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you, and downloading an app is a very simple test (or in our case a measurement tool) to determine personal voter commitment and engagement from the public at large.
The Lessons of Nenshi What Nenshi has been able to do is put a spotlight on what happens when authentic, charismatic candidates use the latest in technology to pursue their political ambitions. When vision and passion are generated offline, they tend to be reflected and echoed online and in the mobile world in proportion to their impact. This creates an interesting measure that may in fact become a guide for candidate selection in the future. Perhaps candidates should be picked for their personal influence through the social media community. Nenshi had hundreds of actively engaged Twitter followers before he launched his campaign, and never once turned over his Twitter password to his campaign to tweet on his behalf. He is still the only one that knows it. There is still a lot of trepidation at the Federal level in
Apps can measure engagement, but not always victory.
O’Brien’s supporters were engaged, but that he didn’t have the absolute numbers required to carry the election. The small total social media numbers for both candi- dates made it clear the race had already been decided. The public didn’t have to click the “Like” button as everyone had already clicked the “Like” button in his or her minds. In essence, the public becomes lazy when it’s already made a decision, and the 10-point drop in voter turnout also echoed that sentiment.
“Liked” vs. “Engaged”. On a grander scale in 2010 there was the Meg Whitman/ Jerry Brown race for Governor in California. Meg Whit- man had more Facebook “Likes” than Jerry Brown by a significant margin, and still does to this day (198,000 vs. 115,000). Having released the mobile application for Meg Whitman in a race with 17 million registered voters, we expected to see huge uptake. Many of the successful cam- paigns we had been involved in had mobile app download ratios of 20% to 30% against the Facebook “Like” base so we were prepared for a huge first day of downloads. By the end of the first week we knew something was
off. Downloads of the application had fallen significantly short of our previous penetration rates. The campaign did everything possible to spread the word on the app and its existence using Twitter and Facebook. There was no shortage of effort in making the app visible to support- ers, and it was prominently displayed on the front page of Meg’s website. Three months later, Meg was defeated - 53.8% to 40.9%. The lesson learned was that it’s not enough to have
people “Like” you on Facebook. You actually have to be able to get your supporters to do real-world things for
50 Campaigns & Elections | Canadian Edition
Ottawa these days around the use of new media, social networking and mobile technologies. Will the current slate of candidates resonate on the new technologies? Do any of them have a genuine appeal beyond the 30-second sound byte? It will be interesting to see who dares to put out a 5-minute video on their vision for the country and test their ability to hold the interest of Canadians.
The App is the new Lawn sign In the past, placing a candidate’s sign on your front lawn showcased personal commitment to their campaign.
It
represented support for a candidate who likely had met the voter at the door and through a discussion resulted in an agreement of some sort about the election. The sign represented the voter wanting to share their voting inten- tion and decided support with neighbors. Today, there is no place as personalized as a voter’s mobile
device. Most people claim they can’t live without it. Oc- cupying real estate on the digital lawn of voters may now be a more quantifiable measure of engagement than ever was the lawn sign. Perhaps the “Like” button is too easy to push, and like TV and radio ads, might end up having the candi- date shared into districts, regions or even countries where there may be support, but no votes to be won. Nenshi’s success in new media, social media and mobile applications should be a harbinger for change in the way we select and measure candidate’s success in advance of the polls.
Clearly, he has paved the way and created the
metrics that all others will be measured by in the near future.
John Craig is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Purple Forge (
www.purpleforge.com) that provides iPhone applications to politicians such as Tim Hudak, Sharron Angle and the UK In- dependence Party. John was also named to the 2011 Aristotle Dream Team for Mobile Campaigning around the Globe.
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