Singh's star turn for Fine Gael

When Fine Gael wanted to revamp its online presence, an unlikely - if effective - adviser was given the task, writes HARRY McGEE

IN 1976, THE LATE Seamus Brennan returned home from the US presidential election campaign with a mission to transform electoral politics in Ireland. The following year, he based Fianna Fáil’s General Election campaign on the American template, with a massive dollop of razzmatazz.

TV, radio and “optics” displaced the soap box and stale statement. Crowds flocked to Jack Lynch during his whistlestop tour of the country. The effect was stunning – Fianna Fáil romped home with a landslide. Brennan’s modern approach was an unmistakable factor.

In the 10 general elections since then, political parties have sought a similar Svengali to wow the electorate. Over the past decade, there was a growing sense that this transformation would take place online. Some thought it would happen in 2007 but it didn’t. Parties had websites, but they were static and the few candidates who were blogging discovered a small community.

By 2011 it was different. A whole raft of new communications platforms had mushroomed and the potential audience had grown exponentially. While television, radio and newspapers still played their part, blogs and tweets fed off them voraciously, and in return provided plenty of fodder for the “traditional” media. An example of this was RTÉ’s count programme, using prominent political blogger Suzy Byrne to analyse the Twitter feeds.

It was noticeable that the resources Fine Gael allotted to its digital campaign dwarfed all others. A floor of the party’s election headquarters on Leeson Street was taken over by a bank of 50 computers, each with two monitors; the party invested in 50 flip high-definition cameras and converted the basement of the building into a green screen room. Twitter and Facebook sites were created for all 104 candidates, and 100 YouTube channels. Some 40 volunteers staffed the office 20 hours a day, seven days a week during the campaign. The party won’t say how much it spent but it’s clear its entire campaign (covering everything) was well into the millions.

Its Seamus Brennan was a most unlikely figure, a Chicago-born Sikh named Ravi Singh. A self-styled “campaign guru”, Singh founded ElectionMall in the US in 2000. The company specialises in building an online presence for political parties and movements and uses a suite of 53 different tools – encompassing every imaginable social network – for maximum spread. The finished product allows parties to build their websites; manage staff and data; raise funds online and build up databases of supporters. An integral part of the strategy is to take online ads on search engines such as Google.

What Singh does well is pool all technologies into one cohesive solution. He has an innate understanding of politics and political motives and is an excellent communicator. He also has a quiver of novel tricks. His first contact with Fine Gael was in July 2010, and he came on board to drive Fine Gael’s online election campaign in the autumn.

On a visit to Dublin recently (where ElectionMall has set up its European headquarters) he explained the single most arresting moment of the digital campaign. That was the idea (driven by him) of the party shutting down its website and replacing it with a video of Enda Kenny, inviting people to share their views. The only other “feature” on the website was a tickertape of comments.

It was a gamble but it had a huge impact. “This is web politics 2.0,” says Singh. “Enda Kenny, in my opinion, was so nice and down to earth and good on a one-to-one level. So we shot him in a coffee shop asking people for their views. It was a non-traditional concept and it worked well. We got the good and bad comments. That’s the beauty of web 2.0. It allows people participate.”

The second phase of the campaign, says Ravi, was to “build a relationship”. He said the comments (some 25,000 were received in all) fed into the party’s five-point plan and shaped the terminology and approach of the party’s campaign.

He then brought in the party’s 104 candidates and set up social network sites for each of them. “We had a very clear vision. We set up a digital taskforce involving the younger generation.”

The metrics are impressive. There were more than 400,000 visits to the website, of which 70 per cent were new. The party doubled its Facebook fans, acquired more than 4,000 followers on Twitter, and went from 190 daily views on YouTube in January to 4,600 by polling day. Ravi says it was a “digital revolution”. Was it? There was certainly massive growth in traffic – and the use of the “conversation” idea and Enda Kenny video were undoubtedly spectacular successes.

But, overall, it did not outperform the web-savvy and more interactive Labour or Greens on the social networking end. The party site also got hacked during the campaign, with information on 2,000 supporters being compromised. And does a digital campaign really sway voters as much as other media? Independent candidate Dylan Haskins had an amazing online presence but it still failed to propel him anywhere near a Dáil seat.

And there were critics. Many candidates didn’t bother using their Twitter or Facebook sites, instead getting young volunteers to “ghost” for them. Suzy Byrne, for example, was critical of the way some Fine Gael candidates went against the spirit of Twitter by refusing to engage. The site also looked great, but those looking for hard information on policies found it almost impossible to navigate. There were complaints also that feedback and “conversations” were heavily censored. And since the election, the website has returned to its former taciturn state, with only Paschal Donohue and Jerry Buttimer tweeting regularly.

Maybe not quite Seamus Brennan in terms of impact. But Singh certainly made a difference for Fine Gael.