Ask a Pollie

Australia, like many other countries, places restrictions on global companies in order to protect local interests. Big monopolies such as Microsoft are deemed destructive to local business growth. Microsoft needed a way to showcase to the Government that despite its American roots, it has a genuine interest in local issues and more over, has consistently invested in the local economy and community. In short, Microsoft needed to get the Australian Government on side. A typical approach to affect Government policy would be to overtly lobby key legislators, however, this brash approach would only serve to reinforce negative views of Microsoft as a big American bully. A more subtle approach was needed.

A traditional advertising campaign would not be effective with a political audience as they hate being told what to do. They are a difficult audience to converse with given they rarely listen to each other, let alone advertisers. But while politicians may not listen to advertisers, they will listen to the public whose opinion they rely on for survival in the political jungle.

Microsoft’s idea was use the voting public to engage politicians using social media. Although knew the public had embraced this trend, Australian politicians were lagging behind. They had witnessed the power of social media in Obama’s US presidential election campaign, but didn’t have the knowledge or tools to capitalise on it themselves outside of poorly maintained Facebook pages.

Given Microsoft’s expertise in social media technology, they had a genuine reason to add value to politicians and provide a voice to the public by creating a forum in which two socially separate groups could now converse. Out of this inspiration, a social media hub named “Ask a Pollie” was born.

The programme commenced with a social media education workshop to which key politicians were invited. The “Ask a Pollie” hub was introduced in the forum and an online panel of politicians were selected, specifically a mixture of those who hungered for a greater public profile and those who were more controversial to help secure public interest. Within the hub, they could upload video content, build profiles, respond to questions, and survey results from the public.

Microsoft also needed to engage with the public. Some people would happily spend hours on the hub blogging on this topic, but to achieve the broader volume of involvement Microsoft were after, a lower level of participation was also required. Microsoft needed to take the new hub to the public rather than expecting the public to make the journey. As such, the public awareness campaign was divided into two targets. For the politically lazy, it was made easy for them to communicate with the politicians via specially designed touch screen billboards situated in apolitical settings, such as shopping malls. This content was dynamically uploaded to the hub and forwarded to the politicians for response. The more politically proactive public were engaged when they were searching on political blogs or researching political parties with digital display advertising to entice them to the hub.

The platform quickly became a hive of activity. The politicians on the forum were eternally grateful that Microsoft had not only educated them on social media but handed them potential votes on a plate. Even politicians who weren’t involved were active on the hub, as they monitored their rivals. Participating politicians sent positive feedback and were keen to be part of future programmes. They became ambassadors for the campaign, as they placed links on their blogs and Facebook profiles - which grew as a result of the campaign. Non-participating politicians approached Microsoft about participating in future series. Visitors spent almost 5 minutes engaging with politicians on the hub. 1 in 10 people voted using the touch screens in areas where available. “Ask a Pollie” also caught the attention of The Information Management Office who contacted Microsoft directly. This department fosters the efficient use of information/communications technology, a critical yet difficult to reach audience.