Archive | Blog RSS feed for this section
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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 5 }
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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 3 }
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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 1 }
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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 4 }

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 [...]

Read full story Comments { 5 }
Nuts and Bolts: Creating a social media schedule

Nuts and Bolts: Creating a social media schedule

Why has your union joined the social media world? Some unions may be there because of the motivations of a single person — the secretary, or an eager organiser or communications officer. They join because they feel they must. Some unions may be there to broadcast their activities – they don’t want a conversation, just [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
The new Facebook changes

The new changes to Facebook

At the end of September, Facebook announced massive changes to pages, profiles and its “social graph”. For union communicators just getting the hang of setting up a Facebook page for their union or their campaign, what do these changes mean? Thankfully, Wildfire, a social media marketing company, has produced a good summary of the changes [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
New free e-book: Online Campaigning for Unions

New free e-book: Online Campaigning for Unions

I am releasing my third free e-book, which compiles my articles on campaign websites, online design and effective Internet campaigining. This e-book, Online Campaigning: A primer for unions shows you how to get the most from Web-based communication and campaings for your union. By campaigning online, you can speak directly to your members, supporters and [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
Pokies and dopamine: why we need mandatory pre-commitment

Pokies and dopamine: why we need mandatory pre-commitment

The sickening anti-reform campaign being run by the gambling industry against the introduction of pre-commitment technology is utterly appalling to all people with a conscience. The pokies industry is even more pernicious because it relies on neurological manipulation to encourage addiction. The Australians who become problem gamblers are being purposely exploited by the pokies industry, [...]

Read full story Comments { 1 }

Stopping power: why good design matters

All unions, progressive organisations and political parties produce advertisements (or collateral) — whether posters, brochures, leaflets, billboards and so on. We can easily measure whether the collateral has been successful by whether the intended audience actually stops and consumes the ad. “Where the eye stops, the sale begins” is an old advertising maxim. With unions [...]

Read full story Comments { 0 }
landingpage

Anatomy of a great landing page

Today, Create Jobs for USA was launched by Starbucks and the Opportunity Finance Network – aimed at attracting donations from the general public to fund job creation programs run by OFN. Whatever your views about US-style philanthropy programs run by large corporations, their JobsforUSA website is an almost pitch-perfect example of a campaign landing page. 1. [...]

Read full story Comments { 1 }