Lessons On Turning The Political Tide With Online Campaigning

Playing an unlikely but crucial role in the recent Presidential elections in France was a five-minute video called the “Human Bomb”. It was produced as advisors worried that Sarkozy was being constantly demonized in the online media through videos like la France D’après, which imagines a new repressive nation state under Sarkozy with riot police, urban unrest and burning cars. 

The video drew more than 450,000 viewers attracted by an old chapter from Sarkozy’s life: as the brash suburban mayor of Neuilly sur Seine personally negotiates with the “Human Bomb,” a deranged man who seized kindergarten students as hostages in 1993.

The video offers a pensive look at this past along with equally pensive soundtrack music (“Honor Him” from the movie, The Gladiator). According to Arnaud Dassier, a strategist for Sarkozy, their “Human Bomb” video was so effective that people were literally left in tears. “We were losing the battle on Dailymotion and YouTube and before we launched this video there was not one pro-Sarko video in the top 50.”

Accorodng to the IHT – When the backstage story of this presidential campaign is written, new media will play a starring role. American campaign strategists have already traveled to France for a glimpse of the new political rituals and pronounced them “one click ahead” of techniques in the United States, as Michael Murphy, an advisor to the California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, put it.

Decide whether it’s worth reaching for tissues when you watch it.

Lessons From Conversational Experts

According to Simon Jenkins from the Guardian, experts advise:

• Never to converse with too many because in much company, few listen
• Be brief to avert tedium and interruption
• Avoid anecdote; refer to others but not oneself
• Be eager to listen and ready to change one’s mind
• This discipline, the subjugation of anger to social ritual, is key to the exhilarating, serendipitous, controlled anarchy that is good conversation.

Hello

I have been intrigued by the ever increasing popularity of blogs, myspace.com and other on-line media which has made it possible from people of just about all walks of life to start communicating with the world at large. As a result there is a large amount of clutter out there.

From a business and marketing point of view, the ability of any message to reach its intended audience and be effective however seems to be an issue that seems to have a plethora of answers much which is as clear as mud. This blog will hopefully provide relevant perspectives and insights into connecting effectively with your intended audience.