Labour’s campaign seems so devoid of original ideas that they have taken to stealing internet memes again. As Brown lectures us about Cameron’s use of image over policy, his party machine has officially commandeered a grassroots geek campaign that was doing the rounds. Just as with the #welovethenhs hashtag that dominated fifteen minutes of silly season, Victoria Street have seen something successful and decided to jump on the bandwagon.
Clifford Singer, an eccentric figure with a history of quixotic attacks from the left, seems to have got lucky this time with his MyDavidCameron.com attack site. The campaign gained traction across Twitter and blogs. Amusingly Labour’s “Twitter Tsar” Kerry McCarthy, who made such a big deal about negative campaigning when the #KerryOut campaign was directed at her, quickly changed her tune when it was Dave being attacked.
Labour have now lifted Singer’s “Is What You See What You’d Get?” on to their website, officially endorsing the negative campaign and revealing just how personally they are going to go after Cameron, just as the Tories are going to make this about Brown. Guido thinks it’s going to be fun…
A bit of (free) advice to Sue Macmillan and Labour’s digital team; campaigns that only run on little visited websites don’t really work.* The official Labour Party site is usually visited only by the party faithful. You have to push your message out. Look at what the Tories are doing, they are paying to advertise their Cameron videos on YouTube, reaching out to people who are not already signed up supporters. There are no votes to be gained from repeating your message to faithful party supporters on the official website or the party affiliated sites like LabourList and LabourHome.
*Dizzy points out just how little visited Labour’s online assets are by comparing the online engagement results for the Ed Miliband championed ‘LabourSpace’ which has garnered 9 votes for its latest round of consultations at the same time as the Tories draft Health Manifesto’s got 40,200 votes from 2,612 people.
