Excellent campaign website

The Campaign to End Child Poverty has published a report today which maps child poverty by parliamentary constituency. There's a great map on the BBC website, which must have been lots of effort from their press team.

We've done a quick audit of the website to identify its success:

• endchildpoverty.org.uk has a 138 incoming links, meaning that it only has low authority
• however, on average they are 457 times more authoritative than the ECP site, increasing its authority to medium
• they are well indexed on Google - ranked number 1 and 2 under 'Campaign to End Child Poverty' and 2nd under 'child poverty' - a very valuable search term.
• there are over 2000 members of its Facebook group (also prominent on Google) many of whom have over 100 friends.

The site is aided by its campaign banners, frequent press releases and celebrity endorsements.

There are other things they could do to improve their reputation further (which will remain confidential between Newscounter and the campaign - should they wish to ask) but it's a very good example of a well executed campaign site.

Where will it end?

Matthew Taylor's blog on the economy is worth reading. He's wise, clever and imaginative (as demonstrated by becoming a board member of Newscounter!)

He says things will never be the same again. But we don't yet know how profoundly because this crisis is not over. It probably won't stop with banks. But by what criteria should governments intervene? If the market for internet advertising collapses, should a government support Google? It is far more inter-connected, with a bigger customer base and more dependants than any AIG or HBOS.

Is Cameron slipping?

David Cameron's poll lead may be slipping.

There's an interesting parallel here with Obama. I was in the US just after his trip to Germany and a considerable poll lead. Then it started to slip. Analysts were convinced that he had failed to 'seal the deal' with the electorate who were intrigued by him, liked him but weren't convinced. Attack ads from McCain started to have an impact.

Is it the same for David Cameron?

Good practice in Liverpool

You may not have heard of LFC TV. It's the reason I subscribe to Setanta and it gives me live coverage of the reserve team games, clips of former games and extensive highlights packages.

The channel is a year old and can sometimes appear amateurish. I set Sky+ to record the highlights of our game against Crewe (we won 2-1 in case you missed it) but it didn't record because the EPG was inaccurate.

One of the channel's editors has gone onto a Liverpool FC fans' site to explain why this happened - and why the coverage sometimes slips up. It's a brave thing to do: corporations often struggle to engage successfully in fora for customers because they lack credibility. Why has this worked?

I'm interested in your views but would suggest it includes:
* transparency of their motives,
* no anonymity
* consistency of engaging in the same way
* plain English,
* no obfuscation

any other thoughts?

Problems with Virgin Trains

One of the members of the Newscounter board has written about a bad day in a more amusing way than I ever could:

http://www.thersa.org/about-us/matthews-blog/archives/september-2008/running-hot-and-cold-in-manchester

Will Virgin Trains pay attention?

Perceptions of Cow and Gate

After my (slightly petty) complaint about Cow and Gate, I set up a basic monitoring alert for "Cow and Gate" and discovered that a recent TV commercial has attracted criticism in the UK and ROI.

Half Pint Pixie complained to the Food Safety Authority (Ireland) about this ad which, according to the blog, confuses follow on milk and infant formula and idealises formula milk over breast milk and Boycott Nestle also flashed up, with concerns over product contamination.

So what impact have these websites had on Cow and Gate's reputation? I think it's significant.

Authority
Both websites have a greater authority than cowandgate.co.uk measured by how many sites are linking to them and how authoritative those sites are, on average.

• Half Pint Pixie has 233 sites linking to it which are (on average) 240 times more authoritative than that site
  
• Boycott Nestle has 167 / 114
  
• Cow and Gate has just 71 / 60

Search engines
Both sites are ranked in the top 20 (13th and 14th) results in Google for a search of 'Cow and Gate Ad' whilst five other sites about Cow and Gate's advertising appear in the first two pages. A search for 'Cow and Gate advertising standards' is even worse for the company. Negative reports are 3rd 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th 9th and 10th.

Even a search for Cow and Gate (which over 18,000 people do each month according to Google) shows that the company is vulnerable to negative articles being displayed prominently.

Social networks
The videos have been well received on YouTube with over 30,000 views and largely favourable comments. However, they are not substantive and largely refer to the 'cute babies' rather than the ethics of the ad.

Conclusion
So in conclusion, Cow and Gate's website carries little authority. This means that the company's defence of the advert is hard to find and that anyone concerned about the company's advertising practices is only likely to find further criticisms rather than arguments in defence. Although the videos are widely viewed and favourably received, this is probably in insufficient numbers to outweigh the negative impact of the controversy.

If Cow and Gate were to engage in the debate, they could improve the authority of their website and enable customers who are interested in hearing a balanced debate, the information to make an informed decision.

I think the information is probably there, on their own site. And the social networking element of cowandgate.co.uk is innovative for a large company. But - as so often - the information isn't packaged well for web 2.0.

Fair play, Dolphin

Dolphin Bathrooms called to apologise for standing us up. They said that they'd had problems with their designers and liked to check on the quality.

I appreciate them calling to apologise and not simply using it as an opportunity to try and force another salesman onto us.