George Yeo, Aljunied GRC, The Singapore Elections And Social Media
May 9, 2011 – 11:54 am | by Daryl TayIn my years of blogging I’ve never talked about politics, and in many ways, this isn’t a post about politics – it’s a post about what happens when you use social media and don’t get results.
To set the context: Aljunied was a hotly contested space in the elections that ended two days ago. I saw in the papers that George Yeo, who was previously elected, used a video to speak “directly” to the young voters both on Facebook and YouTube.
According to the papers, it went viral. I watched it and it was a good video – everything social media is about: sincerity, being personal and being authentic.
But two questions ran through my mind when I watched it two days before polling day:
1) Is it too little too late?
2) Will it reach the right audience, or is the social media/Facebook/YouTube audience below the voting age?
The answer to both questions seems to be yes and no respectively, seeing as George Yeo didn’t get re-elected and Aljunied went to the Workers’ Party instead.
It’s very tempting to blame social media and say “well, that didn’t work”. After all, George Yeo is one of the few ministers who blogs and even manages his own Facebook page. If his efforts didn’t pay off, is everyone else destined to fail too?
Why then, didn’t it work?
I think perhaps it’s a little bit to do with not knowing your target audience. It’s very easy to get caught up in posting content on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter. But how many of those people are able to vote for you? (ie within your constituency?). Would time have been better spent on focusing on residents instead?
I think George Yeo’s “young advisors” made a wrong move by believing that creating something like this that late in the game would push the needle.
It certainly worked on someone like me – I was truly impressed by the video. But I don’t live in Aljunied and couldn’t vote for him even if his personal message moved me.
The politics analogy ends here.
The lesson here, I think, is if your social media efforts don’t translate into something of value (sales, or in this case, votes): then all the views on YouTube or “engagement” metrics don’t matter a whit.
How often do we jump onto the social media bandwagon “OH WE NEED A FACEBOOK PAGE BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS ONE” – without realising you’re a premium product and the majority of people who “like” your page don’t have the purchasing power, resulting in no leads or sales and thus concluding that Facebook is a “failure”?
Yes, it’s cool and sexy to have a digital channel.
Yes, it allows you to have a voice to speak directly to your customers.
But – have you sat down to think your strategy through? Are there other bits of low-hanging fruit that you could work on instead, and come to digital/social later?
What do you think? Have you jumped into social media too early/too late and not gotten the results you’ve wanted?
Tags: aljunied grc, authentic, digital channel, facebook, george yeo, low-hanging fruit, politics, sincerity, singapore elections, social media, strategy, viral, workers party, youtube
6 Responses to “George Yeo, Aljunied GRC, The Singapore Elections And Social Media”
By Aaron Tay on May 9, 2011 | Reply
You have a point but it’s interesting you think that social media didn’t work here.
Of course George Yeo didn’t get elected. In that sense ultimately it didn’t work.
But how many votes were swayed by the YouTube video that would have otherwise gone to WP? Many who watched it couldn’t vote for him true, but that is the nature of social media.
For that matter, Wendy Cheng made I thought a huge play for him to the extent that “ride the lightning” trended in Singapore for a short time. Who knows how much worse the results would have being without these moves? I’m speculating of course.
I think ultimately, nothing George Yeo could have done would have saved him as he was up against a very qualified opposition team and I think voters were sensing that history was going to be made (I heard comparisons to Anson among friends voting there) that pretty much nothing could have swayed them even if 100% of the youtube viewers were voters.
I’m certainly not convinced that his “young advisors” (Wendy Chong?) suggested a “wrong move”, it was as good try as anything. Say the time spent on creating the video, was used instead to shake more residents hands or do 1 more rally speech in person. Would that have saved him? Given the margin of victory unlikely.
Nicole Seah is perhaps a more clear cut case. Would anyone say Social media “didn’t work” for her?
Your point is very well made of course, like how all the “likes” in the world didn’t get Nicole Seah elected, though you would be hard pressed to say that it didn’t make a difference. Would Nicole Seah have restricted SM Goh to just 56% votes without Social Media existing (and TPL of course)?
I guess a sales analogy would be that social media brought in revenue for Nicole Seah (and possibly George Yeo), but it wasn’t enough to meet the profit target.
But then again sometimes the product is just poor, sometimes the competitor just has a superior product (in the eyes of the customers). No amount of social media or marketing can recover from that.
I would also wildly guess to some extent, because GY was already active in Social Media and to some extent already has some reach, the add-on effects of the youtube video was less then if say MM Lee suddenly decide to do Twitter
By Daryl Tay on May 9, 2011 | Reply
@Aaron: I suppose the definition of “work” in this post is quite simplistic in the sense that “work” means getting re-elected. In the same sense that if Obama -didn’t- win the presidential election in 2008, all his new media strategies would not have worked, or at least not as well.
You’re right, of course, that in the grand scheme of things, anything was grasping at straws. Though I can’t help but wonder in the larger strategy, if they had made it clear how they would tackle this both online and offline, if that would have made a difference.
In Nicole Seah’s case, it’s hard to say conclusively because there are a multitude of factors (as you’ve pointed out). There definitely was a dent in the votes for SM’s team – whether that’s due to him not being on social media or other causes, I guess we can only speculate.
Good point that maybe GY has already reached diminishing returns due to his already-strong presence online. Perhaps something his team should have looked at too.
Thanks for the great comment!!