What was it like?

So, I have this nagging concern that, with the major social battles of the 20th century fought and won - women’s suffrage, equal rights, free market economics over socialism - and, especially, with all this new media about - why, in the 21st century, is our society diverging rather than converging?

And why aren’t our politicians more sophisticated, more strategic, about how they use these new media opportunities to bring people closer together and unite society – globally as well as domestically.

I have never very impressed by politicians, certainly not professional ‘career politicians’. What have they done? I don’t like their air of superiority, their fiddling expenses and flipping houses to avoid capital gains tax. This was going to be a major issue in this election (not).

I must be better than this lot. In fact, I can prove I am. So I decide to stand up and be counted as an Independent MP. I’m the man.

And that’s my problem. I’m on my own. I’m Independent. I am not a party. I am a person, warts and all.

I don’t have ‘policies’. Aren’t policies executional (rather than strategic)? Why don’t strategic marketers have ‘policies’? What was Lowe’s Heineken policy? Or the BBH Levi’s policy? Or Fallon’s Cadbury policy?

I don’t even like the word ‘policy’. It sounds like the police. If you emphasise the second syllable, you can even pronounce it ‘policey’.

Call me old-fashioned, but I feel more comfortable with setting objectives, agreeing strategies and developing executions - all in one logical flow.

1. What were my objectives?

There is an easy answer – and a more complicated one.

The easy answer is ‘to persuade the constituents of Battersea to vote for me, Hugh Salmon, to be their MP in the House of Commons’.

The complication is that this an unlikely, unrealistic objective to achieve.

So why bother?

Well, there’s the Lottery answer that if you’re not in it, you won’t win it. And, of all elections, this one is very unpredictable. You never know.

But the chances are still low, so are there any other reasons to justify the time and cost involved?

Well, for me, yes. Remember, my over-arching concern is the divergence, rather convergence, of society. Why are we becoming further apart from each other, rather than closer together?

Maybe, by offering myself up, albeit in a non-commercial environment, I could connect with real people. Not target audiences, not demographic profiles, not focus groups. Real people in the real world.

Where would that get me? I didn’t know, but I was keen to find out. If nothing else, it would be a new, interesting and, hopefully, enjoyable experience. And you never know…..

2. What was my strategy?

As I saw it there were three strategic barriers I had to overcome:

i) how to attract attention but, at the same time, be taken seriously?

ii) how to attract local voters, within my constituency, when they are most influenced by national issues and the established parties (and especially, as it turned out, the national party leaders)?

iii) how to balance offline and online media opportunities?

I decided that I would use offline media and ideas to attract attention and get noticed. And thereby, hopefully (because there was no time to test this), potential voters would go to my website where the content would be full and the tone serious and compelling. My ‘manifesto’ ran to 27 pages: www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk

I was advised to use all sorts of other online strategies but I had set myself a fourth barrier. I was due to move house right in the middle of the campaign, leaving me bereft of broadband for three weeks prior to 6 May. This was going to be a Blackberry campaign if ever there was one.

3. How did I execute this strategy?

Standing in one of the most contested seats in the country (the Labour majority in 2005 was a mere 163 votes), I was aware the Conservative candidate, in particular, had been ‘working’ the constituency for years. She had fought Pendle (nowhere near Battersea) in 2005, so she knew the game. She infiltrated Battersea like she has been here all her life.

For unsurprising reasons, the seminal book ‘Eating The Big Fish – how challenger brands can compete against brand leaders’ has a particular resonance for me (http://tinyurl.com/2339ere).

As, now, a Challenger brand myself, I read it again. The four principal requirements of a Challenger brand stood out:

i) Self-Referential Identity. For three weeks, I was going to be me. Introducing myself to people, talking about myself, telling them my views, answering their questions about what I thought about their concerns (and there were some surprises, I tell you).

ii) Emotion. To deliver my strategy of getting noticed, I had to find a way of moving people emotionally. Ideally, I would be interesting, approachable, welcoming, human, maybe even fun to engage with.

iii) Intensity. I needed to offer ‘intense projections’ and be ‘vivid’.
Oh dear, this was going to be hard work.

iv) Salience. I had to be ‘highly intrusive’ – unavoidable.

I knew I could not compete with the brand leaders – or their leaders.

I knew I did not have time to knock on every door of the constituency.

I knew they had more money than me.

I had to think.

And I had more reading to do.

The Electoral Commission’s ‘Guidance for Candidates’ runs to 119 pages. Hidden within was the news (to me) that every candidate is entitled to the delivery by Royal Mail of a leaflet to every letter-box in the constituency.

So that was a no-brainer. I needed a leaflet, the brief for which was to get noticed in the short journey between the letter-box and the bin.

My team and I went for a shot of me and the line ‘Battersea needs Hugh’. Not great, but arresting enough we hoped. On the rear, was a personal ‘letter’ from me outlining why I would be the perfect vote and a call to action to my content-filled and seriously argued website.

But we could not rely on the leaflet. And we did not have time to follow it round every letter-box in Battersea. We would have to find a way to get noticed – to achieve ‘salience’ some other way.

Hence renting a milk float bedecked with the line ‘DON’T FLOAT – VOTE!’ (sorry, the line works better in capital letters than upper and lower case).

We would decorate it with banners and bunting and bottles. We would drive it up and down the roads of Battersea, we would park it on the High Streets, we would drive it past the stations and the supermarkets and in the parks. We would have children rapping on the back and we would wave and smile and have fun. We would be intrusive and salient with vivid intensity and, by having fun, we would ‘invite a realignment of emotions’. We would achieve a self-reverential identity.

And we did.

I’m telling you, we did. Trust me. As the Challenger brand, in terms of impact, the little fish beat the Big Fish. The Tories had a trestle table!

But no-one was going to the website. According to Google Analytics, we were getting around 50 visits a day, peaking at just over 100 on 6 May itself. In the whole campaign, we did not achieve 1,000 visits to the site.

Yet this was where the serious content had been placed, the arguments discussed, the case made and my 27-page Manifesto housed and hosted (I couldn’t afford a print copy).

So I knew, from very early on, that there was no way this level of interest in the website would translate into any sort of meaningful vote.

But you have made a commitment to the country. You have to carry on.

I was out there, my team was out there and the milk float was out there (apart from when it broke down, but that’s another story). Whenever I handed out a leaflet, I urged people to take a look at the website – but clearly, this strategy was not working. They just weren’t doing it.

Nevertheless, I was enjoying being out there, meeting people, talking to them about the things that mattered to them. There were plenty of surprises, not least that the biggest issue, by far, was Immigration.

MPs expenses, arguably my strongest card, were hardly mentioned.

Immigration came up at the hustings too – those that I was invited to. Small-minded sprats sidelined me and the ‘smaller’ parties, using the TV debates as an excuse for restricting exposure to the three major parties. ‘What’s good enough for the BBC is good enough for us’.

Then I discovered that one of them had been a Labour agent in another constituency and I worked it out. Labour were scared of me!

With a tiny majority to protect, Labour were desperate. By the end of the campaign, the poor Labour candidate was begging for every single vote – and he could hardly bear to look me in the face.

He must have known what was going to happen too, especially after the first TV leader debate on 15 April. But you never know. Nor did he. In the end, although paltry, my vote would have cost him the seat in 2005.

When more open-minded and democratic constituents (including, to their credit, a locally-based trade union) allowed me, as an official candidate, to answer questions at the hustings I really had to concentrate.

The first time I was on top table - alongside Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, UKIP and Green candidates – I realised they all had guidebooks with the answers to give to every ‘policy’ question asked. Yet again, as I could not resist pointing out to the sizeable audience, I had to think!

As an Independent, how would I run the economy? How would I repay the national deficit? What were my views on Iraq and Afghanistan? What did I think about gay couples being turned away from B&Bs? What were my policies on Immigration?

With every answer, I tried to feature a personal story, a human touch. I wanted to emphasise that, in a Parliamentary democracy, the electorate should vote for the best individual candidate for the people of Battersea - what, later, on 16 May, David Cameron admitted to Andrew Marr is ‘a more civilised decision’ than to vote by arcane tribal loyalties or the most charismatic party leader.

So, for example, in my answer on Immigration, I asked if people had read ‘The Lady In The Van’ by Alan Bennett. I said he had let her live in his driveway for nearly 20 years, and it was very generous of him to do so. But he could not let 50 Miss Shepherds live there.

In the same way, I said, as a country, we haven’t got room for everyone who wants to live here so it is a numbers issue, and a control of those numbers issue.

With my own experience of the civil service and my lack of trust in politicians, did I have faith that the people in charge of controlling Immigration were doing so effectively?

My answer would be a resounding ‘no’ – however, as their Independent MP, I would be on top of these people and, if necessary, asking them awkward questions in Parliament.

I had lots of answers like this but they are for a book, not a blog, and I’m not a good enough writer to write a book (I’ve tried).

There is one final ‘What was it Like?’ question that I must address. And that was the count itself. It was in Wandsworth Town Hall, with Battersea (Conservative gain) being counted and announced alongside Putney (Conservative hold) and Tooting (Labour hold).

When you watch these things on TV at home or with some friends, you hear the results read clumsily by the Returning Officer and you smoothly and seamlessly return to the smooth, seamless David Dimbleby to hear considered and interesting analysis by intelligent, well-behaved experts.

Well, it is not like that when you are there, I can tell you. I’ve never been to Millwall Football Club but this was how, in the past, I have imagined it. Talk about aggression! Talk about bigots! Talk about tribal loyalties! Talk about uncivilised behaviour! Talk about divergence!

There were rah-rahs with big blue rosettes sniffing and gloating about their Battersea gain. There were people with big red rosettes (and bright red metallic wigs) pointing at the blues and chanting for Sadiq Khan, the Labour hold, “Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan! Yes, we Khan!”.

And all this at three in the morning. Where do these people go all day?

I have every faith that most people are perfectly decent and reasonable. As advertising people know, consumers are not morons. But, I have to say that some of the people at this count were morons and bigots - and, by the way, I have to say more of them wear blue or red than yellow.

I wanted to experience ‘real people in the real world’ but this wasn’t that. Frankly, I wondered what on earth I was doing there. I did not feel comfortable at all. After an intoxicating, invigorating, challenging, exciting experience, this was a horrible, unsettling ending.

So, was it worth it?

Why did I do it?

I had never been involved in politics, certainly not party politics but, in July 2007, I was asked by a friend, who headed up one of the public sector reviews in Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice, to cast my professional eye over the report his team had produced.

We met in a pub, as you do, and I gave him my views. Then he asked me what I thought of the Conservative Party’s image and communications. I duly rubbished the ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’ campaign from the 2005 election and agreed to prepare a document demonstrating how I felt the Tories could, alongside my agency, develop and more effectively communicate innovative solutions to help mend the ‘broken society’ the Centre for Social Justice had identified.

Although this initial work would be pro bono, I was hoping it might lead to a professional appointment (even though I was not a member of the Conservative Party, had not always voted for the Party or even been to a Party party).

I prepared a document in which I argued the case for a more innovative and creative approach to the Role of Government in today’s free market economy including:

i) a mission to ‘ruthlessly examine every aspect of society and define the part Government has to play’

ii) to ‘reassure the electorate that the Conservatives care about each and every UK citizen, including the poor, unhealthy and needy, and have thought through the way ‘The State’ can help every single one of them’.

Steve Hilton, the Conservative’s director of strategy, agreed to a meeting. Unfortunately, the date offered conflicted with a photographic shoot in The Bahamas I was due to attend for a paying client. Well, however tough the assignment, you have to put your existing clients first don’t you?

In the event, I never got to meet Steve Hilton. He went cold on me. But I sent him my presentation. I have no idea what happened to it - but some of my thinking is surprisingly similar to the Big Society initiative which the Tories have since rather clumsily announced.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Bahamas, as you do, and got on with my life.

Then, early last year (2009), another friend asked if I could help advise a friend of his who was planning to stand as an Independent Candidate in the forthcoming Euro elections.

I met and liked the guy. And we went to the launch of The Jury Team, led by the impressive Sir Paul Judge, which was aiming to challenge the Party political system by promoting the value of Independent MPs.

Martin Bell, the former Independent MP, was there. So was Dr Richard Taylor, a standing Independent MP. But I was most impressed by a certain Major General Ramsbotham, one of nearly two hundred ‘crossbenchers’ in the House of Lords. He said that, on debating every issue, an expert on one side of the House would make his or her case, an expert on the other side of the House would argue an alternative point of view and the crossbenchers would vote for the side which they felt had the most merit.

Yet in the House of Commons, you could argue until you were blue, yellow or red in the face and still the ‘career MPs’ would be whipped sheepily into the their party lobby. This was their job. If they did not do this, they would not have been recruited by their Party Head Office in the first place – and they certainly had no chance of promotion. No debate about it, a majority Government could get what it wanted.

I was persuaded that this situation was daft. The old party political system was as ‘broken’ as the rest of society. Perhaps, even, one led to the other.

So I got sucked into this burgeoning case for Independent MPs. Alongside 46 other candidates, I was ‘endorsed’ by the Independent Network. I passed their tests to show I am a true and proper citizen and I agreed to abide by the Martin Bell Principles of honesty, integrity and trust.

I attended a prospective candidate workshop in Birmingham (Esther Rantzen was there!) and a debate in the Houses of Parliament (where I had never been before). It was all very interesting.

I wrote another paper on the barriers to entry for potential Independent candidates, both emotional - ‘will I be seen as the local Screaming Lord Sutch?’ - and rational - ‘where do I start, how much does it cost, are there any forms to fill in?’ (oh, yes there are!).

I also developed my ‘Role of Government’ ideas and, on a national level, felt that:

i) I have ideas to help bring UK society closer together

ii) we aren’t being very intelligent about how we counter terrorism

iii) there is a role that the media, especially new media, could play in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have blogged on this before: http://tinyurl.com/y4rca5s.

Appreciating these issues are a bit soft, I had more concrete local policies. I am very angry about the lack of secondary schools in Battersea - and the consequent behavioural differences of our eleven year old children.

I had the idea that a recently-closed local hospital overlooking the green pastures of Wandsworth Common should be re-built into a vibrant new school. I also argued the case for changing the name of Clapham Junction to Battersea Junction. I’ve blogged on this before too: http://tinyurl.com/32o5x7v.

Thus I found myself standing as an Independent Candidate for Battersea. This was not one of the target seats that Martin Bell had identified, but I have lived here for twenty years, worked here for over ten and think MPs should come from the area they know and not be parachuted in by the Central Offices of the established parties.

On 5 July 2009, I had watched John Major say on the Andrew Marr Show: ‘We have a problem with people becoming advisors to Ministers, learning the jargon, getting selected for seats and into Parliament without touching real life on the way.'

Well, I feel I have touched ‘real life’ so I decided that the time had come for me to stand up and be counted.

I did not know then what we all know now - that the TV leader debates (Gordon Brown and David Cameron’s biggest mistakes and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem’s biggest opportunity), would dominate the election, blow all the Independents out of the water and result in the end (hopefully) of the old tribal party politics we were standing against in the first place!

Before all this, I had developed a marketing strategy for my Independent candidacy in Battersea. Watch this space. My next posts will be headed ‘what was it like?’ and ‘was it worth it?’.

I’ll get them done asap but sorry, for now, I need to get back to the real world.

@ Parliament Square

I filmed my thoughts about the more intelligent use of new media in Iraq and Afghanistan yesterday:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAw-8ETHP1M

PUBLIC MEETING

Tomorrow, Tuesday 4 May, I will be at:

'The Alma' Function Room (upstairs),

Alma Road SW18 1TF

8 - 10pm

All welcome!

Here are some shots of me floating about the constituency yesterday and today:

Battersea Power Station

Just past the Old Brewery, Wandsworth

Outside The Bedford, Balham

At Clapham Junction

Bank Holiday Update

The now infamous milk float will be out and about today. We aim to cover the whole East to West trajectory of the 'Battersea' Constituency.

Many of you have been kind enough to enquire about the progress of my campaign so here goes:

1. The Battersea Constituency which, for some reason, includes parts of Balham and Wandsworth and where, in the last Parliament, the incumbent Labour MP had a majority of 163 - after six recounts, one of the smallest in the country.

2. The TV Leaders Debates have thrown everything up in the air. By agreeing to these, Gordon Brown and David Cameron may have made the biggest mistakes of their professional lives (except, perhaps, for Mr Brown's gaff last week -mind you, I have found there are a lot of bigots out there. A 23-year-old member of my team with Asian ethnicity was so roundly and aggressively verbally abused by a self-proclaimed BNP supporter that I have asked her to withdraw from anymore leafleting. Which is a pity because she is a talented lady, I need her help, I am ashamed she had to endure such offensive behaviour and appalled that such objectionable people as the man who approached her live amongst us).

3. Having said that, after the extraordinary, and unexpected, reaction to the first TV Debate, Nick Clegg may have made a big strategic mistake. After 'winning' so convincingly, I felt at the time that he should have used this momentum to demonstrate the Cabinet credentials of his Lib Dem colleagues, particularly Vince Cable, and thereby position his Party as fit for Government. In Battersea, the electorate know Cable is a credible Chancellor (arguably the best of all three parties) but they have no idea who Lib Dem are fielding for Education, Health, Home Office or Foreign Office.

4. So where does this leave me as an Independent Candidate, unconnected to any party though 'endorsed' by the Independent Network(http://independentnetwork.org.uk/)?

5. I certainly feel that, with my team of friends and volunteers we have achieved the most professional marketing campaign:

I believe our logo design has award-wining potential (see below).

The milk float has gone down a treat - and rocketed me onto the front page of the Wandsworth Guardian (fame at last!).

Feedback suggests my website is the best of all the Candidates, including the three major parties (http://http://www.hughsalmon4battersea.co.uk/).

I went for a sticker rather than a rosette, which I feel uncomfortable wearing.

6. I have managed, wherever possible, to convey my message of 'convergence rather than divergence' and how more effective use of the media tools and skills we have available could help modernise politics, unite us as a society, and perhaps even be more powerful than military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I recognise that this is a bit 'soft' and have obviously had to underpin my thinking by taking specific positions on a range of issues from Immigration (without doubt the most- asked-about issue) to the rights and wrongs of B&Bs to accommodate gay customers.

7. What are my chances? Certainly the TV Leader Debates have significantly compromised the exposure I might otherwise have managed to achieve. Small-minded local societies and campaigns have used this as an excuse to allow me, as an Independent Candidate, minimal time at various hustings ('if the TV people are only featuring the three major parties, why should we let you speak?').

8. And certainly the Lib Dems are an easier 'default' vote than they would have been before the TV Debates.

9. But I think I have managed to overcome the strategic tension between getting noticed (the milk float) and being taken seriously (my website).

And feedback suggests that there are still a fair few of you who know that a vote for an Independent cross-bench Candidate like me will be the only way to challenge our broken political system and our untrustworthy and corrupt career polticians.

10. Many, many thanks to all who have donated to my campaign. I should have emphasised before that my £500 deposit to stand as a Candidate would be born by myself - and this is what I have done(notwithstanding the fact that Wandsworth Council would not accept a cheque so I had to rush out to a cash machine and get the readies!).

11. This means that ALL - the full 100% - of funds donated has gone directly towards the promotional material I have produced.

12. Inevitably, we are over-budget. It has been a hectic few weeks of making things happen quickly and at the last minute (advertising agency background very useful here).

13. Also, I have moved house right in the middle of this process and have had no broadband access at home.

14. So that's the message. I'm still in there pitching. Any last minute donations gratefully received……….