Alex White » Campaigning

Opening minds: Correcting misperceptions

Alex — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:48:03 +0000

Some interesting new research by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler from Dartmouth examines attempts to change people’s strongly-held pre-existing beliefs. This kind of research is very important, especially for progressive organisations and causes, and it ties into what my previous blog post about evidence-based campaigning.

The research looks at (mis)perceptions of three issues: the war in Iraq, job growth under Obama and global warming. In particular, they use graphs to display complex information, such as a graph showing the number of jobs created under Obama, and compare it to a paragraph of text explaining the same information.

From the abstract:

People often resist information that contradicts their preexisting beliefs. This disconfirmation bias is a particular problem in the context of political misperceptions, which are widespread and frequently difficult to correct. In this paper, we examine two possible explanations of the prevalence of misinformation. First, people tend to resist unwelcome information because it is threatening to their worldview or self-concept. Drawing from social psychology research, we therefore test whether affirming individuals’ self-worth and thereby buttressing them against this threat can make them more willing to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Second, corrective information is often presented in an ineffective manner. We thus also examine whether graphical corrections may be more effective than text at reducing counter-arguing by individuals inclined to resist counter-attitudinal information.

There’s a lot to read through in this article, and it is definitely worth reading in detail (and the PDF is free to access).

The main take aways from this research is that there is a right way and wrong way to present complex information that contradicts peoples’ deep-held beliefs, and that graphs can help reduce misconceptions. (Of course, graphs are not a silver bullet.) The research is also clear that just using text to present information that contradict’s someone’s deeply held beliefs just doesn’t work:

When people encounter dissonant information, it is threatening to their self-concept, which they seek to maintain by either dissonance reduction or other strategies for affirming their self-worth… In particular, they tend to interpret ambiguous or mixed information in line with their preexisting views and to resist or reject counter-attitudinal information. For instance, Lord, Ross, and Lepper (1979) found that individuals who were presented with balanced information about the effectiveness of capital punishment rated the counter-attitudinal information to be less convincing and of lower quality than pro-attitudinal information.

In addition to using graphical information, Nyhan and Reifler also test using “affirmation” tests, where they ask respondents to recall pleasant experiences or thoughts about themselves before presenting them with “dissonant” information. This can reduce misconceptions. Affirmation combined with graphical representation has the greatest effect.

For progressive organisations, this kind of research should provoke some thoughts about how we present information. For example:

Can we simplify our message so we reduce the possibility we will be misunderstood?
Can we present any of the information we’re trying to get across in a different way? For example, with graphics, or graphs?
Have we written or presented the information in a way that’s mindful of our audience?
When presenting confronting information, can we reduce the confrontation by “affirming” the reader?

Again, it’s worth pointing out that this research doesn’t look at how to change minds but rather how to correct misperceptions. This research shows that by presenting information graphically and using affirmation, even people who are predisposed to disagree with uncomfortable facts are more likely to acknowledge those unwelcome facts.

No related posts.

What’s your union’s social media strategy?

Alex — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:15:55 +0000

No doubt you, like me, read lots of blogs that have lists of “10 best ways to use social media” or “top Twitter tips” and so on. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

And you’d think with the enormous number of blogs, resources and top-ten articles out there, no union in Australia would not have at least one social-media maven or guru.

Obviously, and unfortunately, lots of unions are still just getting started with social media or have jumped in and are now not sure what they’ve gotten themselves into.

The problem I see with the scores of unions I come across each week and month is that their online and social media campaigning is in a silo, unconnected to the rest of the union’s activities. In short, most (but not all) unions’ social media and online campaigning is done without a strategy or plan. Without a plan, your Facebook or Twitter page isn’t going to do much for you — and will probably do more harm than good.

Like house-visits, phone calls and site-visits, social media is just one tool in your campaign arsenal. No union would just “do” house visits or large numbers of phone-calls without a plan, targets, goals and measures.

Yet lots of unions just create a Facebook page or Twitter account because a top-ten list told them to, or because they read about some amazingly successful social-media driven campaign that got 14,000 people to engage. It can easily appear that social media is an amazing silver bullet that will help unions connect with their members, recruit new members and put pressure on bad employers through Twitter campaigns.

The truth unfortunately is that this is rarely the case. Online campaigning and social media should be a part of any comprehensive union campaign, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. The real challenge is integrating your online campaign elements with the real-world campaign — how does your website and Facebook page link to your print materials, your campaign events and member meetings? Where does your online and social media presence fit with your union’s communications plan?

While it takes just a few minutes to set up a Facebook page, no amount of top ten lists will help you achieve anything with it unless it is tied to and integrated with your campaigns.

Here’s some questions to ask about your social media (and it’s worth asking these whether you’ve set up your Facebook/Twitter pages already, or are just in the planning stages):

Who are you targeting?
What is your message?
What do you want to achieve?
Does this fit with your other communication/promotional material?
Do you have the resources to keep updating your social media accounts

Your online and social media plan needs to work out how social media will do what it does best — engage and interact with your key audiences: members, potential members, activists and so on. Creating a plan can take time, and may be a bit challenging for unions that are still struggling with online campaigning, but it is worth it.

So, before you invest more time and effort into social media take a look at your overall communications strategy. Look at the big picture before jumping in.

While I’ve written my fair share of “top 10″ lists, I’ve also been a consistent advocate of aligning your online/social media activities with the real-world activities of your union.

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

Alex — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:19:55 +0000

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 wrote this e-book, he write a detailed article for the New York Times, titled Nudge the Vote: How Behavioral Science is Remaking Politics.

If you are involved in running campaigns of any kind — political, union, progressive, environmental — then this article could be the most important article you can read this year:

The growing use of experimental methods — Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, calls them “prescription drug trials for democracy” — is convulsing a profession where hunches and instinct have long ruled. Already, experimental findings have upended a lot of folk wisdom about how votes are won. The most effective direct mail might not be the most eye-catching in the mailbox but the least conspicuous. It is better to have an anonymous, chatty volunteer remind voters it’s Election Day than a recorded message from Bill Clinton or Jay-Z. The most winnable voters may be soft supporters of the opposition, not the voters who polls say are undecided. (“Undecided” may just be another word for “unlikely to vote.”) …

The experimental movement in politics began a decade ago, when the Yale political scientists Alan Gerber and Donald Green conducted a study testing the relative effectiveness of basic political tools. As the 1998 elections approached, Gerber and Green partnered with the League of Women Voters to split 30,000 New Haven voters into four groups. Some received an oversize postcard encouraging them to vote, others the same message via a phone call or in-person visit. One control group received no contact whatsoever. After the election, Gerber and Green examined Connecticut records to see who actually voted. The in-person canvass yielded turnout 9.8 percent higher than for voters who were not contacted. Each piece of mail led to a turnout increase of only 0.6 percent. Telephone calls, Gerber and Green concluded, had no effect at all.

This scientific approach applies behavioural science, organisational behavior and psychology disciplines to election campaigns.

What can unions and progressive organisations learn from this? (And note: many unions in the USA, like the AFL-CIO, are already adopting these methods.)

Firstly: Don’t rely on the above anecdotes that direct mail and telephone calls “don’t work”. This whole approach is data-driven — based on split tests and control groups.

Secondly: Challenge preconceptions. Just because your union or organisation has always done direct mail or calls, doesn’t mean they do work. Test your assumptions and try something new. For information on how to actually run a test in a live environment during a real campaign, check out Doug McKenzie-Mohr’s book on Community Based Social Marketing (available for free).

Thirdly: More broadly, the progressive side of politics should take the science of campaigning more seriously in Australia. In America, millions are being invested on both sides, while in Australia there is very little research being done in this area — and almost all of it at universities, unconnected to practitioners. (Am I wrong? I know Make Believe took a more rigourous approach to the Greens Party Melbourne campaign, but this hasn’t carried on now Bandt has been elected; and perhaps there is someone in the ALP National Secretariat who is on to this, but I haven’t seen any evidence of this.)

Lots of campaigners and organisations have a problem known as path dependency. Decisions about what we do now are powerfully shaped by what we have done before. Hopefully, this article, Issenberg’s e-book and the various other blog posts like this one help shake you off your predictable path.

Stephen Colbert, Super PACs and the US Presidential election

Alex — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:10:08 +0000

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 between Super PACs and presidential committees.

Shortly after handing over control of the Super PAC to Stewart, it started to run ads against Mitt Romney, and calling for people to vote for Herman Cain.

There is now an interesting debate going on over at Politico’s Arena about whether Colbert’s activities are healthy or toxic to the American political process.

Here are some of the interesting quotes from the discussion:

Stephen Colbert might be funny, but his exploratory campaign is no joke. The point he’s been assiduously making on “The Colbert Report” is a smart bomb wrapped inside of an absurd conundrum. Simply put, there is no greater force for campaign finance these days than Colbert. By following the tortured laws and starting his own super PAC, Colbert has unleashed a prank that could embarrass the body politic into real change.

… But Colbert was twirling a lot of plates way up in the air when he discussed the lack of control he had over ads run by the super PAC he created called “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” Based on legal advice from a former FEC chairman who’s become a frequent guest on his late-night show, Colbert recently turned over control of the PAC to “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart. No sooner did they stage a ceremonial transfer of control than the PAC was on the air in South Carolina with an ad asking that if Mitt Romney believed corporations were people, and Bain Capital shut down some corporations, then did that make Romney a serial killer?

When Stephanopoulos pressed Colbert on the claim, the comedian exposed the self-serving loophole. “I don’t want any untrue ads on the air that could in any way be traced to me,” said Colbert, but not before trotting out the old nag, “I don’t know if Mitt Romney is a serial killer. That’s a question he’s going to have to answer.”

To ask people to vote for someone who is not even a candidate could hurt either party. The matter of running this country, keeping us safe, working to create jobs, healthcare, etc. is no laughing matter. Colbert should use his celebrity for good, encouraging people to vote. In short, he’s a jokester and should stick with that, he’s good at it. Running the country? I’m going to leave that up to our president, and whoever America decides should have the job for the next four years.

Considering there are people in countries like Afghanistan that risk their lives to vote, we should consider it both a privilege and an obligation; something men and women for years have fought and given our lives for we to have the freedom to do. Shame on Colbert; he might be funny, but I’m not laughing.

Stephen Colbert may be the only candidate willing to be honest about why he and his fellow Republicans are running for president: to protect corporations, not people. And that agenda is no joke.

The corrosive nature of corporate donations to Super PACs and presidential campaigns, exacerbated by the Citizens United case, is far more dangerous to the democratic process.

In my view, Colbert is doing democracy a service, demonstrating the corrupted nature of the US political system.

UPDATE:

The Christian Science Monitor explains the paper-thin line between coordination (illegal) and talking via the media (legal):

The point they’re making is that the line here is tissue-thin. The law says candidates cannot “coordinate” with super PACs. That means they cannot request, assent to, or suggest any super PAC activities.

But there is a loophole, or, as Colbert called it, a “loop-chasm.” A candidate can talk to his associated super PAC via the media. And the super PAC can listen, like everybody else.

“I can’t tell you [what to do]. But I can tell everyone through television,” said Colbert on Stewart’sComedy Central Show. “And if you happen to be watching, I can’t prevent that.”

Stewart then played a clip of Newt Gingrich calling on his super PAC to scrub ads attacking Mitt Romney for possible inaccuracies.

Stewart and Colbert then talked to elections lawyer Trevor Potter – who is the attorney for both Colbert’s exploratory committee and the super PAC – through the same phone. Stewart said he’d bought air time in South Carolina, and so on, and Colbert just said he couldn’t coordinate, but smiled or frowned, depending on which city the ad time was in. Columbia, no. Charleston, yes!

Is this all legal, or are these comedians pushing the legal envelope and in fact risking jail time?

Nope, amazing as it sounds, they’re doing everything right. Election law expert Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine, on his blog linked to clips from the show, and posted but one additional word: “hilarious.”

Collective Bargaining Facts: a new AFL-CIO website

Alex — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:54:12 +0000

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 that invest in websites with substandard design are doing themselves and their members a disservice. In this case, the AFL-CIO have contracted New Signature, a professional design agency who were responsible for the I Am Not Your ATM site.
Interactive elements (including video): In this case, the primary goal of the website is education and information rather than action, and the design of the site makes the key interactive information elements (the videos) prominent.
Engaging and humourous: While not everyone will be taken with the rehashed “comedy” in the satirical videos, they are professionally made and acted, and credit should be given for the AFL-CIO steering away from dull talking heads droning on about collective bargaining. Other videos on the site also feature interviews and stories about real workers and their experience with collective bargaining.
Open source: The entire site is built using WordPress. This demonstrates the flexibility of WordPress, ensures that the site is easy for the AFL-CIO to update and keep secure, and suggests that the site was relatively inexpensive to set up.

The CBF site also includes social elements, such as the tweet and Facebook share buttons, that allow for easy social sharing. These are not prominent but included “as a matter of course”. I would have liked to see a Facebook landing page included in this, even if it was connected to the ALF-CIO Facebook page.

It’s also worth noting that the entire site is just one page — all the links and other content leads to the AFL-CIO main site, or to other websites (like news sites).

Case study: Union website redeveloped using WordPress

Alex — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:08:09 +0000

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 using WordPress, a free, open-source content management system, combined with an off-the-shelf professional template.

As you can see, the site has a nice, modern professional appearance. It includes a scrolling carousel for featured content, and further down, there are social media links, a way to sign up to the union’s email updates, and an event calendar. What’s more, because it is built using WordPress, and the theme has been developed by a professional design firm (Studio Press), it will continue to get security updates for the foreseeable future (and Studio Press also provides ongoing, free support). It also comes with built-in search engine optimisation (from WordPress, and the theme), which is an important feature.

If I were to make any recommendations for improvement, it would be: get a custom favicon, and include an online joining page. I also hope that the email subscription uses MailChimp or another professional email marketing service, and that they have Google Analytics installed.

On the right, you can see the screenshot of the original, generic theme (and here’s the link to where you can buy it). Clearly, the IEA haven’t customised the theme much, but let’s be honest: they don’t need to. The default theme looks nice and professional — so all the union needed to do was add their own content and plonk on their logo.

Choosing to go the WordPress road is good for a lot of things, but isn’t necessarily the answer for every union website.

WordPress is excellent for getting up professional websites that are inexpensive and fast. WordPress can be deployed in just a few days or a weeks (depending on how much content is needed). It is very flexible, and in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, it will look great and have a lot of useful features. New content can be easily added, including pages, blogs, and with proper plugins, events and more. Many of the “features” spruiked by design agencies and in-house CMSs come standard with WordPress, like drop down menus, customisable URLs/permalinks, blogs, page templates, comments and threaded comments, built-in SEO, built-in RSS feeds, and so on.

However, it does have limitations. For very complex websites, or unions with a desire to integrate their membership database with their website, WordPress may not be the best solution. Most of the reasons that you wouldn’t choose WordPress are technical ones relating to your specific needs or existing infrastructure. Other reasons include the federated/local/branch nature of unions, creating expansive hierarchies of editors and users (for example, layers of editorial control across state, national and local levels, etc), something that WordPress doesn’t handle very well out of the box.

Your choice of CMS for union website should be based on the goals of the website, and your union’s budget.

Repost: Farewell from Creative Unions

Alex — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:47:46 +0000

Reposted 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 our experiment. We have both spent a life-time in the union movement, working for several different unions. Now, we are leaving the movement to pursue opportunities in other sectors.

We believed that unions, as the world’s greatest, most transformative social movement, were slow in taking up many of the new tools, techniques and standards that the rest of the non-profit sector were adopting. Across the globe, unions were facing pressure on membership numbers, conditions and members’ rights. We saw four areas that unions could improve:

1. Effective campaigning. Although unions were the birthplace of social campaigning, many unions were stuck using old, outdated techniques, or were largely responsive and ad hoc. We argued that union campaigns should be planned, research-driven and have clear goals.

2. Social media. Before the Arab Spring, we argued that social media was a potentially transformative communications medium that would allow unions to re-engage with members in a highly personal, meaningful way. We argued that ownership of unions’ social media must be given to members, and that unions should adopt best-practice.

3. Good writing. Unions once used powerful language and words that mobilised thousands and tens of thousands. Good copywriting would help remove jargon and insider-language that was now a hallmark of union writing. Our goal was for simple, clear and concise language, written with the audience in mind.

4. Graphic design. The connection between good communication and good design is clear, and a hundred years ago, unions were once at the forefront of graphic design. Today, many of the brochures, newsletters, posters and other material that unions produce is amateurish. Poor design standards do great disservice to unions, and we argued for unions to recognise the importance of design as a specialist skill in its own right, not something organisers or media officers should do in their spare time.

As we reflect on our successes and failures, and prepare to leave the union movement, we thought we’d leave you with some thoughts on what we have learned.

1. Change is hard
We both underestimated the difficulty we faced in trying to change things. Both in our own union (the NTEU) and more broadly. Every day, we would face the challenge of people (organisers, union leaders, members, delegates) wanting to keep doing the same, comfortable (yet ineffective) things. We continued to see unions spend small fortunes on printing leaflets that were unreadable, or pursue losing campaigns with no goals, no measures, no research and no prospects. We continued to see unions set up social media accounts that then languished unattended or simply pushed out megaphone broadcasts. We continued to see newsletters, posters and websites filled with industrial jargon, written for insiders rather than for members.

Along the way, we did meet many inspiring comrades, in Australia and across the world, who shared our vision and beliefs. We are heartened that some people, some unions, have started along the road. We were encouraged to see the scores of amazing, powerful campaigns that unions are running in every corner of the world. Change may be hard, but it’s happening.

2. Forge our own path and don’t be afraid to fail
When we started Creative Unions, we didn’t really know what we were doing. We knew we wanted to develop and improve design and communication standards, and that we wanted to look internationally. One of the early mistakes we made was overestimating how much people wanted to interact with this. While the positive support is overwhelming (we have over 1000 Facebook fans and Twitter followers), we found that people were more interested in watching and listening, than talking back. Similarly, our attempts to foster a broader community of union designers ran into the problem that both of us were working full time on our own union’s campaigns – there simply wasn’t time.

We tried a lot of different things. Some worked, some didn’t. Our Creative Unions pads were very popular, but also very expensive (and we financed Creative Unions almost entirely out of our own pockets). The few events we held were time-consuming and less successful than we’d hoped. Each success and failure was a valuable lesson, and we certainly weren’t afraid to say “this didn’t work”.

3. There’s power in a union
Although both of us are leaving the movement as paid officials, we remain proud unionists and union members. The best thing of the last three years has been that Creative Unions has helped us see campaigns and union work that is, simply, incredible. We are both deeply honoured to have been able to promote the work of hundreds of unions to hundreds of other unions.

There is always the risk in unions of being too focused on our own work, our own members and the daily or weekly crises that occupy us. But the union movement’s strength is in our solidarity – the fact that we are an international movement that spans borders, race, gender and language. The breathtaking campaigns we saw came from every continent on earth, from every sector conceivable.

We are, and will remain, incredibly privileged to work for the members of our union. The work we have done with Creative Unions challenged us, depressed us, infuriated us, and inspired us.

In solidarity
Atosha McCaw and Alex White.

Social media and political news reporting

Alex — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:35:43 +0000

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 (“gotcha”) quotes and sound bites that sum up a debate, announcement or interview. Now, social media is changing the way journalists pick their sound bites, by amplifying certain quotes and giving journalists a real-time gauge of public sentiment.

Tweet via @blakehounshell - managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Within minutes of the fated bet, Twitter started buzzing. While analysts mostly ignored it, the social media response was strong. The Twitter hashtag #What10kbuys was added alongside a lot of the #IowaDebate and #GOPDebate posts. Eventually, it started trending in its own right.

Social media amplifies

The Mitt Romney #What10kbuys debacle shows that social media can amplify your message to all corners. A few years ago, Romney’s comment would have gone reported in a nfew newspapers, for a single day. The social media reaction to Romney has shown that what you say as a candidate will get widely promoted — and most of it is outside your control.

The amplification is not what you say about your campaign, it’s what everyone else is saying. It allows an undercurrent of sentiment to become mainstream — like the strong response that was appalled by the cavalier way that Romeny made a $10,000 bet as though it were a dollar-bet.

Another good example is the video of Rick Perry appearing to be drunk at while giving a speech. This video went viral, although the speech and event itself was fairly minor and uninteresting.

Social media scrutinises

After the debate, the Democrats tweeted:

DNC: We want to know #what10Kbuys for you and your family. #IowaDebate

This helped not only to spread Romney’s comments further, but helped ensure that even people who weren’t watching the debate or following the GOP primaries have heard of it. What’s more, Romney’s defenders on Twitter have kept the hashtag going by trying to use it to attack Obama and the Democrats — leaving confused people days later to try to find out what it is all about.

Lessons for union recruitment: brand choice research

Alex — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 22:11:23 +0000

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 of past experience was the most common reason for buying a particular brand.”

Roper Report - Consumer Reasons for Brand Choice (1992)

The next strongest associations are likely to be formed on the basis of word-of-mouth (friends, family, colleagues, etc) or other non-commercial sources of information (consumer groups, media, etc). The report notes that word of mouth is likely to be particularly important for service organisations. “Company-influenced sources of information such as advertising are often likely to create the weakest associations and thus may be the most easily changed.”

What does this mean for unions?

Brand associations are critical determinants of what information will be recalled by someone, and therefore affects their “brand decisions” — that is, their choices to buy a product or service, or join a union. The strength of an association depends on how the information is initially processed as it enters someone’s memory and where it is actually locarted as a result. There are two ways to build “brand association” — commonly known as encoding and storage.

Encoding is two things: the quantity of information a person receives and the quality of their processing that information. Simply, this means the more times a person is exposed to a brand, the more likely they are to recall it, and likewise, the more they focus their attention on a brand, the more likely they are to recall it (and vice versa, exposure when the person is distracted means they are less likely to recall the brand). Other factors like consistency and congruity come into play as well (for example, the ease at which new information can be integrated with existing perceptions, or the brand’s inherent simplicity or vividness).

Storage is affected by a range of things, like the presence of other brand information, exposure time and “retrieval cues” (when a brand name is on the tip of the tongue).

Simply put, the more a union symbol is present in the workplace, the more it is encoded — similarly, positive word of mouth from colleagues improves the quality of the encoding.

For unions there are two take-aways from this research:

1. Someone’s past experience with a union is likely to be the most important determinant of whether they will join a union. This means that unions should think carefully about non-member outreach, how non-members are treated and referred to, and how the union is generally perceived. For an organiser, it may mean that a non-member with a “bad union experience” may not be worth trying to join up, whereas former members (even from other unions) should be prime targets. For lead organisers and union communicators, it is worth remembering that non-member “experience” the union even when they are not members — and even this second-hand experience can be important.

More generally, it suggests that peak bodies like the ACTU or trades halls should try to keep a record of past-members that can be accessed by union growth-teams. Knowing that someone has previously been a union member from another sector may dramatically increase their likelihood of joining a new union. When someone resigns from a union, their name could be passed on to the ACTU register. Unions undertaking a recruitment drive could enter in names of prospects or non-member lists into the database and see who was previous a union member.

2. Building a union’s presence in the workplace is important in shaping experience and fostering word of mouth. I’ve written before about the power of social proof and endorsements. With a growing number of people in Australia (and the world) never having a direct experience of joining a union, unions must increasingly shape second-hand experience to build positive engagement with future members. Of course, the most powerful brand advocates for unions are existing members and delegates, who should be encouraged to display union signs and symbols to create social norms.

The final, less important, take-away is that media exposure and the attitudes of political leaders is much less important than union leaders and organisers often think it is. Although Howard and the News Ltd media demonised unions, what is more important is personal experience, word of mouth and things in the union’s own control (price, quality).

Addendum

What is obviously not covered in this research is the question of union brands themselves. Do unions have their own individual (“corporate”) brands? Is there just a single “Brand Union”? Do people see the difference between one union and another at a brand level?

The ACTU did a lot of work creating the campaign brand “Your Rights at Work” — but four years on from the defeat of the Howard Government, how many people outside of the union movement and politics remember the brand or the campaign? The ACTU unsuccessfully tried to create a “Australian Unions” meta-brand to sit across individual union brands. But without the money to spend on seriously creating brand equity, the project was never going to succeed.

For individual unions, the answer will influence how much a union may decide to try to create their own brand. Some unions may have very high brand recall — like the teachers union (AEU) or construction union (CFMEU). For those unions, high investment in branding exercises is probably appropriate. For smaller unions though… are the efforts of the broader movement likely to overwhelm their individual efforts? A topic for future research.

Retaining members in public sector unions

Alex — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:18:30 +0000

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 test several propositions:

Whether the union’s package of financial services (including discount mortgages and shopping facilities) kept people as members
Which services were most appropriate to keep members
Whether service quality influenced membership retention
Whether satisfaction with services influences member retention

They also looked at several arguments that are floating around in the movement and in the literature, that unions should adopt similar relationships with their members to clients and automobile associations, that “new individualism” will lead to the collapse of unions, and that financial services should supplement traditional union activities.

The background for UNISON is interesting, because it reflects a challenge facing many unions that I’m aware of: significant membership “churn”.

UNISON’s National Recruitment Plan, for example, assumes that the union will grow by 234,000 members between 1995/1996 and 1999/2000 to meet a target of 1.5 million (UNISON, 1995). As UNISON’s membership turnover is 12.5 per cent per year, a total of 907,875 members will have to be recruited to meet this target, 673,875 of which are required merely to meet the losses arising from membership turnover. However, if retention were to be improved by 30 per cent, the target would be met by the recruitment of 705,713 new members or 78 per cent of the existing requirement. The key question is thus, what factors influence membership retention?

What are the take aways from this article?

The supposed ‘new individualism’ does not thus appear to have influenced public sector trade unionists. As only 6.6 per cent of UNISON members report being ‘very secure’ at work, it seems more likely that uncertainty about their future is a more important factor in retention than a new individualism.

The importance attached to mutual support as the prime reason underpinning retention certainly duplicates results on recruitment and confirms the centrality of local union organisation in retention and recruitment, as it is the local shop steward to whom the member turns for support in the first instance.

Membership benefits are rated more than ten percentage points higher than financial services among the individual benefits. We thus reject the proposition that the financial services currently offered by UNISON are central to the retention of members. In combination with other work on recruitment, this result indicates that the expectations of the SRB on the efficacy of financial services are without foundation. Even when financial services are ‘tailored’ to the specific needs of the membership, they remain peripheral to membership retention.

Very few differences emerge between men and women in their reasons for retention. Men assign a greater importance to belief than women, whereas women are more influenced by their peer group. These differences in emphasis produce the only variation between men and women in the rank order of the responses.

The importance of membership retention is further illustrated by the appearance of peer group at the second position in the ranking. This result indicates that the presence of large numbers of trade unionists encourages retention. In other words, once a union presence is established, there is a degree to which it is self-sustaining. This result also suggests that if membership falls beneath a specific threshold, the impact of peer group may decline, thereby leading to further membership decline. A belief in trade unions also has a major impact on retention, almost 37 per cent of members cite it as one of their two principal reasons for remaining in UNISON.

While UNISON’s membership is principally white-collar, it does cover sectors traditionally seen as blue-collar, such as manual workers working in transport. As far as white-collar workers go, it ranges from relatively low-skilled clerical workers to highly educated managerial and professional staff.

Until reading this, I agreed with the accepted wisdom in my union that although union benefits didn’t cause people to join, they were important in retaining members once they had joined. This research (and my own experience in growing the NTEU’s membership at Swinburne by over 40 percent in a year) has made me change my view: there is almost no benefit to having a “member benefit” scheme.

I’m signed up to several unions’ email lists — and most of them (possibly all) prominently include as headline stories “member benefits” like Union Shopper, discount movie tickets and financial services (mortgages, etc). I’m not sure what the open rates or click-throughs would be, but this research certainly should cause unions to reconsider this issue.

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

Alex — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:37:24 +0000

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 as joining, volunteering, contacting an organiser) the first thing they will do is visit your website, not your Facebook page.

With many unions still having outdated websites, now is the time to invest in a refresh. Afterall, websites are the central hub for all online campaigning.

Here are five reasons why you should fix your union’s website before it gets onto social media:

1. Branding

Having a fresh, modern website lets you ensure that the branding is consistent and professional. It means you can directly customise the user experience to support the goals of your union. Whereas Facebook and Twitter have strict limitations on how pages look, your own website means that visitors to your site get an experience that your union designs.

2. Control

When you control your own union website, you have complete jurisdiction over its code, hosting environment, page count, content, plug-ins and more. This means that you have control to make any necessary changes, as well as major improvements for specific campaigns. With Facebook and Twitter, you can only tweak minor graphics, but not the underlying code.

3. Content

Content is important for so many reasons — engagement, SEO and social to name a few — so putting your content on your website benefits you rather than a third-party platform. Creating content about your union, its campaigns and members, then putting it on Facebook does nothing to help your own site. Putting that same compelling content on your site increases the likelihood that people will share it on their social networks. Having your own website means that you have control over your content — third party sites like Facebook always have the risk that it will be deleted or lost.

4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Talking about SEO, many unions have asked me “how can we drive traffic to our site?” If garnering lots of visitors to your site is a priority, then having control over your own union website is essential. Having a new, modern website that meets contemporary standards will mean that your content is more likely to have good search engine results. When properly coded and managed, your union’s website delivers natural and sustaining search results (due to search engine optimisation) that drive traffic to the exact pages on your site where you want visitors to be.

5. Analytics

Unions are used to making data-driven decisions on organising, recruitment and finances. It’s time to step up to online analytics, and at the moment you get the best analytics from website tools. Most social networking analytics are still rather rudimentary, with the more in-depth tools costing a small fortune. Free analytics tools for websites, like Google Analytics, given you world-class tools to examine your website and your online campaigning.

UPDATE: A Bonus 6th Reason: Joining

No matter how whiz-bang your Facebook or Twitter page is, there are only two ways potential members can join your union: using a hard-copy membership form and on your website. If your union’s website doesn’t have a page for potential members to join, then stop reading this blog and go and set one up right now. Having a page to join up new members is really one of the most important functions that your website can have. The good news is that you can customise and tweak your join page to make it more effective. It’s generally much harder to do the same for hard-copy membership forms (although it is possible).

Now, I’m not suggesting you drop social media. I’m advocating that your union should invest in a quality, professional and modern website that acts as the central portal to your other online presences and tools — including email, social networking, mobile and so on.

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

Alex — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:32:42 +0000

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 routinely violated many (most!) of the laws of marketing, and has paid the price. Except for a brief period in 2007, when it got its act together in the lead up to the “Kevin 07″ Federal Election, Labor’s record during this time has been one of systematically losing elections, losing “market share” (primary vote) and losing “brand advocates” (members).

This post goes through the first five “immutable laws”, briefly explains what it is and how the ALP has violated them. I note that some of the laws are followed (on purpose or inadvertantly), but they are the exception, not the rule. I will go through the other laws in later posts.

1. The Law of Leadership

It is better to be first than be better

The Law of Leadership is about convincing people that you are first in a particular market. This is because it is easier to persuade someone that you are first than it is that you are better. In marketing, the “leading” brand in a category is usually the first entrant into that category.

Because marketing is a battle of perceptions, people perceive that “if you are first, then you must be the best”. This is the case even if subsequent brands enter a category with a better product/service. Secondary entrants are seen as inferior, even if they are not.

The ALP and The Law of Leadership

In politics, marketing “categories” can be thought of as issue areas. Health, education, housing, climate change, national security, and gay marriage can be thought of as “categories”.

The ALP has historically been the category leader for many issue areas: workplace rights, health, education and so on. The traditional strong policy areas for Labor. Labor was founded on progressive outcomes on these policy issues. On these examples, the ALP follows the Law of Leadership.

However, the ALP has violated this law by trying to enter other categories and act as the “market leader” – such as on “economic management” and “national security” – issue categories where the Liberal/National Party are first. Beacuse politics is about perceptions, the ALP cannot be better at those issues because the Coalition was “first” — even if Labor has clearly better policies in these areas.

2. The Law of the Category

If you can’t be the first in a category, set up a new category that you can be first in

The Law of the Category relates to the concept in which the range of products or services are broken down into discrete groups of similar or related products/services. For example, the category of “computer” has sub-categories of “super computer”, “personal computer” “laptop” “tablet” “desktop computer” and so on.

Ries and Trout argue that if you can’t be the first in a particular category, try to find or create a new category. For example, in the category of “cars”, Toyota created a new category of “hybrid cars” in which it is now the global leader.In the world of marketing, “consumers” are always interested in what is new, not necessarily what is better. This is why a marketing strategy of producing a “better” product when you are the second entrant into a category is a failed strategy. It is very difficult to overtake the market-leader.

The ALP and the Law of the Category

I’ve already noted that categories can be seen as policy issue areas, and that the ALP is a leader in several established issue categories. A brief look at the Greens Party shows how political parties can create new categories and be a leader. While the ALP may own the general category of “equality and fairness”, the Greens Party have created a sub-category of “marriage equality” and become the market leaders. Even if the ALP supports same-sex marriage, the Greens Party were the first entrant in the minds of voters (this is not a reason for the ALP not to support same-sex marriage).

This is why the ALP should not talk about “green energy” or “green jobs”. It should create different categories of “clean energy” and “clean energy jobs” to own the issue category. The same goes for categories “owned” by other parties: “Accountability” = Democrats, “tough on border security” = Liberal/Nationals, “looking after forests” = Greens Party. It doesn’t matter how draconian Labor makes its refugee policy, voters will always perceive the Liberal/National Party to be the party that is “tough on boat people”.

The Law of the Category doesn’t mean come up with a new name for existing policy areas. It means thinking creatively about policy challenges and social pressures; the area and difference must also be meaningful. If the category is too small, it won’t matter.

3. The Law of the Mind

It’s better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace

Marketing, like politics, is a battle of perception. While policies (and products) are important, how they are perceived is more important. The Law of the Mind is about getting your idea or concept into the mind of your target audience (or consumer). Once an idea is there, it’s almost impossible to change (unless there is some major shock or trauma).

For example, Xerox will always be a photocopier company (despite their attempt to make computers), Microsoft will always be a large, evil corporation and a Labor government will always be a “tax and spend” government. In order to change established perceptions, you need to “blast” your way in. For example, Apple managed to blast into our minds with their ipod campaign, which allowed them to transform from a computer company to a media company.

Ries and Trout make the point that to get into the mind, it helps to have a simple product or service name. The simpler the idea is, the more understandable it is. In politics, “stop the boats” is more understandable than “regional processing”, and “axe the tax” is shorter and simpler than “the Clean Energy Future Act” or “carbon trading”.

The ALP and the Law of the Mind

The ALP is a serial offender against the Law of the Mind. While it is associated with certain categories (health, education, etc, as I’ve mentioned), it regularly wastes enormous time and effort trying to change people’s established perceptions. Similarly, it is “first” in people’s minds on a whole bunch of bad issues — like the knifing of Rudd or the “broken promise” on carbon pricing.

The goal of The Law of the Mind is to “own” a word or concept. At the moment, the Liberal/Nationals are trying to make Labor own the words “crisis” “incompetant” and “debt”. Similarly, the ALP is giving up its traditional ownership on words like “compassion” “equality” and “environment” — all to chase after the mind-share of concepts firmly embedded with the Liberals.

This is a classic problem that besets people who don’t understand how to use market research. Pollsters and focus groups would tell the ALP that they want a government that is “tough on boat people” and that ” marriage is between a man and a woman”. Labor’s response has been to “give the voter what they want”, as well as a shopping list of other attributes. This means Labor provides a draconian refugee policy, and Gillard’s pronouncements that she does not support same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, these concepts are already “owned” by the Liberal/Nationals. By chasing those concepts and that mind-share Labor is diluting its ownership over other words, allowing the Greens Party to snatch up the categories.

Additionally, Labor has missed the opportunity to capitalise on conceptual shocks that could have given it ownership over new concepts. The Global Financial Crisis was an opportunity for Labor to seize the mantle of “good economic managers” and how ruinous the Liberal/Nationals were. Instead, Labor spent the crisis talking about how close to ruin we came, then didn’t fight back against accusations of mismanagement (pink batts, school halls) and apologised for the debt. Now, three years later, Labor has yet again been sadled with the “debt” concept — and is reinforcing it by constantly talking about getting back into surplus (therefore highlighting that we’re in debt).

4. The Law of Perception

Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions

The quality of a product is not a determinate of how successful it will be in the market place. A good example is with smart phones. On every spec, the iphone has been outdone by one or more smartphones. Yet the iphone is still the most successful single model of smartphone on the market. Similarly, people take on associations with brands that no amount of marketing can change. When Coke famously introduced New Coke in the USA, market research and over 200,000 blind taste tests proved that it was a better product than Pepsi and “Coke Classic”. Despite a massive advertising campaign, New Coke was third, behind Pepsi and Coke Classic in first place.

The product itself is not central to marketing, it is the perception. Everyone knows that Volvos are the safest cars to drive. This is because Volvo owns the “safety” word, was the leader in the category of “safe cars” and because it has won the perception battle. Even when other brands like Toyota and Ford make cars that are safer than a Volvo, people will still associate Volvo with safety.

The ALP and the Law of Perception

Something I hear quite a bit in Labor is that “if only we had good policies”, then we’d be polling better. Or, “the problem is our bad/ill-conceived/left-wing/right-wing/etc policies”.

The Law of Perceptions means that how people interpret our policies is more important that the detail of the policy itself. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have policies, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should hand over policy-making to marketers, pollsters and focus groups.

What is means is that policies that run counter to people’s perceptions won’t change their mind. They’ve already made up their mind. Our policies should be made within the framework of our values and principles — which means, the positive issue categories that Labor “owns”.

People think that Labor is “weak” on boat people. No amount of tough policies on refugees will change that, no matter how detailed or considered the policy is in reality. The reason that the Liberal/Nationals have such an easy time of talking about policy is because marketing doesn’t happen “in reality”, it happens “in the mind”. They “own” “good economic management” in the mind of the voter, so it doesn’t matter that their costings are missing $70 billion in savings. It’s a losing battle and Labor shouldn’t fight it.

Labor should fight on its strengths. A good example is during 2007 when Labor started talking about “working families”. While the commentariat and many Labor supporters tired of this, it is founded in excellent principles because it created a new issue category and a new word for Labor to own. When polled about “who could manage the economy the best”, most people answered “the Liberals”. When asked “who could manage the economy the best for working families”, most people answered “Labor”. This is because “working families” was a sub-category of “the economy” — Labor was first in the category and because it linked to other issue categories that Labor was associated with (workplace rights, fairness, justice, etc), it won the battle of perceptions. The Liberals can own “the economy” but that was irrelevant as long as the policy debate was about “the economy for working families“.

5. The Law of Focus

The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind

The Law of Focus challenges us to boil our marketing message down to just one idea. Ries and Trout use the example of Coke, which for generations owned the word “refreshment”, while Hoover owned the word “vaccuum-cleaner” and Heinz owned the word “ketchup” (this is an American book afterall).

A key element to the Law of Focus is to resist “line extension” — trying to associate your brand with multiple products in different categories. They use the example of successful companies that have encountered trouble due to line-extension, such as IBM. IBM was once associated with “computers” but extended its brand to many different products across multiple categories, including software, satelites, and so on. As a result, those lines largely failed and the core business, computers, was undermined. Similarly, when Coke tried to extend its brand into clothing and fashion, it worked for a few years, and then the market crashed overnight, saddling Coke with millions of dollars worth of unsellable stock.

In politics, the Law of Focus means staying true to the central tenents of your party. The Liberals for example are damaging their brand by proposing “big government” policies rather than free-market ones (for example, their paid parental leave scheme and their direct action climate policy). Labor damages its brand through a “tough on refugees” policy and (less recently) its indefensible support for the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement back in 2004.

The ALP and the Law of Focus

You can’t be everything to everyone. Branching out into different areas can be dangerous, as it weakens the brand (or in the ALP’s case, the party) as a whole. Ries and Trout say, “No matter how complicated the product, no matter how complicated the needs of the market, it’s always better to focus on one word or benefit than two or three or four.”

This means Labor needs to kill the long, detailed policy explanations and the “policy announcement a day” approach. This is where Labor is unable to communicate about what it has achieved because we’re all over the place.

During the last Federal Election, Labor would announce a new policy every day, and sometimes several policies a day. We had no focus. Although we have lots of great policies, we should concentrate our effort and what we say to one key idea. Less is more. Too much policy information, too many “new” policies, too many new announcements.

The most successful time for Labor was when it spent months talking about the same issue: Rudd rode high on the back of months of talk about the CPRS, climate change and Copenhagen (and was let down because of unfulfilled expectations). Similarly, when he was tanking in 2010 against Abbott, he turned perceptions around by spending a month visiting hospitals and talking about health reform. Because of the focus, the message got through and people started to listen.

While this may infuriate the Canberra Press Gallery, who will complain bitterly on Insiders and in the pages of The Australian, we know that messages become stronger when they are narrowed and repeated.

Concluding thoughts

Marketing is a dirty word in some circles, but much of what Ries and Trout talk about is common sense, and if it were expressed without using the term “marketing” “segments” “products” or “brand”, it would largely be accepted as sound political advice.

(It’s worth acknowledging that although The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is a marketing classic, many contemporary marketers rail against it and consider many of the laws to be out of date or irrelevant.)

Reading books like Inside Kevin 07 and Looking for the Light on the Hill, which purport to be “insider” accounts of Labor from 2007 to 2010, it’s clear that Labor is trying to adopt modern marketing techniques. Unfortunately, while many of the methods of marketing have been adopted — direct mail, television advertising, market research and focus groups, the principles behind the marketing have not.

Because Labor’s membership has hollowed out, mass marketing techniques, branding, and positioning are all filling in the gap left by a once-active membership. Lots of active members serve as ambassadors and chamions for a cause, and ensure that internal forums and discussions are geniunely representative of the community at large. Market research can only go so far when, after the focus group is over, there is no one to champion the meaning behind the information and interpretation is left to party officials and ministerial advisors.

Labor, despite the fact that it regularly violates these laws, can turn itself around.

The discussion within Labor following the Bracks, Carr, Faulkner Review into the 2010 Federal Election has focused on rule reform. This is a red herring. Labor’s problem is not rules, or factions, it is that members don’t know what Labor stands for anymore. Because Labor has given up its issue categories, pursues ones that dilute its brand and has no focus. Strong values and a clear vision will assist with all five of these rules.

In the next post, I’ll cover more rules such as the Law of Exclusivity (why Labor can never own a Liberal concept) and the Law of Duality (why Australia will always have a 2 party system).