Saturday 9 August 2008

Good technology

The Bristol Blogger has been having a bit of a rant on his site (a 'self-declared rant' in fact) about the Council producing a DVD on recycling. MPs get sent loads of such things. We don't watch them. We don't have time. A few get chucked at researchers, and I try to convince them that yes, I really do expect them to take them home and watch them. Most recently there was one on the Regional Spatial Strategy - what's not exciting about that? (And yes, I know the RSS is important - but essential Saturday night viewing? No).

At the last couple of elections Labour - and I guess the Tories too - produced videos of candidates in marginal seats, distributing them to 1000s of households. I wonder how many got watched? One of my colleagues in fact produced a DVD of his TV highlights, set to the tune of 'Search for a Hero' by M-People (which is enough to put anyone off). Can you imagine mine? Here's a clip of Kerry talking about buses on Points West... And here's another.... And another....

Anyway, what does work - for me at least - are emails with links to YouTube clips. But only if it's something like seals being clubbed, where you need to see it for yourself. And only if they're short. I can't quite see the Regional Spatial Strategy being a YouTube hit.

2 comments:

SteveL said...

We in the railwaypath.org campaign found youtube videos very effective as they are not only cost effective (free), and easy to distribute, you get data on usage; demographics.

What is interesting about youtube is alongside our efforts, videos of drunken parties, and lego stop-motion animation (my son's favourite), there are things like Martin Luther King's unedited speeches, documentaries on US tent cities and stuff that wouldnt make it onto television. It's a very interesting place for political activism.

Kerry said...

It's also easy to pass on the link if you find it interesting, so word gets round much quicker.

But what do you think of politicians using YouTube or the like? I mean things like Webcameron, Derek Wyatt TV (http://www.derekwyatt.tv/), Stephen Williams' use of YouTube on his site - do you think that serves a useful purpose?