champion for her views, have put the issue on the agenda.

And not the agenda she obviously wanted to set. Instead, she’s awoken a beast of bored voters who were looking for a trigger to engage with this Election. Thankfully, homophobic diatribe isn’t accepted by the majority of Australians (indeed, internationally as well) and this seems to be the trigger for a movement.

As for @wendy4senate, she hasn’t tweeted since last night. Her Twitter followers have grown by more than 200 since her tweets, and she’s refusing media interviews. My guess is that her short-lived senate bid is over, thanks largely to the power of social media and the collective voice of reason.

What do you think? Would you try to delete a tweet if it didn’t get a good response? Any advice for Wendy?

Posted in social election | Tagged family first, Federal election, greenpeace, homophobic, nestle, social election, wendy francis | 5 Comments

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