10 Downing Tweets
Issue 15 | June 2010
Agency
Twenty Six
Creative Team
Adam Campion, Will Jones and Ryan Michael
Production Team
Senior Flash Developer: Ryan Michael and Richard Sykes; Designer: Adam Campion; Senior Designer: Will Jones
Other Credits
Technical Director: Matt Pallatt; Data Analyst: Jonathan Alderson; Creative Director: Guy Sharman; Account Executive: Matt Mosely and Dan Wilkinson; Search: James Zoe; Designer: Nic Cann; Designer: Adam Hidgson and the whole twentysix agency for making this happen often in their Own time and spreading the word.
Date
12th April 2010
Background
As a piece of self-promotion for our agency we wanted to create a fun and interactive website that aggregates what twitter users think about it about the up-coming election. We wanted the site to give a different perspective in the build up to the election that would capture the interest of our audience encouraging interaction and debate around key issues facing the nation
Idea
www.10downingtweets.co.uk is a twitter aggregator that aims to capture the mood of the nation during the election period.
The site aggregates all Twitter mentions of the various parties and leaders, allowing people to see who’s generating the most noise and discover the hottest topics of the day.
As we saw in the Obama campaign, social media played an important role in the new president’s victory. In 10 Downing Tweets we’ve created a weather vein for the 2010 election where all Tweets relating to the parties and party leaders could be accessed in one place together with a voting system so we could keep a close eye on who is in the lead as the election progresses.
We know attention span online is short so it had to be snappy, quick to dip in and out of but allowing users to play with it and go deeper if they choose to.
Key features of the site are:
- “Cast your vote”, allows users to vote by connecting to their twitter account. This provides up-to-the-minute polling data – even tracking the ages of potential voters.
- “Join in our poll” includes a regular question poll on the current political hot topics at the time allowing users to give their opinion.
- “Statistics” allows users to see who is getting the most volume of Tweets.
Finally, we also link directly to the official Government voting registration page to encourage users to register, if they haven’t already. Users can also join the facebook group and follow the site at www.facebook.com/10DowningTweets where we are trying to get discussions going on the latest questions.
Results
In the first three days (and we have a long way to go) we have
Visitors = 7,100 (6,300 unique)
Fans = 400
twitter followers = 700
Been mentioned on:
Timesonline
Telegraph online
BBC
Skynews have called!
Our Thoughts
Unlike in the USA, where social media played a big role in getting Obama elected, it was good old-fashioned TV that led the way in the UK. The televised debates between the three party leaders sparked debate across all media channels. Most of the content created purely for online consumption was very disappointing. The Labour party tried to get supporters to go and create their posters in a classic UGC approach; but otherwise the Conservatives relied on outdoor to attack their opponents in what Lord Saatchi called a “hit and be hit” strategy. The most interesting online ideas were Lean Mean Fighting Machine’s ‘Speechbreaker’ campaign (see p.14) and this neat little idea from Twentysix.