Labour flips Obama message of change for social media campaign

The 'Change We See' campaign flips the 'Change you can believe in' message used by Barack Obama and his team in the 2008 US Presidential race.

Instead of a promise for tomorrow, Labour is asking its supporters to take photos of new hospitals and schools that have been delivered since Tony Blair won power in 1997.

Kerry McCarthy MP, Labour's new-media campaigns spokesperson, said: "It's a crowd-sourcing campaign, but it's also about getting an important message across – that we have made enormous changes to the country since 1997. It's not just change you can believe in, it's change you can actually see with your own eyes in every village, town and city across the UK."

The party has made it as easy as possible for supporters to get involved by allowing them to upload photos via Flickr, Facebook, Twitter and through its website.

More than 120 images have already been uploaded on Flickr alone, including Great Lever Children's Centre in Bolton and the Rope Green Medical Centre between Crewe and Nantwich.

The grassroots campaign was created to build on Labour's growing base of digital grass roots support.

According to a report out today (25 January) from Tweetminister, Labour has 113,201 followers on Twitter, compared to 36,874 for the Conservatives.

However, while the party does very well in this area, the report also said the Conservatives are better at getting their message out.

"The Conservatives not only have significantly greater reach than the other main parties, but also their [Twitter] posts tend to have greater distribution (i.e. mentions and retweets) than established media and key bloggers," the report said.

The 'Change We See' campaign follows previous efforts by Labour to involve its grassroots supporters digitally, including most recently, the party adopting the MyDavidCameron.com spoof poster created by bloggers on its homepage.

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This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk