Words Dept.: entry

Today’s CashGordon fiasco has got me thinking about the point of a social media campaign and reinforces the point that simply getting your brand or campaign mentioned on Twitter is not an end in itself.

For Tories, the CashGordon strategy was based around creating something that would inflame people on Twitter, and then watching as the #CashGordon hashtag began to trend highly, regardless of the actual merits of the campaign or content of the CashGordon site (in this case, Charlie Whelan and the Unite union’s supposed hold over Gordon Brown and Labour policy). This much was admitted by Tory blogger Samuel Coates, who said on Twitter earlier:

Sitting back and marvelling at #CashGordon – we had an open hashtag policy, and have not changed that today, for a reason!

Other examples of self-satisfied gloating on Twitter earlier today came from the Tories’ in-house “online communities editor” Craig Elder, who praised Labour and lefty-types for drawing attention to the CashGordon site:

@psbook Such an own goal on your part, repeatedly drawing attention to our campaign. Please continue.

What was actually happening here was not any discussion of Whelan or Unite. Instead, there was lots of criticism for CashGordon. The Guardian had noticed that the site used a template that had been developed in the US as a campaign tool against US healthcare reform. The phrase also started to trend highly because people quickly realised that since the Twitter stream on the CashGordon website was unmoderated, you could write embarrassing things about the Tories (or indeed childish swearwords, or even adverts) and get them on to the CashGordon site in real time, provided they were tagged #CashGordon (see image, top left).

Then someone realised that the site could be exploited by script commands. Pretty soon, CashGordon was redirecting to a site saying “David Cameron is a c**t” in 48-point type, a Rick Astley video on YouTube and some OAP porn (link is safe for work). The site was subsequently taken down and remains offline. All in all, then, this was fairly obviously a total embarrassment, a mega PR fail and a terrible idea very poorly executed.

Yet, after a couple of hours, Elder and Coates reappeared on Twitter, still maintaining that all was well. After I sarcastically observed that CashGordon was “a social media triumph”, Elder replied to me like this:

@davidquinn Can’t disagree with that – it’s still trending in the UK…

How stupid do you have to be to think that just because a word or phrase trends on Twitter, that automatically makes it a good campaign? It obviously doesn’t, and to think otherwise is simply confusing the medium with the message.

I realise that as an employee of the Conservative party, Elder’s job is to talk up its “successes” against all rational logic but, really, does he actually believe that this idea was executed in a way that was positive for the Tories? His argument, and that of some other social media practitioners, seems to be that if you get something trending, you’ve automatically “won”. But in this case people aren’t talking about Unite, the BA strike or Charlie Whelan (the point of the Tory campaign). Instead, they’re talking about how a flagship Tory website has been forced offline in embarrassing circumstances – and having a bloody good laugh about it. How is this a win?

Using the Tory rationale, Nestlé had a good day on Friday, when the company’s name began to trend on Twitter following claims by Greenpeace about the slaying of orang-utans during Nestlé’s harvesting of palm oil, which was compounded by Nestlé’s disastrous intervention on Facebook, in which it told people to stop using its logo. In reality, of course, the brand has taken a dive and the thing is already a case study in how not to “do” social media.

Looking back, if it’s remembered at all, I very much doubt CashGordon will be seen as a brilliant use of Twitter as a political campaigning medium. Instead, it will be seen as a byword for total technical incompetence and a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of social media.

Footnote: In case you’re wondering, and since there’s an election brewing, this blog is not pro-Labour, nor is it pro- any other political party.