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Will the war over NHS privatisation be won on the social media or on Question Time?
In his lecture for the LSE recently called “These European Elections Matter”, Nigel Farage explained how the 1999 European Elections had been a ‘gamechanger’. This election had apparently returned three MEPs, and Farage explained that this result had only been achieved through the method of proportional representation. Farage concluded that, despite no MPs, this had meant UKIP was suddenly being involved in contemporary political debates on the BBC such as “Question Time” or “Any Questions”.
The situation how the UK entered Europe is almost a counterpoint to the situation why people want the NHS to leave behind market dynamics. The United Kingdom referendum of 1975 was a post-legislative referendum held on 5 June 1975 in the United Kingdom to gauge support for the country’s continued membership of the European Economic Community (EEC), often known as the Common Market at the time, which it had entered in 1973 under the Conservative government of Edward Heath. Labour’s manifesto for the October 1974 general election promised that the people would decide “through the ballot box” whether to remain in the EEC. The electorate expressed significant support for EEC membership, with 67% in favour on a 65% turnout. This was the first referendum that was held throughout the entire United Kingdom.
There has never been as such a referendum on whether the market should be forced to leave the NHS, but many feel that this is an equally totemic issue. It’s quite possible that the 2015 general election on May 7th, will have a low turnout generally if all the main political parties fail to capture the imagination of the general public. Using a market entry analogy, the question is how UKIP and NHAP enter the market of politics. It’s possible that UKIP could manage to come top in the European elections, though this is yet to be seen. UKIP are not opposed to UK in some sort of market with Europe, whilst wishing to not be embroiled in ‘spending £7 million a day for something undemocratic and unaccountable from Brussels’. Likewise, NHAP (National Health Action Party) is also concerned about the lack of democracy and accountability which appears to have become a pervasive theme in English NHS policy, and wish the NHS not to be fettered by the markets (for example European competition law). UKIP appear virtually weekly on Question Time, so the question is in part how can health issues compete for air time? Labour could even benefit from their greater presence in explaining their health policy, which is supposedly to escape the free market and TTIP. And NHAP could hold Labour to account on this issue, and other significant issues such as NHS reconfigurations and PFI. Conversely, UKIP is all for free trade.
Dr Lucy Reynolds soldiers on. As an academic in the highly prestigious London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Reynolds has developed an understanding of health policy which is unrivalled by many. Lucy has been quite successful in getting her well informed views across in the social media.
Dr Lucy Reynolds doesn’t have the luxury of Question Time.
Nigel Farage’s main complaint about Question Time is one of hostility to his party’s stance:
“I am one of the few people who can’t really complain about the editorial policy of Question Time having been on it 26 times since I was first elected in 1999. In terms of the coverage it gives Ukip I have found it fair and in the past few years the programme has even started accepting Ukip panellists other than me! But there have been a couple of programmes in which my colleagues and I have faced a hostile audience which in no way represents how Ukip is normally received or which are representative of the opinion polls. I am not pointing the finger of blame at the QT team but the question I want to ask is whether the Question Time audiences being exploited by the hard left?”
Even when Question Time was recently hosted at Lewisham, the number of questions on the NHS was kept to a bare minimum. This has been a general trend with this flagship TV programme, although the producers consistently cite that they can only air debates on questions proposed by audience members. However, occasionally dissent does ‘break though’ unpredictably. There have been over 86,000 ‘hits’ for a lady in the audience in Lewisham QT here
If it feels as if Nigel Farage is rarely off Question Time, that’s because he isn’t. Farage appeared more times on the programme than any other politician in the last four years. Top performers on #BBCQT include Nigel Farage, Vince Cable, Ken Clarke, Caroline Flint, Peter Hain, Caroline Lucas, Theresa May, and Shirley Williams. The arguments for Farage appealing to producers are that he is charismatic, inspires debate and helps them to fufil their requirement to give representation to smaller parties. But surely the same can be said for some experts in health policy?
Dr Louise Irvine (@drmarielouise), a GP in New Cross, south east London, and chair of the ‘Save Lewisham A&E’ campaign, has recently announced she will be standing for the National Health Action Party in the European Parliament elections on the 22 May 2014. Dr Irvine has said the NHS was under threat from an impending EU-US trade deal and the Government’s policies of ‘top down reorganisation, cuts and privatisation’.
She said: ‘I want to use this election to raise awareness of the imminent danger posed to the NHS by the EU/US trade agreement which will allow American companies to carve up the NHS and make the privatisation process irreversible.
‘I also want to alert the public to the gravity of the threat to the NHS from this Government with its programme of cuts, hospital closures and privatisation and to send a powerful message to politicians in Westminster and Brussels that people will not stand by and let their NHS be destroyed.
‘If elected, I will strive to ensure that EU regulations don’t adversely affect the NHS and are always in the best interests of the health of British people. The health of the nation spans all areas of policy from the environment to the economy.’
Dr Irvine is not only the “new kid on the block”. Rufus Hound is planning to run for the European Parliament to campaign against the privatisation of the NHS, saying he wants to preserve “one of the single greatest achievements of any civilisation”. In an impassioned blog post, he accused the Conservatives of wanting to sell off the health service to party donors – claiming that the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was “killing the NHS so that his owners can bleed you dry”.
The NHA was set up by Dr Richard Taylor, a former independent MP, to campaign against the Government’s Health and Social Care Act, introduced under the previous health secretary, Andrew Lansley. The party plans to field 50 candidates in the 2015 general election. Dr Clive Peedell (@cpeedell) has also been talking to the social media to get the NHAP’s message across’ he is one of the co-leaders.
The Max Keiser/Clive Peedell interview is here.
To give them credit, Dr Marie Louise Irvine and Rufus Hound offer us a chance to discuss the NHS, in the same way Nigel Farage and, say, Patrick O’Flynn (@oflynnexpress) offer us a chance to discuss our membership of Europe. The criticism is that they represent single issues and do not have a coherent corpus of policies across the full range of policy areas, and indeed have no realistic chance of forming a government. But paradoxically they both do offer a chance for domestic policy to operate in such a way Portcullis House doesn’t become another neoliberal outpost of the Federal United States of Europe. In the NHS’ case, socialism might only survive if it is not engulfed with yet more Atlantic Bridge-type stuff next parliament. But UKIP would not probably stop that. Who knows if Labour would be able to either in reality.
Labour’s Twitter messaging of #NHS299
One of the basic lessons of Twitter is to make your tweet ideally ‘visually eye catching’. Hence, a stunning photo might help.
It’s often said that you must make sure that ‘your content is not caught in a timewarp‘. By this, marketing professionals provide that your promotion must relate to the current configuration of a product, not, for example, a prototype.
Two Labour MPs literally decided to tweet about the #NHS299 protest outside #cpc13 by showing the same image of the ‘Stop the War’ protest against a Labour government from a few years ago.
According to Heather Stanley (@hstanley_), the source of the actual photo is in fact the ‘Socialist Worker’ from Sat 30 Sep 2006 with the caption,
Picture of 50,000 marching through Manchester on Time to Go demo
Through chance or design, 50,000 was also thought to be the number marching today.
#Lab13 Stop #NHS2?
Whilst many of us find the concept of the NHS being outsourced and privatised to the highest bidder quite revolting, there is also a vocal minority, with cumulatively sufficient numbers of them to hold office if not power, who believe that the Health and Social Care Act (2012) and concomitant “top down reorganisation” bring innovative, free market forces to make the NHS a “global brand leader” in the competitive world of healthcare. They believe it’s simply about making the new NHS, ‘NHS2′, “fit for purpose”, and it was only a matter of time under the two main parties (Labour and Conservative) that yet a further reorganisation of the NHS would become necessary. Arguably, the public would learn to love its benefits. Similarly, the public would learn to love HS2, “high speed 2″. Problematically, despite supportive noises from Osborne and Hammond about HS2, HS2 could still become derailed.
As the UK Labour Party hit their latest debacle of a Philip Morris stand at conference, having wished to make a stance on standard packaging of cigarettes, the tensions between populist stances maximising Labour’s electoral chances on May 7th 2015 and highly principled strategic stances based on policy have arguably never been stronger. If you’re not in Brighton for the Labour Party Conference, you might have caught sight of the “#stopHS2″ campaign in the social media. Also, if you have been spending time looking at tweets about Labour’s health and social care policy, you can see the criticism of Labour over the accelerated privatisation of the NHS is not without its critics. Even intelligent well-meaning Labour supporters have been collecting electronic clippings of the continued interest in the private finance initiative (and the involvement of Coopers and Lybrand in the Major and Blair governments) and the independent sector treatment centres of the Blair government. At a time when Labour is seeking to restore faith in the political process under Lord Ray Collins of Highbury, the question that Labour is so strapped of cash that it needs Philip Morris support remains an irritating one? The notion of the ‘democratic deficit’ is seen in both HS2, as such a policy issue not even mooted in the 2010 general election which seems to have gathered cross-party support (a bit like ‘personal health budgets), and in ‘NHS2′, the top-down NHS reorganisation implemented by the Conservatives with the Liberal Democrats aiding and abetting. So if nobody voted for either policy, where did the policies from? It might not be quite the “smoke-filled rooms of beer and sandwiches”, but powerful lobbying of private commercial interests are likely to have been proven influential in the past.
Whatever the official party positions on HS2 (and this has been subject to flux in recent months), both HS2 and NHS2 have formidable national grassroot campaigns in places. Stop HS2 is the national grassroots campaign against HS2, the proposed new High Speed Two railway. Theri mission is To Stop High Speed Two by persuading the Government to scrap the HS2 proposal and to facilitiate local and national campaiging against High Speed Two.Their supporters come from a wide range of backgrounds and from across the political spectrum. The “Stop Section 75 campaign” from 38 degrees aimed at thwarting the major competitive tendering construct of the Health and Social Care Act (2012), but it was ultimately unsuccessful. 38 Degrees is the one of the UK’s biggest campaigning communities, with over 1 million members. They share a desire for a “more progressive, fairer, better society”. They tried to argue earlier this year to all MPs and members of the House of Lords that our NHS is precious – and the public overall don’t want it privatised. Privatisation for both HS2 and NHS2, here, essentially means diverting of state resources into private sector hands.
Both HS2 and NHS2 are staggeringly expensive projects in this day when we keep on having austerity rammed down our throats, but admittedly the scale of spending of each project is different. Nonetheless by anyone’s standards, £32 billion as an estimate for #HS2 is an eye-watering amount of cash. It works out at well over £1,000 for every single family up and down the United Kingdom, and large numbers of us remain unconvinced that this will be money well spent. The exact cost of the NHS2 top down reorganisation is in its own different way unclear. Following on from Labour’s claims of ‘hidden costs’ last November, Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham claimed that the reorganisation planned in the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill (as it was then) amounted to costs of £3.5 billion, far more than the £1.2 – £1.3 billion claimed by the Government. Minister of State for Health Simon Burns branded this figure a ‘mistake’, reasserting the Government’s own figures as the correct estimate.
Also, both policies HS2 and NHS2 are “unpopular” with the general public. This is reflected by the fact they have never been openly discussed with the public before implementation. The public remain unconvinced about the actual rationale for HS2 to bring greater equity between London and regions of England (critics argue that the plan would benefit London more than the regions). Likewise, at a time when the ‘cost of living’ has been thrust into pole position by Ed Miliband, the cost of non-NHS providers providing NHS products and services for a cost which enhances shareholder dividend, the case for pimping out the NHS to the private sector has never been more badly timed. A YouGov poll into spending cuts commissioned by the TaxPayers’ Alliance last summer found that 48 per cent of people supported cancelling plans for HS2, with barely a third wanting to press ahead with the scheme. And it’s hardly surprising that the public remains so reluctant to support it. Andrew Lansley’s NHS reorganisation is unpopular both with the public and health service staff. Such a large scale reorganisation (likened to “throwing a grenade into the NHS”, by Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston) would be difficult even in the Blair years of increased funding.
Research published by the TaxPayers’ Alliance last year into the hidden costs of HS2 further set alarm bells ringing, highlighting, for example, the billions of additional funding that would be necessary to mitigate the environmental effects of the line by running more of it underground or through tunnels. Andy Burnham, Shadow Health Secretary, spoke of a “bruised and battered” NHS that was in a “fragile” state. Burnham believes there is now a choice to be made about whether we want to allow the inexorable advance of competition in the market, or whether we want to hold on to a planned national system that many successive generations in England have benefited from.
Both HS2 and NHS2 pose fundamental problems for the Labour policy review, still currently underway. They poses problems for the UK economy – how much benefit are we actually going to get from this surge of spending to implement them? They also pose problems for the public’s institutions. Both the railway network and the NHS are cherished by the public but in different ways. Many citizens, whether they are Labour voters, think that the privatised railway industry has become costly, fragmented and essentially a shambles following Tory privatisation, and some would fundamentally like it in state ownership. While Burnham has consistently said the dichotomy between public and private is a false dichotomy, he has also reiterated his affirmation for the ‘NHS preferred provider’ policy which is a small attempt to mitigate against the loss of a state-run comprehensive universal National Health Service.
Both HS2 and NHS2 are ‘elephants in the room’, and it is merely a question of time for how long they may remain hidden.
Have you ever stopped to consider how you use the internet? (Guest post by @AndyKinsey from 'Labour Online')
The internet is a source of vast swathes of information and data, from the BBC News website to social media like Facebook and Twitter.
In 2008, Barack Obama used this mass of information to help him win his presidential election campaign. He used social media and engineer his victory by taking advantage of big data. He looked at everything from location to interests and beyond, together he gained a profile of individuals, groups and localities, this enabled him to campaign both from the grass roots and from afar.
Since his victory, the Labour Party has began making moves towards becoming more “connected” but we feel this hasn’t gone far enough. Yes, we’ve got the amazing work of Movement 4 Change for ground campaigns, but what about tackling grass roots online?
In the Pew internet study during his the election campaign in over 18% of USA internet users talked about Obama’s campaign, over 45% of these watched at least one of his YouTube videos and a huge 83% of these survey participants of those were aged 18 to 24 and 60% of this age group took part in Obamas social media campaign.
These are staggering figures – let’s put them into today world. There are now more users than ever online in the UK, there are now more users than ever using and interacting with social media. However you look at it, most of those users will be aged 18 to 35 in the UK. Further than this, many users of social media are under voting age, but can still take part in your social media campaign.
So with this information in mind, what can we do as a party to Get Online and Get Back to Power?
1. We start today building social media profiles.?Every member of the party, every party area, every cllr and mp needs an account on twitter AND facebook.
2. Build websites that look good and have great content?Websites can be used to pass information around, blog about news and more importantly collect information about constituents (as well as keep them updated)
3. Plan for the next elections?Yes plural! Today is the time to start looking at the big data we already have and how we can best use that to our advantage in campaigns.
If we, the Labour Party, can pull together we can move past our defeat in 2010 and learn from the lessons of a great campaign of Barack Obama. We can utilise everything we know from contact creator and social media, we can collect information today for use tomorrow and we can win forthcoming elections.
Today, we must start building, because if we don’t they will and we must be at the forefront of technology if we want to win the next elections.
About the Author:
Andy Kinsey is the founder of Labour Online an initiative to ‘Get Labour Online’ with great web design and social media campaigns.
Twitter: @AndyKinsey
Links of interest:
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/6–The-Internets-Role-in-Campaign-2008.aspx
The social media for Labour can act as an incubator for ideas, but can also act as its coffin
As the conference season draws near, councillors, MPs and other activists will be wondering what does the Labour Conference actually achieves. Ideas typically range from a form of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ in the main Conference Hall itself, to the more outlandish dissection of policy by relative nobodies. Some people use it to showcase their importance within the party, whereas other people like me simply enjoy it as a holiday to meet other members of Labour and to discuss ideas informally.
How do activists get their message across? Heated arguments ensue about the balance and bias of the BBC, with approximately half of the audience accusing it of rampant left-wing bias with the other half accusing it of rampant right-wing bias. In the last year, I have noticed an upsurge in the number of Photoshopped posters, some definitely bordering on an incitement offence, defamation offence, or public order offence. Facebook proprietors are typically slow to remove outlandish controversial groups, but seem quite willing suddenly to remove ‘losers’ fitting a certain pattern of opinions.
Disability is one. Somewhat provoked by David Cameron using it as an opportunity to promote his love of the disabled, a swathe of disabled citizens and hardened disability campaigners have taken to the social media to put their point-of-view across, equally forcefully. It seems that everything is politicised these days, ranging from the policy to save billions by taking disabled citizens off the disability living allowance to the new alternative payment mechanism. GCSE grades are politicised. International students studying at London higher education establishments appear to be politicised, or rather extradited.
The social media nonetheless has become a place where people can communicate. Like all networks, speed of information can be very fast, and misinformation can travel extremely speedily. When somebody appears as a trend on Twitter, he or she has just allegedly died, or appeared on Question Time (or in some cases, both in a sense). Networks have a phenomenon where there are lead adopters, so if a Twitter seleb retweets your motley tweet you can find yourself having short-lived popularity status yourself. Everyone has a valid opinion on Facebook, even the anonymous tweeps can mount a persuasive case, and it is easy to dip in and dip out of other people’s conversations if you are so inclined.
Nobody is honestly deluding themselves that this is where actual policy is written. In fact, nobody exactly is sure where policy is written. It seems a far cry from the focus groups of New Labour, and possibly the easiest way is for all of us to sign up to a giant Wiki and put down our thoughts. However, I am sure that we would probably never agree, and, as a party, we seem genuinely uncertain about our past, let alone present, and let alone future. Twitter and Facebook are great media for where those who shout the loudest can have the most eye-catching message, and there is always the hope that Tom Baldwin and Ed Miliband, instead of reading the #xfactor tweets, are absorbing what people are writing about the privatisation of the NHS.
One can live in hope, but all too frequently the social media do not serve as an incubator for ideas. It is where instead good ideas can be given a good burial. Excellent political concepts are as rare as hen’s teeth, and there’s always a hope amongst the million blogposts, there’ll be that equivalent of a Mozart masterpiece. The social media, for Labour certainly, has become discredited by people just launching abrupt insults, which often disintegrates into a ‘well, he started it’ conversation. For example, it was all David Cameron’s fault that he started off with the benefit scronger language, some might say.
Blogposts have, however, been democratising to a limited extent. For example, some young people who started off as bloggers now write regular columns for national newspapers. The question nonetheless remains whether some authors should have more klout as they have more experience, or whether these authors are being given undue weight in what is fundamentally an utilitarian debate – greatest benefit for the maximum number of people. In such a system, there are no winners or no losers, so if you’re hoping for a top 100 list of bloggers to motivate you, forget it.
Blogpost: "Blogging Against Disablism Day 2012" – my experience #BADD2012
The seventh annual Blogging Against Disablism day is today, on Tuesday, 1st May 2012. This is the day where all around the world, disabled and non-disabled people blog about their experiences, observations and thoughts about disability discrimination. In this way, we hope to raise awareness of inequality, promote equality and celebrate the progress we’ve made. I once wrote a post for the legal blog, Legal Cheek, describing the practical difficulties that disabled students like me, have in training contract interviews. But this is a different post!
I have often written on this blog about inclusivity and accessibility in relation to law and legal education; and I strongly recommend their twitter thread @legalcheek.
Actually, the firms on the whole are very good at making you feel comfortable for the interview. So much so you end up feeling very uncomfortable (as a result of the ‘Does he take sugar?’ syndrome). However, I would say almost too comfortable, in the sense that you do feel that the Partners concerned were taking meticulous care. In a sense, this is a case of ‘damned if you do, or damned if you don’t’.
My disability is multi-fold. I see double all the time, therefore I often voluntarily have to shut one eye to avoid seeing double. This is because I was in a coma for six weeks in the summer of 2007 due to meningitis. I now have also a cerebllar dysarthria (speech problem), but I am told that my speech is comprehensible. Secondly, I have trouble walking. I have a condition which is known as ataxia, which means I can easily go off balance, and I look as if I am mildly drunk. I find that London cabbies immediately know that I have ataxia, even if I hail a cab from outside a pub (I do not drink alcohol any more); they are very discerning, and, of course they have a right to refuse to pick you up if they wish and they can justify it. The handicap means I have to take it steady while walking (I won’t be doing the London Legal Walk 2012, but the organisers have kindly given me the chance to do sponsored tweeting for it, which makes me very happy as I volunteered for 5 months last year in a law centre in London in welfare benefits, as a law student approved to do the LPC).
I think for training contract interviews, some candidates do not even know that they require ‘reasonable adjustments’. I am very influenced by David Merkel, the lawyer in charge of the Law Society’s ‘Lawyers with Disabilities’ group. I went to their Christmas bash in 2010, and David told me, at a quiet moment aside, it was all about giving law students ‘a chance to show what they can add to a law firm, on a level playing field‘.This I feel is very true. Disabled citizens like me don’t like being made to feel ill, which they can sometimes do in the application procedure for training contracts. They’re not ill, they’re just different. Unfortunately, this Government, which stopped my Disabled Living Allowance without any warning or notification, makes me feel unwanted. I refuse to allow that perception of me, even if Katie Hopkins makes hurtful tweets like this. I cried for a bit after I read it, but with all due respect having completed my MBA recently I feel confident about business too, but in a different sense. I am 37, with several good postgraduate degrees, including in business, law and natural sciences, so I feel that I can bring value to society, even more than a popular TV show. Ironically, I feel @Lord_Sugar appreciates ‘value’ in business.
Finally, I am most grateful to @BADDTweets for alerting me to this, which is the Twitter stream for “Blogging Against Disablism Day”, run by @goldfish and @themanoutside (#bad2012): http://tinyurl.com/BADD2012. I particularly appreciate the chance to voice my experience of disability and disabilism here. All I can say to disabled and non-disabled citizens that it can be, in any context, very insidious and subtle. I am very lucky in that the law school I’m in does not “make me feel ill” (in any way you wish to interpret this legally or not!), but rather instead wanted and valued, and it is a joy to study my Legal Practice Course at BPP Law School, Holborn.
Two novel social media innovations by law firms creating social value: the cases of Eversheds (@legaltrainee) and Inksters
Law firms are increasingly embracing innovation as a source of competitive advantage within the UK. Innovation allows an unique strategic marketing niche for law firms within a highly competitive marketplace, and offers law firms a means to improve on market share and market growth. In management of these firms, especially in the contemporary landscape of alternative business structures, such flexibility and adaptability can mean that firms such as Eversheds and Inksters flourish, whereas older, bigger incumbent firms struggle.
Fundamental to the definition of an innovation is an idea or product which is easily understandable; that then ‘diffuses’ across to ‘adopters’ within a wider ‘network’, who can then decide to make or break an idea. Google+ is an idea but its ultimate survival depends on whether the general public take to it, in the way that they have taken to Facebook; indeed, Facebook announced its IPO today. The network no longer consists of employees, including trainees, within the firm; it is much wider, critically involving now the general public, other clients, potential clients, and even potential trainees. In this post, I describe two innovative uses of the social media by two law firms: @Inksters and the trainee account of @Eversheds, called @LegalTrainee, both involving Twitter. Inherent in the innovations is full participation by the intended audience in determining the success of the innovation; this is reflected indeed in the tagline of ‘Legal Trainee’, “this is not just a brochure, this is conversation” (as depicted here).
Inksters decided to send out Christmas hats through the post in a campaign which is still going strong, and @LegalTrainee decided to offer a competition whereby a law student who had put ‘@LegalTrainee’ into his or her profile could win coffee with a partner of Eversheds. Both were relatively simple ideas, but were remarkably successful. I put various questions to Brian Inkster of @Inksters and Ismat Abidi, a trainee solicitor of Eversheds @LegalTrainee, earlier this week. As explained here, @LegalTrainee is not simply a Twitter account, but is how Eversheds has embraced the social media in a number of different platforms.
Both are great examples of how an organic social media marketing campaign should be conducted. Indeed, for a wider discussion of the social media issues, a brilliant short book has been written by Guy Clapperton called ‘This is Social Media: Turning Social Media into Sales’ (this book, newly published by Capstone, is available in Kindle and iBook formats too, and available from here). This updated book is especially great for practical tips throughout the text, including “action point” boxes, with a variety of topics covered such as content, tone, business analytics, platforms for innnovation, and returns-on-investment. Guy discusses in his book the critical issue of participant behaviour; implicit in his argument is the convergence of the culture and mindset of the two parties, and fundamentally increasing brand awareness. This is certainly no mean feat, as it is all about the ultimate holy grail of marketing – discovering new members of the target audience.
Brian Inkster (Inksters)
1. What is the concept behind the ‘Inksters hats’ campaign?
Inksters rebranded in December 2011. The new brand reflects Inksters’ place in the legal market as forward thinking lawyers and incorporates an arrow device. This points to Inksters’ care for detail, progressive approach and the fact that we direct clients and lead the way.
2. Where did the idea come from?
As part of the rebranding exercise we asked our designers, O Street, to design a Christmas Card to launch the rebrand. They came up with the idea of a Christmas Hat as the cut out in the Christmas Crown reflects the arrow device in our new logo. Indeed, as with the hat, on our new notepaper and business cards the arrow is actually cut out of the paper/card rather than being printed on it.
3. Why has the campaign been such a success?
Social media has really made it a success. We printed on the hats an e-mail address to send photos to but the vast majority of the photos received have been tweeted to us. Tumblr was an excellent blogging platform to post the hat photos and Twitter quotes to. Setting up the Tumblr blog with the www.inksterschristmashats.com domain enabled the hats and quotes to be showcased. This combined with Twitter was a winning combination. Tweeps tweeted about receiving the hat and/or tweeted photos of it on themselves, their pets, toys or elsewhere. Other Tweeps who had not received hats asked if they could get one and we were still just a week ago (which is a month after Christmas) posting them out. We are now into February and still have the promise of some hat photos over the next week including someone who has a carefully planned photo to take this coming weekend! All of this has kept Inksters Christmas Hats in peoples minds well beyond Christmas and given it a longevity that a standard Christmas card would never have had.
Ismat Abidi (@LegalTrainee)
1. Why does Eversheds, through @legaltrainee, consider it important that applicants understand the work and culture of the firm through social media?
A Trainee gets as much out of a TC as they put into it. It’s also no secret that Trainees that most closely fit the firm’s culture will be the most valuable to the firm, get the most out of their training experience and become more likely to secure an NQ position with that firm. It’s really a two way process, so by finding applicants that fit this bill at the graduate recruitment stage, it’s a win-win situation for both sides. That’s why it’s important that applicants understand the work and culture of the firm. It’s not crucial that this is done through social media, but social media is the best way for Trainees and Graduate Recruitment to engage in real and live conversation with potential candidates. It’s like a 24-7 international networking event where recruiters and candidates can come and go as they please. What’s even better is that all conversations are public, so unlike face-to-face networking events, students can see what other candidates are asking and join in discussions between recruiters, legal bloggers and other students.
2. In addition to offering the competition, how does @LegalTrainee use social media to achieve an innovative, competitive edge in securing the best applicants ?
@LegalTrainee isn’t just a Twitter account – it’s an entire project using three social media platforms: Brave New Talent, Facebook and Twitter, which are integrated with one another. Chances are that our target applicants use at least one of these platforms. The competitive edge is that we’re offering a live brochure to candidates (our slogan is: This is not a brochure, this is conversation), which no other firm really does at the level of direct engagement we’re involved with right now. Aside from the project itself being innovative (@LegalTrainee recently won the SoMe Graduate Recruitment Award 2012 for Best Use of Twitter), Eversheds allows real Trainees from across its international offices to manage and run these accounts using mobile devices and engage directly with press/candidates/any other followers. It ’ s not the PR team or graduate recruitment that followers are speaking to (though they do monitor the account), it’s the real trainees talking about their real experiences at the firm – something that hasn’ t previously been done before in the legal world.
3. Why do you think that the various competitions run through @LegalTrainee have been so successful in reaching new candidates?
It’s unfortunate that there’s no other way to sift through large volumes of high-calibre applications more efficiently than online applications. We’ve all been through it (most of us have done so several times) and it can be a really grating process. You could be an absolutely ideal candidate and for one reason or another, have a bad numbers day and fail the numerical reasoning test, which means your application automatically stops there. I applied to Eversheds in 2005 and again in 2007 (with a supposed destined-to-fail-in-a-TC-hunt 2:2), so I know what it’s like. These competitions that Eversheds run offer a chance for those who otherwise didn’t get through the standard application process. Unlike spending an evening filling in your work experience and grades in an online form, the way to enter these competitions is quite refreshing for law students. It can range from submitting a video/song/blog with a friend to win work experience in our Hong Kong office or simply following a Twitter account to win coffee with one of our Trainee Partners. If I was still searching for a TC, I’d definitely enter these sorts of competitions.
This is a general article about law firms, social value and social innovation ; LegalAware has received nothing in the production of this article which is a freely-written opinion, and please note that the article is not representative of the views of BPP or the BPP Legal Awareness Society. The blogpost is a personal academic viewpoint of @Legalaware.
A view from North of the Border: Law Firms, Law Students and Twitter by @LegalEagleMHM
A view from North of the Border: Law Firms, Law Students and Twitter by @LegalEagleMHM.
In this vlog, Michelle explains what Twitter is, the potential benefits of law firms embracing Twitter (especially with regards to Scottish law firms), personal benefits for using Twitter in the context of road traffic law, and, finally, the uses of Twitter by individuals and corporate firms.
Michelle feels that Twitter is not the ‘be-all-and-end-all’ and is merely one marketing tool, raising the profile of law firms, students and law firm employees. Michelle feels that Twitter gives law students an opportunity to establish interest and knowledge about a subject, and also that Twitter can even generate networks of lawyers who know where to go for specialist advice. Michelle has used Twitter to download legal sources, to do legal research, to enroll students for special projects, to build a personal profile, and to establish rapport with fellows. Michelle however advises that it’s very important to conduct yourself professionally at all times, as what you write can reflect on you personally, and your firm; not to be of an opinion of being critical, but to be collaborative by re-tweeting if appropriate. Michelle feels that it can be used as an academic resource, solely for information gathering, or leverage for blogging (practitioner, academic or otherwise).
Michelle provides that a single tweet can make a massive impact – this is a point that appeared to be made previously by David Allen Green in his evidence in the Commons Select Committee.
David Allen Green: Strictly, the number of followers is irrelevant. If you have a single tweet that is of any interest, it will go round the world very quickly, regardless of how many followers the particular tweeter has.
Book review: Socialnomics, Word of mouth for social good, by Erik Qualman (@Qualman)
The associated website of ‘Socialnomics’ is http://www.socialnomics.net/.
This book surrounds a huge mystery surrounding social value. The easiest question to ask is what is the cost of social media? Apart from the investment in the necessary computer hardware, the answer is ‘virtually nothing’. Erik Qualman devotes the entire book to discovering the value of social media for both individuals and businesses, and is a very engaging and impressively researched contribution to the field.
Whilst there is a relatively short formal section on ‘return on investment’, the book has its focus why people could possibly benefit from an involvement with social media. Like the nature of these innovative technologies themselves, this book is more than a simple invention. Like the importance of this book, the value of social media, according to Qualman’s thesis, ultimately arises from the quality of the interaction of the user with the product.
The book is surprisingly flexible in the possibilities that the reader might wish to adopt after reading this book, although there is one useful ‘socialnomics’ diagram which could be used as a basic framework. The actual business models of social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been evasive, even for the management of these companies in real life, so it would be unfair to expect Qualman to produce a definitive answer about this. There are some real ‘unexpected gems’, such as the possible ‘unique selling proposition’ of people who are experts in particular areas getting their 15 minutes (or beyond) on Twitter. I was particularly intrigued about the use of Twitter in easing communication between different generations of Twitter. I find this ‘democratisation’ of society through the social media extremely attractive, where every person’s opinion is highly valued, irrespective of social rank. This could be a potent theme in thinking how businesses interact in a dialogue with their clients, for example in law and business.
Qualman’s question is fundamentally a problematic one – what is the value of ‘socialnomics’? How or why might it go further than face-to-face real-life interactions. It is impossible to argue that the book lacks structure. The book in a very systematic way segments the discussion into relevant areas, but certain chapters (such as the use of social media in Obama’s electoral campaign) may not be that interesting to all readers in the UK. The book is founded on a plethora of interesting facts and opinions, and the case examples are relevant and interesting. For example, Qualman visits the notion of the ‘expert blogger’, and provides a very elegant and compelling argument why the “expert” blogger might be more impressive than the “expert” journalist in a prestigious newspaper. Qualman also reviews in a meaningful way the complicated world of Twitter, considering what might be of value in a 140 character tweet, and considers the advantages of real-time interaction in platforms such as Twitter and 4square, say, for example, compared to Facebook.
A possible limitation of this book is the answer to the question, “Can you show me the money?” This is where I feel that Qualman does not go into ‘hard sell’ of his undoubtedly considerable expertise in how to ‘make’ the customer benefit from the social media. Qualman sticks to a very interesting story about the possible impact of social media on society and its economy, instead of immersing himself in a turgid analysis based on international marketing principles which might have added little to the reader’s understanding. Instead, he allows in a very pleasant way the reader to make his or her own mind up, about what might work for him or her. Anyone who says otherwise, I feel, is exhibiting some sort of ‘book envy’.
I am not aware of any book like it, which provides a comprehensive understandable overview of the world of social media, for both personal and business user. It’s available in a number of formats, including audiobook, hard copy book, and of course a form which you can read on your #ipad2. Like is true for the whole social media industry, and corporate entities such as law firms, the ultimate goal is to find those new customers.
The anti-social network
There are many advantages to a firm embracing twitter as part of their corporate strategy, and these have been discussed elsewhere extensively, including by @BrianInkster, @kilroyt, @bhamiltonbruce, @legalbrat, @colmmu, @NewLeafLaw, @LindaCheungUK and @LegalBizzle (= top (legal) commentator). @Miss_TS_Tweets has recently been given the go-ahead to take part in a corporate blogging exercise, and her recent experiences can be seen in her blog post as of yesterday. I am not going to talk about aspects of the ‘lawyers enjoying the tweet taste of success‘ described by Alex Aldridge, in his recent Guardian article. The tweeting community benefits from all contributors, ranging from @charonqc to @AshleyConnick, with differing but complementary perspectives. This all may be a far cry from what Mark Zuckenberg had originally conceived of in development and implementation of his ‘social network‘.
A medium-sized firm might be able to secure generic competitive advantages through their unique relationships in diverse practice areas and sectors (some of which might be extremely community-friendly such as social enterprises), but there always remains the ‘glocal‘ challenge – i.e. how to make such a fundamentally national or international approach work level at an individual basis within a particular town in England, Scotland or Wales, for example. My story here revolves around twitter, but it could equally apply to blogs such as this one. Equally, the strategy could be one focused on imparting knowledge including press releases and relevant publications (see, for example, the excellent @SJ_Weekly account which acts as a handle for the main journal/magazine). A robust synthesis of how to approach twitter in the corporate law was offered by them in a excellent thought-provoking post, “Tweet Forth And Multiply“, earlier this year. Jean-Yves Gilg, the Editor of Solicitors Journal, is well-known to be interested in this emerging area in corporate law.
Such educational initiatives via the social media can be extremely effective, even if the initial communication appears unidirectional but quickly allow prompt recriprocity (see for example the brand new educational initiative for law students, @TSL_Tweets and their rapidly-updated website). For example, Brian Inkster and Linda Cheung of the Institute of Directors, noticeably through @cubesocial, had emphasised the crucial importance of high quality people-relationship building, for example. However even the CubeSocial analysis has recently evolved into something further, with personal conversation management an achievable goal (as explained in Kim’s blog on 7 September 2011). This is essential for the ‘carryover’ effect for profitability of transactions, beyond the corporate billing of a single transaction, arguably.
The blog post of @Miss_TS_Tweets reinforces the view that corporate social media does not involve a network that is entirely “social”: it involves what I feel is an “anti-social network“. In her blogpost, Miss_TS_Tweets provides an example that you wouldn’t be necessarily be expected to wear a name badge at a social event outside work hours, so why should you be so identifiable if doing corporate twitter or acting as a corporate blogger? There are certainly issues about the infrastructure of the firm, its management and leadership, its customers/clients/competitors, its supply chain and network, its quality management, its process and quality management and its resource allocation which will influence the operational efficacy of implementation of a new corporate strategy within an organisation, whether in an incremental or revolutionary way.
It’s probably advisable for the anti-social network to developed, created and implemented according to well-known principles in management and leadership to maximise the chances of success. This is critically dependent on all members of the organisation, but this is dependent on realisation that the employee of the corporate firm cannot necessary be expected to do twitter 24/7 and needs some time to be in anti-social network (anti-social to work but social to ‘real immediates’, i.e. with personal friends and families only. Lawyers, like architects, journalists, physicians or surgeons, need their quality “me-time” too. Resource allocation and funding demonstrate a commitment to any particular innovation in a corporate, but paying somebody to be available 24/7 might unfortunately introduce some contractual obligation to be ‘on-call’ on twitter when the top priority should clearly be the nuts-and-bolts of practising the law like the drafting of contracts. Expecting somebody to tweet on a single merged work/personal account means that tweets become prominently designed to ‘play safe’, diminishing the breadth of substance to the tweets.
However, in the culture of the corporate firm embracing twitter, it is vital that corporate tweeters forge powerful relationships with all other stakeholders, which might include lay members of the general public, marketing and media analysts, lawyers, managers, others, or themselves. For this innovative approach to succeed, everybody’s input could be welcomed but in such a way where diversity is respected – this includes for different physical abilities, or hierarchy (e.g. trainee up to partner). The atmosphere has to be open.
The inherent issue with Twitter is that it is vehemenently innovative, such that participants must be able to feel they can make mistakes, and can take some risks. Corporate tweeters should not be penalised financially or otherwise if they make innocent mistakes, as a lot of damage can be done towards the enormous goodwill for the corporate tweeting to be a success. Giving improper advice would be wholly inadvisable for corporate tweeters, as they do indeed deserve to be disciplined by @sra_solicitors (and correspondingly @barstandards for the ‘other half’) for imparting incorrect advice which undermines the reputation of and confidence within the legal profession as a whole. The code of conduct for the routine operation of lawyers who are solicitors, including confidentiality issues, integrity or conflicts of interest (say), can be immediately applied to Twitter, which is merely just a genre of media. Corporate tweeters will perhaps need the help of senior people or specialists to advise constructively on this, in the same way a trainee would not be able to cough without someone noticing. That’s where a supportive education and training division, under the clever guidance of HR, might kick in to guarantee training (there possibly might be some actual skill to doing twitter effectively?), and robust encouragement is given for social media engagement.
The risk of such risky comments might indeed be mitigated by the corporate tweeter explaining that views are not necessarily thoe of the firm, and the corporate tweeters could be interspersed throughout the firm that an organisational change which is pro-twitter is not threatened by obstructive barriers within the organisation, the so-called “silo effect“. As there is much tacit knowledge potentially to be shared, such as the shared experiences of personal corporate tweeters in their personal accounts, it’s essential that these experiences are freely shared by established corporate tweeters and newcomers.
Risk-taking is a very tricky for those implementing a corporate twitter change to get their head around. If corporate tweeters, it’s pivotal that a ‘blame culture’ does not swoop down on the few member trying to make it work, and there is a balanced assessment of any successes (like @LegalTrainee actually achieving in improving quality and/or quantity of trainee recruitment through measurable analytics). There has to be clear authority, time scape and authority-to-act in the implementation of resources to make such a corporate twitter strategy work.
It might be helpful for ‘corporate twitter leaders‘ to be dispersed within the organisation, to ensure that the embracing of Twitter is a genuine one, and not a cosmetic one for purely marketing purposes (as can go wrong in disability accsss or corporate social responsibility). Individual motivation is clearly important but it is perhaps likely to work best if aligned with the overall goals of the organisation. This might be for example for a firm to have an excellent reputation and license-to-operate in something technologically -related, or prove that the firm can offer something different in traditional areas such as insolvency or company law.
Lawyers may want to take it in turns in covering their corporate tweeting commitments, and will not individually be available 24/7, particularly if they are in their 20-40s with young families; however clients, particularly in this brave new world including alternative business structures, may wish to feel that there is someone there, and Twitter could be powerful in establishing this even if it is actually merely an illusion. The trick would then to be to make a partly anti-social network look wholly social at a superficial glance, at the very least.
So, having taken the plunge to make a law firm succeed in the brave new world of Twitter, as indeed Inksters and Silverman Sherliker (@London_Law_Firm), the firm of Chris Sherliker and Jennie Kreser (@pensionlawyeruk), have proved, it would be tragic to see such an innovative strategy literally implode through lack of direction of management. This is unfortunately where lawyers, including partners, may have to concede that they can’t do everything; in much in the same way social media gurus will go nowhere without the help of their corporate tweeting colleagues.
