I was genuinely excited about the prospect of the general election, not the event itself per se, but the potential for digital marketing to come to the floor in UK politics for arguably the first time.

Now the big day has arrived and in review the power of digital, primarily social media, really has not been embraced by the main political parties. If we actually look at the utilisation of digital throughout this campaign the only real impact has been the prominence of flawed strategies, negative (humourous) viral pieces and the emergence of gaffes that are all too common in UK politics finding their way online.

It is probably worth looking at what impact a well thought out digital strategy could have done for any of the three main political parties. If we consider Barack Obama's Presedential campaign, which is often highlighted as one of the most successful digital/social media strategies of recent times, we can see the power of the medium in politics.

The Obama presedential campaign managed to raise around $600 million dollars, of which 67% was through online endeavours. His embracing of digital media meant that the current President had a 13 million strong email database and 3 million fans on Facebook during the 2008 campaign, far more than any of his competitors.

UK Political parties have a lot to learn on this front. Most of the attempts to utilise online to any effect have blown up in the faces of our politicians, through badly advised and poorly executed strategies. Take the Gordon Brown YouTube videos for example. I don't know if it is the creepy fake smile the constant "youthful" swaying or just the fact that everything is so woefully contrived in this activity that makes it so painful.


The social web has however played a big part in this election but not perhaps in the way politicians would have wanted. Negative viral pieces have been rife across the net throughout the entire campaign, showing again what could have been done if the medium was utilised productively. One of my favourites was the mydavidcameron air brushed spoofs of the Tory poster campaign.



It may not be surprising that UK politics hasn't embraced digital media with examples such as the above. Every single action by each of the top three parties is scrutinised and the social web is the ideal place for the reporting of gaffes to spread like wildfire. Probably the most prominent of these was the trending topic of #bigotgate storming to the top of the trending topics on Twitter the day Gordon Brown forgot to remove his radio mic.

It has become all too apparent that the lack of any social media strategy on the part of political parties is a massive issue and probably one of the main reasons this did not become the digital election I thought it would be. We only need to look at some of the antics of politicians, such as Stuart MacLennan calling old people "coffin dodgers" on his Twitter page, to see that even the most basic of beneficial strategy or procedures have sadly been forgotten. It is clear that these mediums were not given the credit they deserve by our archaic political parties and there is a clear lack of understanding about their potential influence.

I do hope that even if there is a shift in this mentality that we continue to be entertained by the absurd political social realm for years to come. Talking about that, what has Boris Johnson been Tweeting about today?