News
2010-04-16
Will This Year's Election Be Digital? Havas CEO David Jones Comments on the UK Election.
David Jones notes, "The biggest difference between this election and previous ones is the power and influence of digital and social media. Digital is setting the agenda and changing the speed of action and reaction by the major parties. Our response to Labour's Gene Hunt poster was up on digital billboards within four hours, with the Sunday press concluding that Labour's poster had backfired. Digital has also changed the speed and immediacy for agencies. Briefs come in with one-hour turnarounds and neither the client nor the agency considers it unusual. These are the new rules of the digital election game."
"The internet will count, but so will things such as direct marketing and house-to-house canvassing," Nicholas O'Shaughnessy, a professor of communication at Queen Mary University of London, points out. "However, we're also seeing a renaissance of political posters. it's important the parties don't neglect these tries-and-trusted staples." However, it is these staples that are, conversely, the biggest targets of the internet's biggest downside in electioneering -- the lack of control that scares politicians witless. Only four hours separated the launch of Labour's poster depicting David Cameron as the 80s TV detective Gene Hunt and the appearance of a Tory spoof of it on digital billboards [created by Euro RSCG London]. David Jones, the Euro RSCG Worldwide Chief Executive, says that digital, and especially social media, is already changing the speed of action and reaction to each other by both parties.
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