7/12/2009

How to waste money by the bucket load

Craig Murray, in another of his "the whole world is against me" statements, is apparently having 80,000 DVDs made for his election address.

He states that the reason why the Post Office had refused was, in part, because nobody had ever issued a DVD as their election address before. He refers to paper and ink as a 14th century thing and seems to think that the DVD is the way forward. Perhaps I should point him to a few campaign realities.

1) The six second rule - This rule states that on average, you have six seconds from the typical front door to the nearest bin. You have, therefore, six second in order to get part of your message across.

2) DVDs have been used before - Brent East saw Labour using a DVD and video combination whilst Iain Dale distributed tens of thousands of DVDs in North Norfolk at the last general election. The Lib Dems too used them in Harborough. Guess what ? They didn't work and in each case the party that used them lost.

The reality is that most people do not have the time to sit down and watch a DVD, but more than this, they don't want to be tricked in to wasting their time to watch a DVD by a politician.

Perhaps he will prove us all wrong, but in my own experience of peoples reactions in North Norfolk to Iain Dale's DVD, I suspect not.

P.S. I should add, I spoke to Iain Dale about his DVDs after the election and he stated that he felt they did not work.

3 comments:

Iain Dale said...

Nich, actually, they weren't DVD's, they were CD Roms. But you are right, they didn't work.

Conor Burns did a good DVD in Eastleigh, but he lost too.

David Davis did one in the 2005 election and he won, thus bucking the trend!!

Anonymous said...

You krazy kids! I remember Jimmy Goldsmith posting millions of massive VHS bricks for the Referendum Party in '92. And who can forget the classic Roy Jenkins Betamax of 1983 and Dennis Healy's Super 8 initiative back in 1966?

Dead format anyway with online video - much less effort to click a link in an e-mail so more likely to be a sensible tool.

Anonymous said...

David Davis I reckon would have won regardless of the DVD.

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