No 10 Embraces Digital PR May 5, 2008
Posted by paulprdixon in : PR in the UK, PRandom , trackbackBritish Prime Minister Gordon Brown took a hammering in the UK local elections last Thursday. Not only was it the Labour Party’s worst performance in over 40 years, the eccentric Conservative Party candidate and former editor of The Spectator, Boris Johnston, was victorious in his campaign to be elected as London Mayor.
‘The multitudes have spoken,’ proclaimed the former Etonian in his victory speech. And from within Brown’s inner-circle, a Labour cabinet member said: ‘We have been given an almighty yellow card with bright red lights flashing at the edges.’ A bit of a strange quotable-quote that one. Perhaps the cabinet member (on the tail-end of an election all-nighter) was supposed to say that Brown better sort the mess out before the UK electorate reaches for the red card.
But even if Labour does get the red card in the next general election, one cannot say it’s because Downing Street hasn’t been playing its PR card effectively.
Since coming into office last summer, Brown first went out to get Carter - Carter being the talented Stephen Carter, former CEO of Brunswick financial public relations. His next move was more recent, and has had an immediate positive impact (clearly not on election results though): embracing the internet.
The Brown digital offensive started with the arrival in March at No 10 of Mark Flanagan, former head of LBC radio (non-stop news for London), as head of digital communications. Initially the move went under the mainstream media radar, but over the last few weeks Downing Street’s ‘tweets’ have grabbed some above-the-fold coverage, with Flanagan now known as the man behind the online buzz.
‘Tweets’ I see you ponder. A tweet is a ‘micro-blog’ on Twitter.com - software that allows users to write a short message from your mobile phone, IM software, and E-mails to everyone and anyone who subscribes to your tweets. It’s a bit voyeuristic, and you may wonder how people find time to (a) write tweets, and (b) why you would want to read other people’s tweets.
Perhaps that’s the reason why on today’s count there are 2411 ‘followers’ (tech-head Brownites perhaps) of the Downing Street tweet. But that is almost double the number from two weeks ago, so clearly it is growing in popularity. A latest tweet, if you are interested, reads: ‘Gordon Brown has just arrived back at No10 after speaking at an event on boosting the Palestinian economy.’
Brown attempting to be charasmatic on the Downing Street YouTube Channel
Away from the tweets, we can also follow Gordon’s movements on live Google Map updates and there is now a Downing Street Flickr channel to view, as Downing Street describes: ‘Photos of special events, overseas trips and other PM activities will be added on a regular basis.’ And then there is the two-week old Downing Street YouTube channel; a hard sell with its homepage video showing a tired Gordon Brown giving a boring policy speech.
But overall it’s impressive. Although Brown is facing flack over the local election debacle, he is still deserved of some PR kudos for embracing Web 2.0 in the government’s communications activities. It will be interesting to see what’s up next as No 10 tries to keep up with the latest online applications.
* This post also appears on ‘Off The Record’ - AC Capital Strategic Public Relations’ (my employer) blog.
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?