Gary Andrews

Gosh, there’s nothing like a few well placed words for kicking off a party political crisis. Or, rather, there’s nothing like a slightly weird video that presents the Prime Minister of this country looking like a strange gurning alien for kicking off a party political crisis.

Earlier this week, Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, wrote in the Observer:

“YouTube if you want to. But it’s no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre.”

It’s pretty obvious what her target was here: the YouTube video where Gordon Brown announced plans to reform MPs expenses without telling Parliament first. It also contained a few somewhat frightening impromptu smiles that didn’t help his image one jot.

Sadly, this kerfuffle has somewhat shown British politics in a somewhat unfortunate light again when it comes to social media. You’d think when you’ve got Barack Obama and his supporters embracing the web, that politicians in the UK from all parties could learn from this.

But, no. We’re still on either dismissing tools like YouTube out of hand or, worse still, condemning any attempt to engage online as a waste of taxpayers money. 

Take this rather ignorant post from Conservative MP Nadine Dorries on her attitude to Twitter.

In some respects it’s no different from what you’d hear from others who don’t get or don’t want to get Twitter. But to hear it from an elected representative is somewhat disappointing.

It essentially implies that she’s quite simply not going to bother engaging in a growing platform that provides an excellent way to directly connect with voters. As Chris at Clicking and Screaming says:

“I see little difference between the banal comments of the Twittersphere about ‘In the Loop’ and the banal opinions of a Member of Parliament on anything outside her remit. If it’s interesting to you, follow it. If not, don’t. But don’t lash out at those who do.

…

The compulsive need of those not involved to discuss it at length shows a fear of the unknown which, for a politician (and I generally have more respect for politicians than most do), is short-sighted.”

Let’s come back to Blears’ comments that You Tube is no substitute for door-to-door canvassing or taking the soapbox on tour. Again, it’s dismissing a wide-reaching social media tool used by a lot of the voting and non-voting public. It sounds a lot like one of those people back in the day who thought email would never catch on.

Local electioneering still has its place but YouTube has the potential to reach millions – many more than the town centre soapbox [1].

A few MPs even have their own YouTube channel, including Blears’ colleague Sadiq Khan [2]. But even then, this reveals a whole new set of problems. The most popular video on Khan’s channel has 227 views. The rest average somewhere between seven and about 150. Still, it’s a start.

The problem, to me, is one that’s all too common in any business or organisation or industry. You have some people who get social media and want to engage. You have some that know that they should probably be on these sites in some way, shape or form but aren’t sure how, and you have those who just don’t want to know.

Politicians, largely, are in the second and third groups. Brown’s office is probably in the second – they’re making the right moves but aren’t really utilising it properly.

So, for Brown’s YouTube videos, it has a feeling of somebody suggesting it as a good idea but with no real strategy behind it or a proper feeling for how YouTube works.

It feels somewhat like The Thick Of It special where the opposition MP’s advisor starts a blog, while the politician himself doesn’t really care.

In all honesty, it probably wouldn’t take a lot of work to join together all the aspects. There’s no reason why, say, Brown couldn’t have announced the expenses measure to the chamber and then had a YouTube video posted immediately after the announcement (sans gurning, you’d hope) and then followed it up with, ooh, a blog post and the like.

Then, on the other side, perhaps Labour (or perhaps an apolitical body) could pull together all the politician YouTube videos, and Twitter accounts, in one place so it’s easy for constituents to find and engage with their MP (which is, after all, one of the main reasons why they were elected, right?).

And there’s no harm in giving the Twitter feed or YouTube channels a plug. I only stumbled across Sadiq Khan’s feed when I was looking for something else – in 18 months living in Tooting, I’d never had information offline that he had a web presence and it wasn’t top of my agenda to look. Many other voters probably have similar mindsets.

As The Register points out, moderating comments isn’t that difficult (and it doesn’t seem as if Downing Street had even thought of it) and there’s so much untapped potential for politicians in this country to get involved in social media, engage and perhaps win back some of the trust that they seem so keen to squander on a regular basis.

But instead Labour (and, via Dorries, the Conservatives as well) have managed to get social media, their strategy and response so spectacularly wrong. Which leads to another spat. Which turns voters off even further.

Add to this the smeargate emails, and the media’s obsession that Iain Dale, Gudio Fawkes and the unlamented Derek Draper, are the only web-politics that matter, well, it just doesn’t want to make you get involved online.

In the US, Obama used social media and the web to bring about a positive movement that engaged the average voter in politics. In the UK, all we can do is sling political mud at each other online. How very depressing.

[1] It’s worth saying that the soapbox offers politicians a direct way to engage and spend time talking to constituents, but there’s no guarantee that the constituents want to engage. With social media – You Tube, Facebook, Twitter et al – you can measure the level of success much more effectively AND engage in conversation.

[2] The only reason I’ve chosen Sadiq Khan is he used to be my local MP so I’m slightly more familiar with his online presence (he has a Twitter feed as well) rather than any particular like of dislike of the politician.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Gordon Brown, Hazel Blears, Nadine Dorries, politicians on Twitter, politicians online, Sadiq Khan, You Tube, YouTube

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqX-tkDXEk]

For a bunch of aging comedians, the Monty Python crew have always been a bit ahead of many of their younger contemporaries when it comes to the internet. Now they’ve gone where many other TV shows would fear to go – uploading their content for free onto YouTube.

As the Guardian reports, they’ve used the site’s Video ID system to identify their material that’s been uploaded (without their permission), replacing it with better quality footage on their own YouTube channel and attaching adverts to the clips urging watchers to buy their DVDs. That immediately appears to have paid off:

“And there is method in the Pythonesque madness of giving away valuable content for free – Monty Python’s DVD sales are up more than 1,000% following the launch of their YouTube channel, and that’s on Amazon alone. Fans must have been listening to the Python message: “We want you to click on links and buy our movies and TV shows. Only this will soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years …”"

As a fan, it’s a great idea – high quality clips for free, while there’s no better way to get you in the frame of mind to buy some classic Python. The quality of the clips is definitely a key hook – why trawl through poor-quality stuff when you’ve got the official stuff in all its glory?

Would this approach work for other shows? Well, the Python team are in a pretty privileged position as they’ve got an established brand and a very large fanbase – not to mention (I’d imagine) hundreds of people searching for clips on YouTube every day.

Whether it’d work for a smaller show trying to make a name for itself or a lengthy drama is an interesting one – but it certainly couldn’t hurt to try.

YouTube is a massive player in online video, so it makes sense to try and utilise it – and if the content’s officially sanctioned, it does give the show’s owner some degree of control. And, as the Python team have already shown, it can have a positive effect on sales.

It’s all part of the more social experience that viewers come to expect online today, and shows that YouTube is hear to stay and should be considered in any promotional strategy. Quite how you then drive traffic from there to your own website, and then ensure you make money from it, is another question entirely. But if you’re not engaging in some way with these sites, there’s always a risk of becoming a dead parrot.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Monty Python, TV clips, video, YouTube

Out of the many strange habits that have developed during my office-based working life is to dive onto YouTube at various points in the day to have a quick blast of music. Usually it’s out of a desire to hear a specific track or a specific band that isn’t on my iPod. It’s quick, easy and generally satisfies any urge I may have to listen to Hoddle and Waddle’s Diamond Lights [1].

Like Homer Simpson squeezing juice out of an orange by pressing it against his forehead, I’ve always suspected there’s probably an easier way to satisfy my arbitrary musical cravings. Certainly Muzu looks like it does the job a lot better. Largely because it’s nothing but music on there.

There’s a few interesting features, especially the bit that allows fans to upload their own tributes, video and footage directly to the artist’s profile, and the video player’s embeddable to blogs and social networking sites. It’s also quite artist-friendly, as they share their advertising revenue with the artists and anything fans upload has the copyright assigned to the artist, which is an interesting solution to the age-old problem on copyright v filesharing.

The teenage me would have probably loved the site, given how into music I was back then. Memories of taping every new entry off the top 40, collecting anything and everything to do with a band and the like. The older me isn’t quite so into his music anymore, views festivals as his idea of personal hell and rarely gets to gigs. But can see why music fans would like the site. As my more music loving colleague said when I forwarded her the link: “I love this. I think it’s broken my computer, but when it restarts I’m going straight back on.”

I’m still having occasional problems navigating around the site, but less so that MySpace. And what I’d really like to see is a ‘like this artist – try these’ recommendation on the channels, a bit like the related video bit on YouTube. But most unforgivably of all is a search for The Smiths brings up New Kids On The Block. That’s something that needs to be fixed before hysterical shaven-headed Morrissey fans start throwing vegan soup at the creators.

Techcrunch has been pretty complementary about Muzu and its nice to see YouTube and MySpace get a bit of competition in the music stakes, and music PRs could definitely find it useful, if it takes off. Thankfully, nobody’s uploaded Diamond Lights to the site yet either.

DISCLAIMER: Yes, this is the product the company who emailed me a few weeks ago was pitching. I’m writing about it as I quite like the site. If it was shite, I wouldn’t have. I’ve not got paid or even given a cup of tea for this. And I’m not planning on writing up any old PR bumf that I’m sent on a regular basis. But I thought it tied in quite nicely with the pitching to bloggers post, and theirs was a good pitch. And, as I said, I like the product. I’d have emailed it to a few friends regardless. Not that this write up will make any difference to their hits, I suspect, given that about 20 people read this blog. And not that I feel particularly ‘raaaah, I am TEH ALL POWERFUL BLOGGER, kneel before me puny traditional media’ for doing writing this, as I don’t really invite these kind of PR pitches and I’m not overly likely to write about them. In fact I’ve probably just destroyed any linger credibility I have now.

[1] I have only ever done this once, I’d like to stress.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Muzu, PR pitching to bloggers, YouTube

I’ve just got back from a fascinating evening down the pub catching up with an old friend of mine, who now happens to be working for a local newspaper and it wasn’t long before we got onto the topic of online video – something which forms part of his everyday job.

[Enters broken record mode] 

What was really fascinating was to hear how his views matched mine and, at times, was even more vehemently critical of the efforts of some local newspapers when it comes to online video [1].

Chief amongst his criticisms were:

1. The idea that throwing video online for the sake of throwing video online is a good way to win readers.

2. Journalists aren’t trained properly and are given sub-standard equipment, so produce sub-standard videos.

3. Sub-standard videos damage the brand.

4. Local journalists simply don’t have the time to produce consistent good quality web content.

This isn’t to say he was negative, and could point to some examples of papers within his group producing well-produced web content, be it video, podcasts, or blogging. But the frustration was there – it wasn’t that he didn’t want to do online content, its just the resources and time available were nowhere near enough.

What was somewhat more terrifying was the attitude of senior management to online content. There was no consistent approach to RSS feeds and he’d taken to putting the videos on YouTube himself because it hadn’t occurred to anybody else in the office to do so. Tellingly, the YouTube videos appeared to be getting more hits.

Then there was the inflexible CMS, not to mention the fact that nobody was even mentioning blogging. He’d considered trying to start a newspaper blog but didn’t have time, although he did occasionally expand some of his print articles. The management attitude to online media players such as Bebo, Google, and Myspace was nonexistent. While it’s not surprising to hear these criticisms coming from somebody who works within the industry (and is by no means representative. A more casual acquaintance is much more upbeat about their paper), it’s worrying. Even more worrying is hearing that those who have some nous about harnessing online potential are just giving up and moving elsewhere.

Tonight was definitely food for thought. There were a lot of positive ideas bandied around, as you’d expect over a few pints, but also a lot of frustration. It’s a shame for his paper that he’s moving elsewhere – he’s not just a very good journalist, but also one who’s willing to embrace the web and can see where the problems lie with local papers’ attempts to move into the digital age. 

[1] I’ll freely admit I’m writing from the point of somebody who has done a bit of this and a bit of that, which includes print and broadcasting, but am not currently working on the front line, as it were, of newspaper’s online efforts. 

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: local newspaper websites, video journalism, Web 2.0, YouTube