Do we laugh? Sure. Do they make us happy? Most of the time. Photographs are, after all, moments captured from our lives which help conjure up generally warm and positive feelings.

But still, they’re embarrassing. Awful clothes, weird hair, terrible photo face.

Because that’s the beauty of time. Things are left there to be forgotten. Without context, it is simply impossible to look upon anything from the past in the same light as occurred at the time of that moment’s creation. It becomes inherently embarrassing

And then the internet ruined it. Because we are more than capable of laughing at our visual appearance, God given as it is, but we struggle when it comes to what we think. We think we know best, don’t we. That our perspective is sound, insightful and wise. And when our pontifications, thoughts and wise cracks are lost into the ether of time that delusion remains. Untainted and intact.

It’s why everyone has a blog. It’s why everyone assume that people will find their daily soap opera on Twitter engaging. At any moment in time, we’re bloody hilarious, and clever, and right.

And then suddenly you can scroll back to June 6th 2009 and see, captured and embossed, your daily piece of wit. And then you cringe

‘Generally speaking whenever someone complains that you have a communications problem what they mean is that you have a policy problem. But this government really does have communications problems too.’

The eternal debate of good policy versus good politics has been tackled by many smarter and more articulate then myself – but let me give it a stab from a comms perspective.

Good politics can be defined by perceived motivation. To be seen to be doing the right thing, as many have said, is more important than actually doing the right thing. From a communications perspective the argument to win is therefore not ‘how this will benefit the country’ but instead ‘we are doing this for the right reason’.

The left have always understood this. It is why Gordon Brown and New Labour’s legacy remain comparatively unscathed next to the respective outcome of their policy decisions. From the 50p tax rate to independence of the Bank of England, the perceived motivation behind each was to be admired. Incompetence can be excused when pure – a streak of sentimentality that runs in the very DNA of our culture.

(Interestingly, consider the two biggest shocks to the New Labour juggernaut – Iraq and the 10p tax rate. Both broke the fundamental rule of good politics – the country decided that the motivation behind them was different to that being claimed – revenue generation and securing oil respectively. An over-simplification, but in losing the purity of their motivations these two actions sparked the death knell of both Blair and Brown)

Two things emerge from this. Firstly, that perceived motivation runs to the very core of a party’s identity. It can not be shaped by individual policies (although it can be lost)  but the party or individual’s ‘reason to exist’. In short, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. This simplistic perspective is hard wired into our consciousness and passed down family lines and within communities and form such an integral part of our identity that all the PR in the world won’t shift it

To change this will take many years or concerted effort and shows why Cameron is right to continue with the decontamination of the Tory brand. The Torys are still the nasty party. (NB – Labour have always been the nice party – to win the battle of competence is one of rationality, and therefore much easier that win the hard wired emotive argument of having ‘people’s interests at heart’)

The second that the coalition has been the author of its own downfall. They had a unique opporutnity to define their reason to exist. As a unique entity the tribal perceptions that come to classify individual parties were weaker. It was a classic branding exercise with a relatively blank canvas to work from. The radical policy approach was waiting for a grand narrative to how it was being pursude for the ‘right reasons’. For fairness, opportunity or freedom? Well yes, but the ‘right reason’ selected and enforced with rugged abandon was to ‘reduce the national debt and bring sanity to our finances’

This is the grand narrative of the coalition government. Decisions being made BECAUSE of the nation’s finances – the role of fairness, opportunity etc simply to soften the blow and justify why each ‘negative’ decision was made (we didn’t want to do this, we had to) . In a culture in which cuts are seen as negative, to then frame every decision as a cut (regardless of impact on finances) seems somewhat foolish.

The power of this narrative is such that it tarnishes all it touches. NHS reform becomes cuts by the back door, Free Schools are a way to remove money from traditional state schools. And because the coalition has defined its reason to exist to mend the nation’s finances, all attacks of this nature stick with the public. A failure of their own making.

Tactically this was  a huge flaw – but the outcome is more serious. Re-alignment of British politics was the prize. And it could have been achieved if the coalition’s reason to exist was to provide a radical new approach to fairness and opportunity (or words to that effect)

Instead the motivation behind every decision is now defined, the purpose of the coalition set in stone in the hearts and minds of the British public – a coming together of necessity driven by both a need and desire to cut.

The best the coalition can hope for is therefore appreciation. Good policy judged on outcome. But being proved right 10 years after the act never helped anyone.

To return to Alex’s initial point, far from being good policy at the route of a communications failure, it is instead a communications failure which has shown the coalition’s inability to do good politics.

There will be post mortems galore come May 7^th. That’s always the way it is. I suspect that even if Cameron break 40+ and returns triumphant, comfortable majority in tow, that the arguments will continue unabated. What did he do wrong? What did he say not enough about? What did he say too much of?

I’ll stick my neck on the line and say that 90% of what will be said will be nonsense. There is an elephant in the room; and it’s that people don’t quite believe in Cameron yet – and at this late stage they are not ever likely to.

There is a famous experiment which Malcolm Gladwell references in his book, Blink. In it, novices and food experts are given a series of jams to judge. Almost to a person, the order of preference come back the same. The power of our unconscious mind.

Yet when asked to rationalise why the choice had been made, not only were the novices incapable of doing so, but much more importantly they then completely re-ordered their choices as they rationalised a series of parameters and tests against which to judge the jams.

Ask an average voter if they believe in Cameron, and the response is likely to be negative, or at best, non-committal. Ask them to rationalise it, as journos and experts will attempt to do on their behalf, and people will struggle. He’s too posh, he’s too wooly, I don’t know what he believes in.

All sounds fine on paper, but they don’t answer the question at hand. These are simply plucked from the air justifications for their subconscious blink: there’s something about Cameron they don’t like. Rather like that jam.

So forget about Cameron the politician, what is it about Cameron the person people subconsciously are struggling to engage with.

My suspicion is that it all comes down to authenticity. And this is hugely important, because an easy take out from the above is that ‘likeability’ wins. Personality politics at its worst.

This isn’t true. Being believable isn’t necessarily being liked. The lack of fallout from Brown’s bullying claims show that the greatest threat to your poll ratings is not what you do, but how it differs from what people expect from you. Brown is dour, Brown is miserable, Brown is angry. But it’s authentic, and for that reason alone, it’s accepted.

So rather than ‘like’, let’s talk about ‘believe in’. People don’t believe in Cameron because their subconscious is picking up something from him which feels unauthentic. It’s that simple. If they believed in him, his public school background wouldn’t matter one iota (see Boris), if they believed in him, his presentational acumen would be viewed as charming (see Clegg), if they believed in him his lack of political detail would demonstrate vision (see Blair)

An individual’s blink is powerful. It cannot be fooled. The more you hide your true nature for fear of being judged, the greater you will be judged. The more you present a self which distorts true beliefs, the greater you will be judged.

Cameron is, for all his skills, painfully inauthentic. I cannot rationalise it, I cannot put my finger on it, but there is just something about him which feels wrong. My blink says so. As does, it seem, a vast swathe of the UK population.

Worryingly, nothing  he can say or do shift this perception. This is not a matter of message, it’s a matter of self.

I presume they have (see below) but I’m putting myself on the line here with my conclusion. They’re all bollox. Ineffectual pointless pandering, ignored by those they are targeted at and absorbed only by the most cautious, triple condom wearing calory counters.

I once watched one of those ‘super skinny’ programs. Some poor girl was being told how unhealthy she was as she was too skinny. They asked her why she refused to eat. Peer pressure? Celebrity obsession? No, she responded, I just get worried about all those adverts that tell me that salt will kill me, fat will clog my arteries, and processed foods of any types will give me cancer.

Climate change, that’s my tip for 2010. Cos I think it’s going to get interesting. A grumble here, dissenting squeak there, raised eyebrow etc is about as much as has been possible up to now. Anything more and out come the burning crosses, white hoods and a one way ticket to a ‘re-education’ centre. To be a climate change denier was akin to claiming the Jews dreamed up the holocaust, or David Ike is an astute observer of the political structure.

My guess is that the weight of opinion, if not dissent than genuine consideration, on climate change may be reaching a critical level. To a point where such blanket and uncontestable acceptance on the causes and consequences may start to strain. Which will be great. Because if like me you feel a little uncomfortable with the tyrannical and almost Orwellian stance on climate change by the political and scientific elite, the opportunity to explore dissenting opinions on the subject will be rather interesting. Not to say I’m ready to jump head first into a newly fashionable ‘denier’ state, just that the whole thing feels, you know, just that bit like a stitch up.

What’s more interesting is that this ‘denial’ movement is bigger than climate change (which may, in truth, cause its downfall) Climate change denial will become a vehicle for an ideological stand point or belief system which puffs out its chest against what certain people perceive as a comfortable, self serving ideological consensus (combined with a vice like control over those that dare challenge the status quo) on a vast range of subjects, from immigration, welfare, tax and social policy.

To be a climate change denier in 2010 will mean much more than a desire to know more about how much influence we, as humans, have had and can have over the future climate of the globe, instead it’ll mean being a maverick on a quest to fundamentally challenge the norms and, often, lazy thinking on many day to day subjects.

Which while exciting, will, ironically, undermine the actual issue at hand: Is climate change man made? How serious are the consequences of climate change? And more importantly, how much can we actually do about it?

All questions worthy of consideration in 2010

There’s a lot to be said for media agencies doing outreach. How it fits within an overall communications plan, the implications upon search and display activity, and the ability to understand the importance of other paid for channels etc.

But that’s not to say we should look at outreach as ‘media’. What I mean by this is not, ‘durr, it’s just PR’, but instead that as soon as we view a blogger as a media owner whose value we judge based upon their reach and influence, it skews the proposition. It comes, in effect, transactional. ‘You have influence and reach. We want that influence and reach. We will give you something in return based upon the level of that influence and reach.’

In short, a media deal.

Now, of course we are all in agreement that a blogger outreach program is founded upon the desire to have individuals of influence within a certain field advocating and discussing our brand, campaign, project etc. But by the very nature of advocacy there has to be an irrational attachment to something. A desire to support it above and beyond the tangible value and utility it has provided you. In short, you can’t put a value on ‘love’ – and the best type of advocacy is exactly that; love. (See Apple fans)

A transactional deal, based upon the tangible value of an individual’s reach and influence will never achieve good advocacy. How can it? Advocacy needs love – and love, as the old adage goes, cannot be bought.

An outreach program should have only one objective; can I make these people fall in love with what we’re doing? The reach and influence is dependent upon yet separate to whether we achieve this – our proposition is simple; love us.

How do we achieve this? Well, what is the one thing that ties all bloggers together? Surely, if anything, it’s a belief in their expertise on a subject. Whether tech, sport or fashion, we blog because we think we have something of value to say on a subject. What we crave is validation. Approval from others that, indeed, what we say is of value, is of interest. To be called an expert is the greatest accolade. Why publish our thoughts if we didn’t want recognition for our thinking.

Understanding this creates the opportunity. If a blogger craves the status of expert, brands are in the strongest possible position to validate this. If Arsene Wenger says I’m an expert on football, Ralph Lauren lauds my fashion knowledge and Steve Jobs praises my design skills, then, my God, I must be doing something right.

And if any of the above asked me, as an expert, to get involved with their latest project, to lend my expertise and specialist knowledge, to be a partner in a project, then I may just say yes. Flattery? Yes, but it taps into the very thing all bloggers crave; recognition. And as we are all aware, involve someone in something that you do, make them feel like they are part owner of it, make them feel as if their expertise is genuinely contributing to something bigger, then they too may even fall in love with it. Oh and then, of course, they may even go and blog about it. But like I said, odd as it sounds, this is kind of separate.

Listen, my point is that the brands and agencies alike struggle when it comes to actually come to working out how to engage bloggers. Sending them a few videos and PR statements to re-post doesn’t seem to work. Asking them politely is generally ignored (now that most of the key bloggers receive hundreds of these opportunities) and a freebie here and there no longer holds the value it once did.

And I wonder if we sometimes forget what the aims of a blogger outreach program is. We’re so busy looking at the level of influence and reach of a blog post that we forget that a blogger outreach program has only one aim – to generate advocacy. To make bloggers love what we are doing. To involve them and make them feel like they are part of the whole process, that they are relied on and integral. Because if we do this, the rest will look after itself.

P1: Right then guys, new brief from Cadburys to celebrate their use of Fair Trade cocoa beans. They’re looking for something gritty, dark, disturbingly close to the bone… hahah, only joking. Let’s think life affirming, optimistic and nauseatingly positive. Any ideas?

P2: Hmm, where the beans from?

P1: Think Ivory Coast, Ghana…

P3: Underdeveloped then.

P1: Erm, yes

P2: Okay, okay – so we’re celebrating how the use of Fair Trade cocoa beans improves the lives of producers in Africa. Let’s make a song and dance over it then.. hah

P3: I like it

P1: What?

P3: Song and dance. Think Africa, think black people, think great rhythms, great dancing..

P2: And, and, hysterical amounts of laughter and inane grinning.

P3: Yes! Just like a Bob Sinclair video, or travelling dancing troupes on Blue Peter. Always smiling, singing, dancing… happy little buggers.

P1: Ok, ok.. I’m getting optimistic, life affirming, as if looking at life through a rainbow coloured filter. This is good guys, this is us. But where’s the touch of absurdity. You know, that spark, that…

P2: Witchcraft!

P1: Hang on, that’s all a bit dark and unseemly.

P2: No, no… witchcraft in the good sense. Glitter and fireworks and pretty colours..

P3: Exploding from the limbs of gyrating people in a state of permanent exstasy!

P2: Except it’s a Monday afternoon, and they’re just dancing, and grinning, and singing not for little old Jonny’s Birthday. No, no.. just for the hell of it!

P3: God, those guys are crazy.

P1: Hmm, this all feels mildly racist, doesn’t it? Like Minstrals, or those old Lilt adverts.

P3: No, no, not at all. We’re celebrating the grit and strength of the African people, who even in adversity always find a time and place to party. It’s what they do best, don’t you know.

(Murmurs of agreement)

P1: Ok, ok, but we’re still missing something. Something people can copy. We have kinda built an agency off that..

P2: Air drumming? No, no.. done that.

P3: Dancing?

P2: No, no, these guys are black, remember. We’d have middle class kids from the home counties looking like epileptic robots. Absurd. We bloody struggled with Whigfield, for God’s sake. Let’s stick with face movements – that worked last time.

P3: Tounge flicking? Ear waggling? Winking?

(Deathly, prolonged silence)

P2: Well… how about all of them?

P3/P1: Go on..

P2: We create a huge virtual 3D head which looks like a cross between a tribal mask and a vodoo doll

P1: Erm…

P2: And it, and it… spins around for no apparent reason while everyone dances, and grins, and looks just bloody happy while fireworks shoot from their fingers

P3: Fuck, this is bigger than trucks!

P2: And then, then, cocoa beans start shooting from the head as it winks, squints, pull it’s own ear off, showering the townsfolk in a symbolic scent of success… coca beans which are, are, are..

P3: Grinning!

P2: Yes! Grinning cocoa beans shooting off in all directions from this great oversized tribal head, infecting people with absurd amounts of happiness!

P3: Shitting hell, I can already see YouTube filled with people making absurd facial expressions while their mates pour bowls of cocoa pops over their heads. It’s going to be bigger than eyebrows!

P1: I’m going to lie down

And then my mate turned up, and I had to leave. Knowing what I do know, I would have asked to hang about a bit longer… being privy to such a stream of creative brilliance.

That documentary about how we’re killing the world? Did you notice that it was only sponsored by bloody Chanel??!

How bizarre is that. Genuinely.

The one thing that I find baffling, regardless of your views on climate change, is the fallacy that we’re killing the planet. Because we’re not. Humanity may be under threat, that much I can concede, but please can we at least start admitting to ourselves that the Earth will continue to function quite happily (although in a differing capacity) regardless of the climate (See Ice Age)

In truth, it is only human kind that may struggle a bit under differing climate. We may all get a smidgen hot and have to hide under a rock. Or learn to swim. So if we accept climate change, we do so because we’re attempting to save our own bacon – not the Earths. She’ll do quite fine, thank you very much.

For those that need an update on the story, refresh yourselves here. In short, the Mcbride, Draper and the whole Red Rag Blog debacle was founded on the fact that when looking into blogosphere, the Labour Party noticed that there seemed to be a distinct lack of independent bloggers eulogising over the Labour mission. ‘Bugger’, they thought, ‘we’re just going to have to do all it ourselves’.

Which is, of course, a huge mistake. Brands, whether Starbucks or the Labour Party, can not micro manage conversation in the blog world. If you do, your blog will be unreadable, and as a result, unread. Controlling conversation is exactly what Labour wanted to do. Seeding rumours, innuendos and insults into existing independent bloggers simply wasn’t an option – after all, what if they then went and said something slightly off message. So they tried to do it all themselves. An independent, trouble making, interesting blog controlled entirely and to the finest detail by the Labour Party itself. Regardless of the publication of the actual smears, the project was alway going to end in an inevitable disaster.

Ironically, the project was undermined by the very person the Labour wanted, so badly, to emulate. Paul Stains’ Guido Fawkes blog, housed at www.order-order.com, is a cheerfully obsessive right wing libertarian with a good network and political nose. Sure, certainly with Conservative Party leanings, but hardly a mouth piece. Yet he is viewed by many in Labour Party as the smiling front of a Tory acid tounged machine.

Does he receive inside gossip from the Tory party? Sure. Does he discuss rumours and possible attacks with Conservative members? Almost certainly. Has Paul Stains and the Conservative party built a mutually beneficial relationship upon which the Guido Fawkes blog gains access to at least part of his insider news and gossip? Absolutely.

But this is the point. Paul Stains is an independent blogger. He is also a very successful blogger with a large readership who enjoy and agree with his viewpoint – a viewpoint which, on many occasions, does not concur with (in truth, often attacks) Tory policy, Tory ideology, Tory thinking.

But he can only be successful BECAUSE of this. He stands out as a voice that wants to be heard, and use them correctly, seed interesting information to them, provide content without trying to control any other aspects of their output (even if ‘off message’), and you create an incredibly powerful and effective channel for your seeded story.

So, to conclude, we have a tail of two political blogs. One controlled from the centre, with a remit only to support the actions of the Labour Party and undermine the opposition. One an independent with right of centre leanings who has forged success through accessing content and gossip (much of which is probably as scandalous, unfounded, and derogatory as the Mcbride emails) through successful insider relationships.

The outcome of the debacle is a lesson not just for Political parties, but for brands of all types worried about how to control conversation in blogosphere.

But why? I’m still not remotely interested in the inane chatter of idiots (of whom they are plenty) but what Twitter has provided me, completely unexpectedly, is the best information aggregation tool on the internet. I follow interesting people who post up interesting links which I read. Simple, but great.

The harder part is trying to work out what Twitter actual is, or more pertinent, what does Twitter represent. From a purely personal perspective, there seem to be two prominent themes.

1. An open instant messaging style service compatible with a wider circle of friends then practical with actual instant messaging and less reliant on immediate response.
2. An open forum to advertise links, resources and information of interest to your followers

On purpose 1, which I think many would presume to be the more prevalent, and also, I’d argue, the description to which non Twitter users would be more likely to subscribe, the service falls down hopelessly. Unless all your friends are all social media experts it is unlikely your social circle will be well represented. Similarly, as soon as you begin following even a moderate number of people it is pretty much impossible to engage in any type of real conversation. Quite simply, how many @replies do you see on the average twitter feed? Not many.

So, purpose 2. And this is where it gets much more interesting because here we see an interesting shift in regards to one of the most fascinating aspects of the internet – and to date, one of its greatest failings – aggregation.

This has been something that has troubled me for some time. Take any subject; media, advertising, fishing or postage stamps, and you’ll find such a plethora of information online that even 24/7 dedicated Googling would only scrape the surface of what’s available. You can subscribe to your favourite blogs, add RSS feeds to Google reader, search high and low for new sources, but ultimately, as we all know, there are never enough hours in the day. Sourcing information online is a truly inefficient process, one where you the inevitable conclusion is of inadequacy and frustration as one feels ever further behind in the great knowledge rat race.

Today was the first time I had visited my Google reader in over a week. The number of unread posts was enough to close the window, turn away, and conveniently forget to visit again any time soon. Why had I failed to keep more up to date with my reading? Well, simply because the latest selection of articles, blog posts or reports I have found the time to enjoy have all come from links posted on my twitter feed, humming happily away in the background on my tweet deck (or tweet dick, as I have heard it amusingly, and possibly accurately, called)

In short, Twitter provides me with the ability to RSS feed not just blogs or news sites, but people. And people are MUCH more interesting to RSS feed because they are multi-faceted beings offering insights into their bookmarks, their sources of info, and their nodules of knowledge – wherever it may be, wherever it is from, and whatever form it comes in.

Put it this way. My personal profile and photos are housed on Facebook. Some further photos on Flikr. I write a blog, occasionally, which are mostly rehashes of cool things I’ve discovered on other people’s blogs. By default, adding a blog entry takes time, so inevitability I may only blog about 1 in 50 interesting things. This is especially true if I don’t get time to blog for a few days by which point, so many other people have done so there’s no point in me doing the same. Oh, and my blog, like so many others, is theme specific. Believe it or not, there are other things out there which I find interesting beyond media. Gosh, I’ve never written the term ‘blog’ so many times in one paragraph in my life. Web 2.0, baby. Anyway, my bookmarks are on Delicious, my videos stored on my YouTube video channel. Etc etc

So what if you were really interested in me? You’d need to be my friend on Facebook, subscribe to my Flikr stream and YouTube channel, and RSS feed my blog. It’s as if facets of our personality are pieces of real estate housed in different compounds, and for an outsider a comprehensive view of what makes me tick involves troopsing around the internet visiting each of these pieces of real estate in turn. Time consuming, inefficient, and ridiculous.

Of course, no one is interested in me. But viewing this from a purely personal perspective, we can look at the type of people whose content I find interesting and whose content I want to be kept up to date with. And this, ladies and gentleman, is where Twitter suddenly fits snugly back into the equation as the beginning of a shift in information aggregation which treats the individual as the gatekeeper to their online personalities (of which we have many) and allows this information to feed through, from their plethora of sources, to their followers. As I said earlier, it’s an individual, personal RSS feed, through which content from delicious to Flikr to Facebook can be filtered and distributed in the form of 140 characters and a tiny url.

What does this mean for me? Well, it’s easier. And in a world of time constraints, ease is paramount. And like everything about the net, those people who offer the greatest number and most interesting selection of insights will rise to the top and enjoy the cultural, and advertising, capital associated with such a position.

But, I hear you say, Twitter is all good for feeding blog updates, or posting ad hoc links to great content, but it hardly provides the one size fits all gateway to an individual’s life. Where’s the Facebook profile, or Flikr stream? Well yes, exactly, and that’s why Twitter is the first step towards this new reality and not the celebrated solution to everything.

Information aggregation should be an opt out process. If I want to follow Mr Interesting, that one click should provide me instant access, through one platform, to their Facebook, YouTube, delicious etc etc (or whatever Mr Interesting is willing to allow public access to) at which point I should be able to chose not to be kept updated on certain aspects of their life. Do I care if Miss Fascinating has been tagged in a series of dinner party photos? No, of course not, but if Miss Fascinating is happy to share that information with her followers, the mechanisms should be available for me to opt out of receiving that information and access without having to venture across a number of different websites, log ins and feeds.

In a world obsessed by opinion formers and key influencers, the next logical step is for these people to do the job of information aggregation on our behalf, filtering to us through their personal funnel the best, most interesting and relevant insights and information they have access to from whatever sources or format that information comes in. This fundamental shift from ‘real estate’ sources (blogs, profile websites, photo hoisting sites) to personal sources is the vision of the future offered by Twitter, a vision which will fundamentally change how we source knowledge on the internet and one which will make all of our lives a hell of a lot easier.

I think.