Mark Pack

The 2010 general election campaign is already, in one respect, much like the previous two: it has plenty of pundits wondering if it will be the first internet general election. The reality is rather more subtle than the question implies. If you look at internal organisation and communications, the internet has long since become crucial to [...] »

Campaign ’08: A Turning Point For Digital Media is a slim volume by Kate Kaye, senior news editor at ClickZ, taking an in-depth look at the online advertising used in the 2008 Presidential contest for the primaries and then the general election. Though the book touches on other aspects of internet campaigning, what makes it stand [...] »

In February 2010 I gave this talk as part of the "Distinguished Practitioners Series" at Nottingham University: Good afternoon, and thanks for inviting me to address you today. The first time I visited Nottingham University was just over 15 years ago for a job interview when, in their wisdom, the panel decided not to offer me the [...] »

The subject of online fundraising came up when I recently took part in a panel discussion at the Search Engine London conference and I was then asked about it further in a short 'post-match' interview:  »

Here are the links and further resources for my talk at Nottingham University, How the internet is changing British politics - and what 2010 will bring. Why I don't trust Alexa data: See my post Can you trust Alexa and Google Trends? Survey of media read by Conservative candidates: The survey was carried out in early 2010 and reported [...] »

OK, if you’re going to really insist on thinking that Obama is the Holy Grail of Campaigning To Be Transplanted To The UK Because Our System Is Just Like Theirs, then here’s a useful statistic for you. The Obama for President campaign raised around $500 million online. Two-thirds of it came from people clicking a “donate now” [...] »

Yesterday I was at the Future e-Democracy 09 conference on a panel talking about "Digital campaigning post-Obama" along with Sam Coates (from MyConservatives.com) and Sue MacMillan (Labour's Head of New Media) and chaired by the Hansard Society's Andy Williamson. There were some good questions but the best I thought was one that turned the session on [...] »

It’s Sunday. It’s 7am. And we’ve got the definitive musical proof that Australian Premier Kevin Rudd is not US President Barack Obama. But first, the news. 2 Big Stories Government to set up bank chains Done well, this could be rather good news. A bit more competition in the banking sector could improve service, reduce costs and – [...] »

Time for a bit more probing underneath the figures about how big, amazing, awesome and must be copied the Obama 2008 Presidential campaign was. (See in particular my previous post about his fundraising.) New figures which have seeped out this month from a confidential report by Catalist, one of the big data and technology suppliers to Democrat [...] »

Barack Obama has been award the Nobel Prize for Peace essentially for effort - he's trying hard, saying the right things but not yet delivered concrete results. (He's also got much less closer to nuclear disarmament than Ronald Regan got in the Reykjavik summit with Mikhail Gorbachev.) I'm pretty underwhelmed by the award as I would rather see [...] »