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Nenshi by the Numbers
By John Craig
Calgary. The numbers themselves are very impressive. By October 18th
N Facebook “Likes”.
, the day of the election, he had over 11,000 His closest contender, Rick McIver
had about 4300. The election itself had a 53% voter turn- out, demonstrating amazing public engagement in a city where the previous voter turnout (2007) was around 32%. Quickly, contrast this with Canadian Federal political
numbers. Right now Nenshi has almost 19K Facebook “Likes,” only 21K Facebook behind Stephen Harper, 14K behind Michael Ignatieff and 12K behind Jack Layton. Not bad for a guy who’s name isn’t on the national news every night!
But lets go apples to apples for a second. Ottawa, a simi- lar sized city, ran what was for the most part a two horse race between Larry O’Brien and Jim Watson. Both races employed a mix of new media, social media and mobile applications, however both combined Facebook fans fell 2x short of Rick McIver’s 4500 Facebook fans. Voter turnout was also low, about 44%, down from 54% in 2006. Why was Ottawa such a different race on the social media scales? Better yet, what is it about this guy Nenshi?
Your Candidate is your Content, and Content is King Ed Rollins, who directed White House Office of Political Affairs in the Reagan administration shared the follow- ing campaign advice during his panel session at the recent 2011 American Association of Political Consultants Pollie awards: “The most important thing in any campaign is a good candidate.”
I often tell people when I speak that social media, new media and mobility are the new battlegrounds in the po- litical communications world. The goals of an election
48 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition Mobile Apps: Better measure of voter engagement than a lawn sign.
campaign, however, have not changed. Those goals are: find volunteers, collect donations and get people out to vote. To do this effectively, you need good content. And content starts, and finishes with the candidate.
Nenshi
has a charisma that resonates with the people he meets. Obama was able to take advantage of this in 2008, and Nenshi was able to do the same in Calgary. I managed to spend some time talking with Richard
Einarson, who was hailed as Nenshi’s social media cam- paign guru. “We were a long way behind in the early stages of the campaign.” explained Einarson. “But Naheed had a strong vision for the city, and when he shared it in person, he was able to get people to share his message. In this way alone, we recruited over 900 active campaign am- bassadors that spread his vision both in public and through our social media channels.” Eschewing the standard 30sec new media ad, the cam- paign developed a 5-minute YouTube video of Nenshi giving his engaging in-person pitch. The clip was viewed over 60 thousand times. “At the time we released the clip, every political pundit told us we were doing the wrong thing, but we knew Naheed had an authentic voice that
aheed Nenshi has been extolled as the “Obama of Canada” for his use of new media, social me- dia and mobility as tools to become the mayor of
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