The death of Focus?
In the aftermath of Henley there’s a lot of hand wringing about our campaign.
One thing which I think needs to be realised is that Focus is not as effective as it once was.
The original Focus was a revolution in campaigning. A simple, but effective way to communicate with the electorate. It could almost win an election on its own.
Today however, it has to compete with loads of junk mail. Its less likely to get read and more likely to get thrown out with the take away menus. Its effectiveness is much reduced.
That’s not to say we should abandon leafleting. That would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There is still a large place for leaflets in our campaigns. It was a focus leaflet in the run up to some local elections whilst I was at Uni which turned me on to the LibDems, it is a great way to raise the party’s profile amongst voters.
What is needed is a reassessment of the role of leaflets. I personally think the regular Focus throughout the year has a place. It keeps up the presence of the party and can really help boost a candidate’s profile if they’re working at it for a long time.
During a campaign however I think we need to concentrate on a few well thought out and produced leaflets rather than bombarding the electorate.
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June 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Well, we will always bombard at by-elections- and our successes at by-elections even just a few years ago owed a lot to this, no mistake. However, I think there is much more of a place for more targetted campaigning (i.e letters) that has a much higher rate of being read.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
[...] The death of Focus? on Tristan Mills’ Liberty Alone blog. The age-old election agent’s question: how many leaflets [...]