Cynosura

Business can learn from election campaigns

Politics has always had the ability to provide important lessons for business, none more so than during elections.

Elections are, in essence, massive communications campaigns. Those who communicate loudest, across the broadest numbers of mediums and most effectively to their audiences will be the winners.

Elections are also sales campaigns. If the product is good, looks attractive, is moderately priced and is better than the competitor’s offering then it is more likely to be bought (in this case, voted for).

Parties that get it wrong and don’t provide what the consumer (voter) wants will find that their product will be ignored. Indeed, there will be an active effort to undermine the product by refusing to purchase it (when people decide to vote against a party). In commercial terms this is similar to a supermarket losing customers because of poor products and lack of service. The customer will shop almost anywhere other than the bad supermarket.

The best example of the latter, after all these years, is the way in which people stopped shopping at Ratners jewellers after Gerald Ratner’s comments about the quality of his products.

A similar meltdown is taking place in Ireland today. If the opinion polls are to be believed the ruling party Fianna Fáil is about to be decimated. Their standing in the last general election was around 42%, today they will be lucky to get 14%.

The new leader of Fianna Fáil, Micheál Martin, has been rather good on the television debates and public events. But after thirteen years in power and a disastrous few months where the Irish were forced to accept an EU/IMF bailout almost anything he says will not be believed.

Fianna Fáil have been wrong footed by their opponents throughout the campaign. Parallels can be seen in business every day. Take the disastrous BA strikes last year. Both EasyJet and Ryanair were quick to put out advertisements enticing passengers on to their airlines.

The canny Fine Gael, the almost certain winners of today’s election, haven’t waited for Fianna Fáil to get it wrong. They, like EasyJet and Ryanair have been ‘sticking the boot in’ at every opportunity for months.

However, Fine Gael has also been canny on another front. They have grasped the importance of social media. With 65% penetration of the internet in Ireland this is now a powerful force.

Fine Gael went into listening mode (covered in another blog) and received over 40,000 comments from the public (not bad in a country with around 3 million voters. But they didn’t stop there. They took the information they received from those comments and developed a ‘Five Point Plan’, their main selling point during the campaign. They developed their campaign slogan ‘Let’s get Ireland Working’ from the comments they received.

They set up Facebook campaigns, used Twitter, developed ‘Take Action web pages’ and developed a You Tube channel (paid political adverts on TV are not allowed). This became the most popular political party channel in Ireland and, according to PRWeb, reached the 6th highest ranking in all of Ireland by reports as well as growing by 3,000% in the final weeks of the campaign.

Meanwhile, some really clever techies have been looking at Twitter using Tweet Sentiments, a service which looks at the positive or negative nature of Tweets on a certain topic area. In the final 24 hours of the election campaign Enda Kenny (the Fine Gael leader) was mentioned positively in 66% of Tweets although Micheál Martin didn’t do so badly on 62%.

The techies used another free service called Klout to look at how influential and what reach each party has been having. The third party in Irish politics (at least up to now), the Labour Party, came top with 65% (measured as 65 out of a possible 100), Fianna Fáil second with 64% and Fine Gael third with 63%; all very close.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to imagine how the techniques and measuring tools being applied by the political parties could be used in crisis or reputational repair situations. These ideas and techniques could also be applied to sales campaigns, product launches and marketing campaigns.

Nor is this the domain of large business any more. You don’t need massive ITC departments. Many of the techniques are available free of charge or at affordable prices which put them into the reach of small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) as well.

Egypt sends some strong messages

January was a surprisingly quiet month with no major businesses suffering crises.

The same cannot be said for the world of politics where major eruptions across MENA (Middle East and North Africa) have shocked, enthralled and enlightened the world.

Arguably the dominoes started tumbling in Tunisia when a street seller doused himself in petrol and set himself alight.  Tunisia followed a similar pattern of increased unrest, small demonstrations becoming large demos, attempted police suppression and then ultimately rage and immense bravery by a few.  The regime fell.

In Egypt the pattern started much as in Tunisia, but then the police abandoned the streets and the army refused to kill innocent civilians.  Backed into a corner by massive demos the government made small and patently reversible concessions.

With the world watching the government seemed to act in a measured but self interested way.  Behind the scenes we discovered later that the secret police have been busy closing down NGOs and arresting political opponents.

Stalemate appears to have been reached.  An impotent international community seem unwilling to force President Mubarak out of office and the protesters are going nowhere until he leaves.

In Yemen, Jordan, Serbia and Albania other opportunists have seized on the domino effect whether it is against autocrats or democratically elected governments. 

But what of the communications angle?

Perhaps the most obvious is that dictators don’t listen to people and are then surprised when trouble brews.  A lesson more politicians should take on board.

Then you get governments trying to suppress communications. 

In Egypt the Al Jazeera team were arrested and banned from reporting on the crisis.  Clearly, in this linked up world, a pointless gesture which was swept aside.  The Al Jazeera reporting is at the cutting edge of this crisis.

The Egyptian government also tried to stop internet and mobile phone conversations.  People got around this through the use of old fashioned techniques such as word of mouth, and the facilities provided by Google and Twitter.  Again, their attempts to stop communication failed.

Then they tried intimidation.  During the past few days we have seen police beating people, behind the scenes arrests and torture, quasi cavalry charges by (paid for?) supporters, low level fly pasts by jet fighters, and tanks on the streets.  This told the protesters that they had got the government rattled.  This point was reinforced when Mubarak started to make concessions.  By then the protesters got a clear message that if they kept pushing they would, eventually, win.

The international community have given the clearest messages of all. 

Over the past two to three weeks the Obama administration has changed its tack at least three times.  Sometimes criticising, other times supporting the regime, and on other occasions trying to distance themselves from the whole affair.  But when you have supported an administration for the past thirty years, poured money in to keep the regime alive and turned a blind eye to undemocratic elections it must be tough trying to be consistent.

Prime Minister David Cameron showed how easy it is to be two faced.  At one point he was saying that the Egyptian government should listen to the will of the people.  With so many protesters on the streets it was clear that the Egyptian government had to listen.  So why hasn’t the Cameron government listened to the similarly large crowds who have come out onto the streets of the UK protesting against student tuition fees.

It is the inconsistencies and blatant hypocrisy of the international community which sends a loud message that they cannot be trusted and will change their message depending upon the circumstances.

But the loudest message comes from the protesters themselves.  If you don’t like what is happening to you then speak out with every means available.  There is a whole world ready to listen.