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Communications Was Key to Election Win

The Conservative Party's communications strategy was flawlessly executed during the recent Canadian election campaign, says media coach Bob Reid.

"Harper’s communications efforts were central to his party’s win, and they provided numerous good examples for any and all in the communications game," Reid comments about Conservative leader and PM-designate Stephen Harper.

In a Veritas Communications e-mail newsletter, Reid explains that in politics, you either define yourself, or the other guys define you.

"Harper hit the ground running, spending every day of the first half of the campaign by rolling out a new and easy to understand policy announcement. That allowed him to define himself and his agenda – and by doing so, it denied the Liberals the opportunity to define him as a scary guy with a hidden agenda (as they were so successful in doing in 2004)."

Another key element of Conservative communications was that the messages were simple and easy to understand.

"Clear, consistent messages delivered in the right way to the right target was the foundation of the Conservatives’ election win, and it will serve as a “how to” example for communications efforts for years to come."

The Touchdowns & Fumbles newsletter is published weekly, featuring Reid and Veritas vice-president Bill Walker. Check it archived editions of Touchdowns & Fumbles here. No RSS feed yet, but you can subscribe to the e-mail version.

If my extensive research is correct, that's Reid (left) juggling extremely large suppositories in the photo, while Walker is seen holding the office intercom.

Baby It's (Not) Cold Out There

Anybody I know who sometimes sends warm thoughts to keep away the cold prairie winter can save themselves the bother this year.  While there might still be some minus 40 weather ahead, this has been the mildest prairie winter I can remember.

We've had a bit of a heat wave (mild wave?) since mid December. The temperatures are finally cooling down a bit in the north, where they need thick ice on lakes and rivers to get supplies delivered to many communities.

Here in Regina, I've only plugged in the car (a heater coil that keeps your engine oil warm) once this winter.

A typical winter scene in Regina from last year:

Environment Canada explains the unusual warm weather.

Blog Comments for Visually Impaired

I notice Typepad has added a visual verification that sometimes kicks in before you can post comments to this blog. This is to make it harder for a spammer to post hundreds or thousands of garbage messages automatically to blogs.

If you are visually impaired, or otherwise can't use the verification tool to post a comment, please just send me an e-mail with your comment, and I'll post it for you.

It's an awkward workaround, but until Typepad (my blog hosting service) comes up with a tool that relies on something other than your ability to read the characters on a graphic image, it will have to do.

According to Six Apart's (the company behind Typepad) Anil Dash, the comment verification requirements vary depending on spammer activity. See his comment on Neville Hobson's blog:

"On TypePad, we adjust the response based on a variety of factors, all based on which behaviors spammers are displaying most on a given day. I haven't followed up enough in detail with the technical team to know exactly what stage those tests are in now, but I expect we won't be as open as we'd perhaps like to be about the various tests in place because spammers read blogs, too. :)

"Overall, TypePad blocks something like 95% or more of spam, and we're always looking to improve."

Stay tuned for updates. Given the hassle comment spam can cause, and the ingenuity of spammers, I suspect the comment control processes will change from time to time for a long time to come.

Anonymous CBC Columnist Unmasked

The anonymous "Campaign Confidential" election columnist featured on CBC's The National and on its web site has been revealed: Rick Anderson.

Wow. The suspense was killing me.

Who the hell is Rick Anderson? "A former campaign director for the Reform                           Party."

How many of the anonymous columns did I watch? Just one.

Was it worth waiting to find out the thrilling conclusion to this mystery?

Zzzzzzz.

Oops, sorry, I dozed off there for a minute.

Previous post:

Anonymous Blogger Bounty: I'll Pitch in $20

CBC, Bloggers Accused of Election Day Leaks

In a "he-said, she-said" debate, CBC's blog report accused some Canadian foreign blogs of violating the Elections Act by announcing election results while polls were still open, while bloggers accused the CBC of doing just that on its international service.

Functional Food: Do Less Harm to Yourself

In a consumer society, there is a product to solve every problem.

Don't want to stop buying useless stuff?  Well, as long you recycle you won't feel guilty.

Want to reduce the pollution you cause? No need to reduce your driving, just buy yourself a hybrid car.

Obviously I don't agree with the idea that you can be moral by just buying more environmentally-friendly crap. But sometimes even I have to agree that buying a product is an improvement.

Take the trend toward functional food. It's a concept the health food industry has been selling for years. Since everyone has to eat, you might as well eat something that keeps you healthy, slows down aging and improves your potency (to name a few benefits).

 

Choosing functional food pushes you toward product choices like pure, dark chocolate instead of mass-produced chocolate bars. Or a good red wine instead of a vodka cooler.

The products are getting more sophisticated. Instead of replacing coffee with chickory (the old health food option), marketers now offer an herbal infusion coffee with calcium and magnesium soaked into the beans, to offset the effect of coffee leaching calcium from your body.

 

If this where the food industry is headed, I'm interested. Just don't ask me to give up my coffee.

Tag: functional food

Spin Detector Measures Political Deception

Queen's University tried out a deception detector, and applied it to speeches by three Canadian political leaders.

The results? Paul Martin uses the most indirect language, Stephen Harper the least indirect, and Jack Layton is slightly more indirect than Harper.

Using the Pennebaker model for detecting deception in text, the computer science students scanned the speeches for the following traits:

The Pennebaker model predicts that deceptive text will be marked by:

• A decreased frequency of first-person pronouns, perhaps because of a speaker's attempts to distance himself or herself from what's being said;
• A decreased frequency of exception words, such as `however' and `unless', perhaps to keep the story simple;
• An increased frequency of negative emotion words, perhaps because of some instinctive distaste about deceiving; and
• An increased frequency of action words, perhaps to keep the story going so that inconsistencies might not be noticed.

I don't know if I buy the model's premise, but at least somebody's paying attention to speechwriting these days.

Intrigued, I tried running a recent blog posting through the Language Inquiry and Word Count tool from the University of Texas at Austin's James Pennebaker, for analyzing character traits of an author.

If I understand the tool correctly, my writing is more direct, less emotional and more optimistic than average. I also use a lot of articles and big words, which leaves me open to accusations of being a detached, concrete thinker. (I also ran this posting through the tool, and it seems to think a brainy robot wrote it.)

Thanks to Jakob Webster for the link.

PR Briefs - News Items Jan. 19, 2006

Tory Story

Antonia Zerbisias on the (very small) furore over conservative blogs, and warnings about contravention of Canada's Elections Act.

Foxy Loxy said: "Come along with me, and I will show you the way."

PR is about more than media relations, Tom Murphy argues in PR Opinions, expanding ona point made by Tom Foremski. It's true.  Most people who aren't in communications don't see past the media relations aspect of the work.

The Emergence of a Blog Caste System

Tom Murphy takes aim at popular bloggers who no longer feel the need to be involved in online conversations.

Firefly Fans are Passing the Hat | Darren Barefoot

The Joss Wheedon science fiction TV series Firefly that became the film Serenity is in a stage of reincarnation, with fans trying to raise money to film another season (it was cancelled partway through its first season). We got the Firefly and Serenity DVDs this Christmas, and love them both.

Annals of the Insanity of Air Canada

Peter Rukavina notes the $4,266 difference between flying Air Canada to Switzerland, and flying a discount carrier.

In Vancouver this Weekend

I'm in Vancouver this weekend (Jan. 20-23) for my Mom's 75th birthday.

She's living in Mission now, to be closer to my sister Maja and her family.

If you want to reach me, try me on  the cell phone (306) 596-6740, or text message me at the same number.  I'm on the North Shore Friday, Sunday night and Monday morning.

I'll also be in Vancouver Feb. 9-11 for the Northern Voice 2006 blogging conference. I'm mostly just in town, to the conference, and out of town, but give me a shout anyway.

Disappearing Brands in Canadian Hinterland

Okay, so while I was sleeping, ScotTowels got renamed "SpongeTowels" and Radio Shack morphed into "The Source."

Not that I really care what brand of paper towels I use, but Scott Paper has a long history in Canada, so it alters your mindset a bit. Like when online friends change their handles, so you no longer recognize them when you bump into them in message forums and chat rooms.

And Radio Shack? Well, that's such a familiar brand. I've always been aware it was a U.S. brand, but the stores are so ubiqitous in Canada, I never thought the parent company would just tell them to stop using the name one day.

Peter Rukavina does a nice job of tracing the history of Radio Shack and Scott Paper.

Other household names that have disappeared in recent years:

IGA
Eaton's
The Progressive Conversative Party (oh wait, they resurfaced)
Woolco
Sam the Record Man (still alive in Toronto)

Got any more to add to the list?