Can we please bust the myth of shareholders as company “owners”?

Over in the UK, David Cameron is trying a bit of populism by calling for outrageous and excessive CEO salaries to be tightened. He proposes to do so by allowing shareholders to “binding” vote on CEO bonuses: David Cameron confirmed the move and said he was determined to end the “merry-go-round” of super-rich bosses rubber-stamping each [...]

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Colbert and Stewart Super PAC

Stephen Colbert, Super PACs and the US Presidential election

If you haven’t heard, Stephen Colbert, the “right-wing” counterpart to Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, recently announced that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee. He had earlier established a “Super PAC“, Making A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and he has handed over control of the Super PAC to Stewart to comply with laws forbidding collaboration [...]

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Collective Bargaining Facts - AFL-CIO

Collective Bargaining Facts: a new AFL-CIO website

The AFL-CIO is increasingly demonstrating that it “gets” online campaigning, with the launch this year of its Collective Bargaining Facts website. Designed by New Signature, and winner of a IMA Outstanding Achievement Award, this website ticks many of the boxes. Where CBF shines Professional design: a good, professional design is essential these days, and unions [...]

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foxnews

When news leaves us less informed

In November this year, Fairleigh Dickenson University came out with a study that suggests that some news sources make us less likely to know what’s going on in the world: The conclusion: Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to [...]

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Email subscriber growth in 2011

End of Year blogging and tweeting: how I went in 2011

Last year I wrote a post about how I’d gone with my blogging and tweeting. Given that I’ve been blogging here since 2008 and elsewhere since 2004, I thought I’d share a few insights as someone who operates a very, very niche blog about union campaigning and politics. Blog This graph shows monthly readership (each [...]

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metric-screenshot

Case study: Union website redeveloped using WordPress

I recently stumbled across the website of Illinois Education Association (Regions 14 & 62) which I think is an excellent example of a union using an inexpensive Premium WordPress Theme to create a professional, feature rich website. It’s worth highlighting this website to give union communicators and officials an example of what can be achieved [...]

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Repost: Farewell from Creative Unions

Repost: Farewell from Creative Unions

It was in 2009 that we founded Creative Unions, a new effort to raise the bar for trade union campaigning, design and communications. Our manifesto was “success doesn’t happen by accident, it happens by design” and we set about trying to find world-class examples of union campaigns. Now, three years later, it’s time to end [...]

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Social media and political news reporting

Social media and political news reporting

If you haven’t heard about Mitt Romney’s $10,000 bet, chances are you weren’t on Twitter during the Iowa GOP Candidates Debate on 10 December and the days following. Mitt’s bet is a good example of how social media is changing political news reporting. Since the dawn of time, political reports have listened hard for good [...]

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Roper Report - Consumer Reasons for Brand Choice (1992)

Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research

Some very interesting research by the GfK Roper Group into what reasons were important when deciding to buy a brand may be of some use for unions thinking about recruitment. The research (from 1992) looked at the reasons that people bought brands, and according to the report, “knowing what to expect from a product because [...]

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The ALP and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (part 2)

The ALP and The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (part 2)

The “marketing bible” The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout sets out marketing laws that the ALP routinely violates. The result of breaking these rules has seen dire consequences for this party: massive slump in support, a collapse in membership, policy drift and an inability to “cut through” in the media. In [...]

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Should we bother with Union Shopper?

Retaining members in public sector unions

University of Warrick academic Jeremy Waddington and UNISON national officer Allan Kerr authored a fascinating article for the Industrial Relations Journal, Membership retention in the public sector. The article examines membership retention in one of the United Kingdom’s largest public sector unions, UNISON, with over 1.3 million members. Waddington and Kerr surveyed 5000 members to [...]

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Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media

Five reasons your union should fix its website before getting onto social media

More and more unions are starting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, but the fact is that your union’s website is much more important than all your social media combined. In Australia, there are more people using social media than ever, but when it comes to actually interacting with your union in a meaningful way (such [...]

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