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I spent the morning at a seminar on politics and technology where noticable by the absence was the technology, and present by the ministerial load was the politics.

Three observations of the session

1. Senator Joe Hockey plays a character in Parliament.  Given he registered his own namespace domain name in 1996, he’s got geek blood.  He showed his colours for a few seconds, remembered that journalists and political types were present, and reverted to his party endorsed yobbo bloke persona.

2. Senator Kate Lundy is awesome.  She had five minutes and said more useful stuff in that time than most people did for half hour speeches.  Still, if you have someone who has to leave 20 minutes after the start of the session – give them the first question, not the second one.  Poor form moderator, poor form.

3. The event was so horribly managed it was frustrating. I walked out of the last session frustrated at the inept management – if you’re going to do a panel of Web2.0 and political campaigns, and open the floor to discussion, you might want to let the audience engage in the debate.  Moreover, if this was a showcase event of politics and technology, bring the wireless networks and have the technology.

This panel concept was an old media dinosaur town hall smashed into 55 minute windows with brief intermissions for commercials.  Two five person panels sitting around talking about politics and technology should have been a full day session.  Hell, the first guest could have used 90 minutes easily.

All up, I’m probably not going to attend future sessions of this nature if I have deadlines, due dates or a better offer from a SPSS analysis output (unless Senator Lundy is speaking for longer on technology. Then I’m there)

A short time ago, in an electorate quite nearby, there was an election. A small matter, and one which Andrew Hughes and I spent a good deal of time watching, analysing and trying to write up to meet a series of deadlines around the same time as the vote was on. The end results of the first paper we wrote (Howard’s leading) rewrote (Howard’s losing) rewrote again (Howard’s lost) and finally rewrote (Kevin07 FTW) once the dust had settled, and the analysis was finally possible.

The paper came out in the Monash Business Review at the end of April (academic version is under embargo until October). We put out a press releases to discuss the finds, and let’s just say, it’s was a good day to be an academic. Andrew was fielding the media calls whilst I stood around in class, and I think he clocked up half a dozen radio interviews across the country.

For posterity (and bragging rights) The Hughes and Dann political marketing machine media coverage on the Lessons of Kevin O7:

• The Age
• The Canberra Times
• Page 2 of The Australian
• Radio Australia
• and the ANU’s College of Business and Economics newsletter

It’s good to be doing work on local issues, topical content and ideas that suit the Australian Political Marketing spectrum rather than just focusing on writing for the esoteric internationally focused Tier 1 journals. It’s even better when the media picks up the story and runs with it.

Political marketing can often be a case of playing the rock-paper-scissors game whereby a single political marketing strategy can beat, and be beaten, by one other move in the political market set.  The political product offering is represented by the rock, electoral engagement is represented by the scissors and personal political solution is represented by paper.

A viable political product (rock) offering can beat an established political candidate with strong electoral connections (scissors) but is vulnerable to the broader question of which party will best serve the interests of the individual voter (paper).  Strong local members (scissors) can fall victim to viable alternate candidates (rock), and yet, as 2007 demonstrated, can resist broader political swings or shifts in government (paper). Finally, personal interest driven voting (paper) can defeat political product offerings by the party (rock) but remains vulnerable to individual candidates (scissors). 

There is no single strategy or magic bullet approach to using political marketing for electoral success – instead, the political marketer needs to balance the various aspects of the campaign to be able to meet the opponent’s challenge, and respond accordingly.