The big event in Hoxton-land this week has been the arrival in the UK of Obama’s digital guru, Thomas Gensemer. His agency, Blue State Digital, managed Obama’s online campaign and he has come here to try to work his digital magic on the Labour Party.
This video, featuring Gensemer’s thoughts on the online strategies adopted by the main political parties in the UK, includes a really important reminder to everyone in marketing, not just political parties, that online marketing (like any other form of marketing) is first and foremost about relationships, rather than technology: ”… what people want is an authentic relationship that just happens to be online … I challenge my clients, if this room was full of 100 people, forget about technology, what would you ask them to do and if you can’t answer that question your problem is not technology.”
He makes a similar point in an excellent interview in this week’s Guardian: “People have been bamboozled with the technology for too long … The real questions are ‘What are your goals and how can you use technology to achieve them?” Wise words. All too often companies ask their agencies for an online strategy or a social media strategy (who in response try to sell them the latest gizmo or app), when what they need is a relationship marketing strategy, that happens to leverage new technology.
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[...] some social media magic dust on Labour’s online activities. It is interesting to hear his views on how the political parties here are getting [...]