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The most important campaigning article you didn’t read in 2010

Last year, Sasha Issenberg released an e-book, an excerpt from his upcoming book, called “Rick Perry and His Eggheads“. It details how Dave Carney, Perry’s campaign manager, invited four academics into his re-election campaign with a mandate to bring a scientific approach to an industry that normally runs on gut feelings and anecdotes. But before he [...]

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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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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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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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How the ALP violates the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (part1)

How the ALP violates the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (part1)

Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote the “marketing bible” The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing back in 1994, and it remains a marketing classic even today. These two renowned marketing consultants explained that successful marketing follows rules or laws that are violated at a marketer’s peril. For over a decade, the Australian Labor Party has [...]

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Three world-class union campaign websites

Three world-class union campaign websites

I write a lot about good campaign websites and landing pages, and I get often get asked for examples of what I mean. This post is a showcase of four of the best union campaign websites out there at the moment. One is a campaign that I had direct involvement in, while the others encapsulate [...]

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Communications survey for unions

In Australia, around 2 million working people are members of a union. Across the world, tens of millions more have joined their union. With the myriad public campaigns, collective bargaining, and workplace activity that unions engage in competing for attention from workers and the community, it is essential that unions effectively community and market their [...]

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