“Tourism Ireland has always strived to be at the cutting edge of e-marketing and we have worked hard to strengthen our social media presence.”

So says Vera Stedman, Tourism Ireland’s deputy head of Great Britain, when she accepted the award for Best Use of Social Media’ category at the UK travel industry’s Travolution awards in London last month. Tourism Ireland have won a number of awards to date.

To be fair in Ireland we know very little of the online campaigns that Tourism Ireland are using abroad to sell Ireland. Their Facebook page gets huge traffic and they have people ‘listening’ in to conversations on line to butt in (politely no doubt) and sell Ireland.  And they have won loads of awards for the stuff they do online.

It might be worth keeping a closer eye on as tonight I checked my spam folder and found an email via the Guardian mailing lists (I’m on a few and no doubt have let them sell my email to partners). It was titled Out of Office: I’m on holiday in Ireland – I clicked for a look.

Now I’m wondering how much the social media guru charged Tourism Ireland (and us as tax payers) for a stupid pretendy unsigned email to land in my spam box. They should have sent one from Jedward – it would have probably got hordes of people over for a visit.

Fail.

Update

Tourism Ireland have been in touch with a response.

This particular email campaign was devised to inspire people around Britain to imagine themselves on a holiday or short break in Ireland and used peoples’ names to try and put them in that position. Email marketing is such a crowded space and we are always trying out new ideas to achieve some kind of ‘standout’, particularly in GB, where – as you can imagine – it is incredibly competitive. Really sorry this email ended up in your spam filter; occasionally, despite our best efforts, an email can get trapped by spam filters. Overall, this particular campaign has delivered good clickthru rates for us in GB, with a good level of engagement to date (so far, almost 11,000 people have clicked through to enter the competition).

Election Mall (based in the USA) were paid €149,435 by Fine Gael for publicity and advertising services.  In addition they spent €98,616 on Google and Facebook advertising. (Fine Gael spent €3,120,238 in total on the election.)

If you want to see what this amount of money gets you, Election Mall have made a video showing what they did! Remember the twolicy, the game, … the MSN advertising? (No i didn’t get the latter either).

Election Mall and Fine Gael are of course now no longer working together after the company refused to co-operate with a Data Protection Commission investigation into the hacking of the new website last January. The party were said to be seeking an Irish company to handle things online for them- any news on who has the gig now?

Ravi Singh continues to work on elections across the world and talk about himself and Obama even though he was never involved.  Election Mall have an office which is their European HQ in a temporary office suite in Dublin 2.

Fianna Fáil paid over €12,000 to their guru’s, Blue State Digital, in General Election 2011.  Have a look through the rest of the expense reports to see who else was paid for Democracy 2.0 in Election 2011.

Farcically there have been more advertisements for internships for waiters (Food Service Personnel cough) and cleaner interns in Four Star Hotels in Cork and qualified beauticians in Malahide who will vajazzle you courtesy of a payment from the Department of Social Protection.   The  hotel jobs were pulled following direct action protests to the hotel by twitter and by email.

One could be forgiven in thinking officials in the Department of Social Protection who are vetting these adverts are doing it so badly on purpose in some sort of protest or attempt to try undermine the Minister and the entire programme.   Meanwhile the Minister and Martin Murphy of HP, chairperson of the Job Bridge Steering Group, are taking to the road to talk about the scheme. Next week they are in Athlone for a breakfast briefing (you can apply to attend)

They will speak about the scheme providing

quality internship in an organisation in the private, public or community and voluntary sectors. Its aim is to provide those seeking employment with the opportunity to gain valuable and meaningful, (my emphasis) work experience. By involving themselves in this internship, participants will enhance their skills and ultimately improve their prospects of securing employment in the future.

That’ll be no mention of cleaning, waiting tables, designing websites for free for furniture movers or vajazzling I assume.

For years I have endured commentary from those in mainly the print media about the fact that bloggers can’t be trusted, have no editors or legitimacy.  Despite asserting that blogging and mainstream journalism were different things, talking about crowd sourcing and fact checking and pointing to the fact that often blog content is nicked and printed as fact without accreditation, I still have been challenged about the poor standard and poor ethics of blogging like it was the same thing or it really mattered (or that I was responsible!).  I’ve also spent a lot of time learning talking about libel and defamation and that the law applies to all.

Now in the midst of the melt down of News International and possibly other media groups as the so called ‘dark arts’ aka lying, stealing, bribing and cheating are exposed I am forced to endure further debates.  From the Marian Finucane show yesterday and other programmes we are hearing about the need for (or impossibility of) control of the internet – mainstream editors in Ireland including the Evening Herald’s Stephen Rae are pointing to the ‘bad boys’ that can’t be controlled online and that nothing like what has happened in the UK will happen here.

Not all journalists blag and hack, not all bloggers want to be journalists or should be trusted.  They are not the same thing but are rapidly merging as news and opinion is more likely to be read and shared online than anywhere else.  Who produces the news and how it’s produced and churnalism and news aggregators online and the work that goes into building stories and views of events using products like Storyful and the fact print is dying can not be avoided any more.

You can’t believe everything you read no matter where you read it.  The debates which have been held online and elsewhere for some time about the close relationships between police and the media and politicians and the media might suddenly get more mainstream coverage.

Pointing to the corner at others ‘being worse’ than you are is a well known distraction technique which after the uncovering of the methods of some in News International won’t work anymore.   The debate has to grow up and the media education of the public needs to begin.

Poor Minister for Communications and Natural Resources ( and that makes him in charge of t’internet!)  Pat Rabbitte got his Internet gurus mixed up when he referred to ‘Mr. Google, Zuckerberg’.  I thought a helpful guide might be in order so if he ever gets to meet Mr. Google or Mr. Facebook he’ll know who is who.

So Pat Rabbitte – especially for you.

(To the tune of the intro to Resevoir Dogs)

This is Mr. Google Larry Page

This is also Mr. Google his name is Sergey Brin

They employ lots of people in Dublin – bought a building off NAMA and all so they did.

This is Mr. Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, he was in Dublin last week, played with a hurley that was presented to him (very on trend!)  He has employees here – (important for tax payers and FDI stuff etc.) For bonus points watch The Social Network which covers the early history of Facebook.

Now this is Mr. Twitter, Jack Dorsey

and that’s Mr. Twitter too, Biz Stone –

There are a few other Mr. Twitters also.  These are people you and Minister Bruton should be talking to about getting to come to Dublin and set up their European HQ. Although Mr. Bruton had not talked to them when Willie O’Dea checked earlier this month.
 

Other internet and computer type people for Minister Rabitte’s cog notes?   Suggestions are most welcome.  Internet Service Provider types? And a topic list? Net Neutrality? What Broadband actually is? Cloud Computing?

I know from liveblogging other debates that there have been tweets sent  surreptitiously from the gallery before but today was different.  An usher was about to tell  me to put my phone away when it was explained to him that today it was allowed.  In the gallery there were a number of dignitaries from embassies and former MEP’s and classes of school children.   The embassy staff were writing things down presumably to report back to their governments.  That is a normal rule violation in the gallery.

In fact there is no applause, no talking, no reading, no writing and above all no phones or data devices in the public gallery of the Dáil or Seanad or from the committee rooms.   I have watched a lot of Dáil and Seanad debates from the comfort of my sofa and rarely visit due to work restrictions but also due to the fact that I cannot communicate what I see or think or when I want to fact check due to these rules.

I can understand no noise, no photos, no phone ring tones, no applause or disruption but surely now is the right time to allow people to communicate what they think or see when they are in to observe?  Also it’s time to explain why the Oireachtas does the things it does and as procedures change in terms of the committee structures and their powers of investigation people from various groups and sectoral interests  should be invited in to watch and tweet/blog  about how things operate and the issues that are discussed.

The experience of live blogging all the stages of the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights of Cohabitants Bill last year gave me a lot of food for thought on the lifelong civics education of the population.  How a bill is written and what happens at its various stages is something that few understand.  The set pieces that make the news do little for the reputation of the parliament but the debates and questions put on issues and legislation and discussions that happen in committee would make for much better fodder for understanding of the Oireachtas and what it actually does and can do.

The online broadcast of Oireachtas proceedings has improved hugely in recent months, I hope with digital TV on the horizon we can have an Oireachtas channel complete with broadcast of local authority meetings.  Enough of the ‘playing to the camera’ worries it’s time for transparency and that includes increasing the volume of the online message and the ability of voters and visitors to communicate what they see.

However Ravi’s international travels have not gone completely smoothly. Politico.com has been having a look. In Poland some pesky but determined journalists kept digging about the Obama claims that he has been allowing go uncorrected for years. Singh has had to take down a video where he was referred to as an Obama campaign guru.

To be clear he has worked for a US state democratic party Obama campaign in a VERY small way. He was sacked by a gubnertorial campaign for messing up a campaign website. And we remember what happened with the Fine Gael website pre #ge11. Those who hired him in Columbia are very surprised to hear that he did not work for Obama.

And thanks to Fine Gael’s campaign Euro’s Ravi posts pictures like this on his twitter account and claims his role in Fine Gael’s electoral victory.

Next stop Guatemala. where Ravi Singh is charging up to 100 dollars a seat (that’s a lot of money in Central America) to hear him talk all about Facebook and campaigns (maybe with gems like where Fine Gael deleted negative posts and temporarily closed down accounts which challenged them – will he mention twolicy?).  And where the media uncorrected by Singh continue to mention him as an Obama guru.

It is very easy to use and needs no specialist recording equipment beyond a smart phone or a computer. So it’s fairly politician/candidate proof.

It was used a bit in the UK election by candidates (See UK Labour Election 10 page) and election watchers and originally made famous by Stephen Fry (well made famous to me by Stephen Fry!)  I have seen some press officers in political parties here use it to make recordings of press conferences and doorsteps in case queries come up later. (See Labour’s Audioboo page here for example).

The sound quality is excellent and could be rebroadcast on radio or television with ease so this means that should something be recorded by a candidate or someone else recording something on the campaign trail it could get a wider audience.  All you have to do is download the software, set up an account (free!) record your thoughts and publish either to your audioboo page or elsewhere (eg. facebook, blog, twitter, campaign website).

Two examples of Audioboo so far in #ge11

First is Simon Coveney, TD for Cork South Central who has made a number of short broadcasts about the winding up fo the Dáil, starting serious canvassing and this most recent one on the election of constituency colleague Micheál Martin as leader of Fianna Fáil.

The second example is different, it’s a series of interviews between cork blogger Paul O’Mahony and Labour Party candidate in Cork North Central, John Gilroy. Sometimes Paul and John meet up for a coffee and they blather on about all sorts of campaign and national issues and other times like this boo Paul comes across John in the street after a canvass and has a chat.

Would love to know if there are other candidates or voters or interest groups using Auidoboo during the campaign. I love the simplicity of it and the use of voice and background noise to get the sense of what is going on. It also gives candidates a chance to talk about their issues or ideas during campaigns.

Many FG TD’s and candidates have established accounts in the last ten days. Fine Gael HQ themselves have an account – @FineGaelToday.

This afternoon that account tweeted a statement about Enda Kenny’s visit to Brussels this evening.

It was quickly deleted – that’s a retweet that I caught and can’t be deleted by the original sender.  ‘Mr. Barroso recognises Fine Gael is the next party of Government’.  Confident eh?

Shortly afterwards (14.15) a stream of repetitive tweets came from a number of TD’s at the same time. Unfortunately the tweets would not be read by many – ie.  A tweet coming from Brian Hayes which starts @EndaKennyTD means that only those subscribed to Enda Kenny’s account would be able to see it. Maybe it was a misguided attempt to get Enda Kenny trending on twitter. Sigh.

It’s very clear that these tweets were centrally sent from someone using tweetdeck.

Someone obviously realised the lack of impact of this initial tweet from multiple TD’s so the exercise was repeated at about 5pm  after Enda met with Mr. Barrosso. Instantly the same tweet came from candidates accounts – all using tweetdeck to do so.

Candidates who hand over control of their personal accounts to someone else are silly, parties who take control of their candidates accounts give the impression of a)having no faith in their candidates or b) having no clue or c)complete paranoia of message control.

There’s no problem with candidates sending that message themselves throughout the day – repeating the message of the day with their own twist on it maybe – in their own voice. I saw that many of the Labour candidates for example tweeting the 50 days message ten days ago with some putting their own touch on it and it was clear that they were doing it themselves.

Yesterday morning I saw Enda Kenny give a speech about trust at  Edelman’s launch of their Trust Barometer research. Ironically that speech centred on the siege of Leningrad.

The use of social media in elections is about engaging with electorate and creating trust. If candidates can’t be trusted to operate their own twitter accounts and speak their own mind how can we trust them in government?