Having written about the Libs’ online strategy yesterday, I must say that it’s definitely the week when it’s all happening in Politics 2.0. The Labor Party has launched the website Kevin07, which includes links to the Rudd presence on social networking sites and claims to foster community interaction:
Become a part of the K07 community. Here at KEVIN07, we’re doing things differently.
We want to hear from you- your ideas, hopes and concerns. Have your say. Or comment on the K07 Blog.
There’s even a t-shirt (and a singlet for the beach).
<img src="http://larvatusprodeo.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/beach.jpg"
It’s probably a bit premature to assess this latest new media play, at least until there’s some substantive content on the website, and we can guage how it’s used. But it’ll be interesting to watch. My first thought is that it does seem to be more of an attempt to engage than the PM’s highly structured strategy. My second thought is that I wholeheartedly agree with Megan’s astute analysis in comments below – the whole vibe of the site is projecting niceness and freshness and calm and youth as opposed to the apocalyptic thrashing around of the coalition.
Update: Tim Dunlop at Road to Surfdom is put in mind of jeff.com. More from Darlene Taylor.
The youf respond!
I got my first K Mail today.
Despite falling stealthily into the 18-25 age bracket myself and also being a fully paid up member of the ALP, and despite my general love of pop culture hottness, this actually makes me less likely to vote for Rudd. Although I will be getting me one of those ace t-shirts.
Oh my God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That website is just so outrageous! Such a breezy breezy response to all the doom and gloom and negative ad campaigning this desperate Coalition government is getting into. And is that picture of the girl with the T-shirt the sea and ‘fresh thinking’ a real Labor advertisement?
I don’t know whether to think that you’re just taking the piss Mark, or if this double-whammy cheese-burger all out effort of a website is a little bit tongue in cheek???????? Rudd can’t be serious.
On the other hand, Howard’s been grimly at it hammer and tongs blaming the states for rising interest rates, taking over hospitals, declaring war on aborigines predicting mass extinctions and cataclysmic disasters should people vote Labor and alternately pleading to the punters that he really isn’t all that clever – please vote for me please please??? I mean he’s fair game since there is absolutely no act he will not do to get himself re-elected.
Notice Newspoll’s not looking good for Howard again, right when the media was saying he was on his feet again. I wonder if the Coalition’s thinking ‘ah negative ad campaigning, it always works in America’, except that Labor is running lovely breezy pictures of people having fun by the beach. Is this tack going to be an effective antidote strategy to the endless, joyless nastiness of negative political advertising? It’s going to be interesting watching what is going to happen next…
No, Megan, not taking the piss. That’s the header image for one of the Kevin07 pages. You got it in one – the whole idea is to project niceness and freshness and calm as opposed to the apocalyptic thrashing around of the coalition.
Well Rudd has got to make some hard gritty decisions soon. Because the Coalition has just rolled the armed forces etc on aboriginal communities and are wanting to pass legislation taking away their land on top of not actioning a single one of the recommendations in the Children are Sacred report. So far Rudd has called it very cool, by backing Howard and refusing to play the wedge but Labor is going to have to announce whether they agree to the legislation or not. If they agree to it I think the sun shine and surf will pall for a lot of people, me included.
Thats nuthin, what till you cop an eyeful of:
http://www.howard-empowered.com
Link’s dead, Lefty E.
Megan, see discussion on this thread. I’m afraid we’re in for a disappointment:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/08/06/the-indigenous-emergency-goes-legislative/
It looks nice but I’m finding that there are a lot of broken links on the site. It looks to me like it is still in development.
I like that you can download heaps of stuff and that they are making it easy for people to add stuff to their email etc. I notice the blog has comment RSS feeds which is a good sign. If they had some guts they’d link to some of the lefty blogs out there…
Heh! As if…
I believe the site’s going to be launched sometime later today, mick, so perhaps there are still a few gremlins to be ironed out of the code.
I think they have done a pretty good job. It is hard to structure so much information in an accessable way. No doubt they will enhance it as it gets going. But I give it top marks for a political site.
There’s lots and lots of gremlins. Methinks some poor bastards have a night of hacking away at code ahead of them.
If the ALP had some sense they would start talking to blogs more and stop fussing over the MSM. The American Dems are doing it, why aren’t they? (note: this is a rhetorical question, just in case you didn’t realize)
Oh, and they are using Joomla for their code. Nice to see that they are going with open source software.
Yeah, I just noticed that too.
I also noticed that if you refresh some of the broken links the page comes up, so perhaps the web gremlins are indeed working as we speak, mick.
Yes, Megan, it’s so…so…like he’s running for Governor of California.
“Kevin07″ does have a lilt to it but I get really wary of any political party that sells the leader first and their vision second.
At least Gough’s “It’s Time” campaign tapped into a mood rather than promoting a maximum leader.
They should be coming up with slogans like “21st Century Aus”, ” The Future Is Out There”, “John, You’re The Weakest Link. Goodbye.”, “We’re not fucked yet”, “Every Australian a King, Yet No One Has A Firm Contract With 60 Minutes.” Hmmm…I’ll quit while I’m behind. Did ya hear that John? “Hear what!!?!!”
I don’t want to vote for an affable, ruthless and bloodless technocrat just because he’s suddenly tricked up with a fake web tan. I just want a new goverment that isn’t bored, jaded, bereft of inspiration, willing to take a punt on more than a barrel full of pork here and there and that at least has some staffers who get this newfangled information and attention economy thang in a way beyond attending Young Republicans Harnessing The Online Tsunami forums in North Carolina (Hi Bill B. You’re reading this right now aren’t you?) .
Plus there’s also the vague possibility Kruddy may open the door to our first female PM. Now that would really put a much needed cat among the pigeons.
That may be the fall back plan, Nabs. Is Arnie term-limited?
Hillary 08
Kevin 07
Presidentialisation = complete. At least it comes with a cool shirt, though.
I think I’m going to be sick.
I want the t-shirt. I’ll settle for some fancing wingdings for my blog though.
But yeah, it’s lot brighter and breezier than any major Aus pollie’s website so far.
And younger feeling too.
Now all the Coalition digs at Big Kim’s fatness are coming back to bite them on the arse. No way any of Howard’s campaign visuals can now show him anywhere near any scene of enjoyable physical activity in the Australian sun. He’ll just look like an overmedicated granddad in his trakky daks trying to chat up eyerolling beach babes.
It’s so brilliantly cunning. Slathering a good dose of USA onto Ozpoliticking just means the plebs think of politics more and more in irrelevant, disingenuous terms, while the Duopoly can continue the conniving under more effective cover than ever before.
“He’ll just look like an overmedicated granddad in his trakky daks trying to chat up eyerolling beach babes..”
Nabakov, not even towards oops/accidently kicking sand in Kevin’s face?
No I read the impending news on Howard’s new legislation and I’m disgusted with Kevin right now although Howard is ultimately to blame for this wedge politics he’s been playing for years. Well it looks like the Greens is the only party around who’s got any guts.
hmmm, Joomla, it’s a nice piece of software. Get ready for http://www.kevin07.com/administrator to be the most hack attempted page of the campaign.
I’ve got some lovely screen shots of the gremlin’s work.
I once had a similiar set of problems with a Joomla install. The 404 errors are because of a f-ckup with the “clean URL” setting, the revert to the basic Joomla install could be because they’ve still got the default joomla theme activated, but then you would expect all the Kevin07 content to appear mangled through it.
As for the content, I second everyone above who’s first reaction was “Is he running for president?!!!”.
There are a lot of similiarities to US presidential campaign sites, compare it to the early versions of Richardson’s site for example. But the most similiar one is definitely Obama 08.
Speaking of opensource platforms, both the Clinton and Obama sites appear to be using Drupal.
You’d think GREEN|GOLD would’ve passed through Mr Coder’s nog for a millisecond…
They are banking on the election not being called for January, then.
Well I tried to buy a shirt and at checkout got:
page disabled for testing
Obviously their focus groups reveal the pseudo/soggy left slackers don’t get out of bed before sun up.
And coming to a video-sharing site near you: more US-Presidential-campaign-style election advertising—“Married With Kevin”.
Kevin Rudd stars as Al, a world-weary snake-oil salesman with no original ideas and even less courage-of-his-convictions. Therese Rein is Peg, a well-to-do business woman in premature retirement.
Laugh as Peg pesters Al for sex, and his children view him solely as a source of money. Meanwhile Al treats all and sundry with sarcastic disdain.
“Married with Kevin” will feature regular musical interludes where buxom beach-babe Kevni-girl sings about her infatuation with Mr Rudd, all the while exposing the shallowness and cynicism of Labor’s blatant rip-off US Presidential campaigns.
A breezy response to doom and gloom? Don’t you believe it. Rudd’s addicted to the fear campaign, whether it be over global warming (if you don’t vote Labor the world will end) or IR (evil employers WILL take advantage of you, unless you vote Labor!)
I’m presuming I’m not the only one who’s tried to comment on K07…. did anyone else have probs with the captcha code submission? It’s our duty to help them debug the site.
I wonder what the moderator turnaround time will be ? What a hot seat.
and then there’s there’s “Kevin Eleven” for the next stoush.
Due credit to Red Symons for that one, I butter the toast, he makes with the gags.
‘pparrently the Liberal singlet has “Not Drowning, Waving” on it.
He’s also got the neatest MySpace page I’ve ever seen.
KEVIN07
BE GONE, JOHN.
I just had a look at Rudd’s Facebook entry. Not the most exciting sounding person: kind of needs a bit of modern culture in the mix apart from “Austin Powers (all of them)”. Actually it all comes across as kinda boring – a lot of it I would’ve expected on the Rodent’s profile.
I would put this in the website (From ‘Reasons you will hate me’)
[link]
If you mean neat as in OCD neat, that’s how Rudd comes across to me. I want to see the end of the Rodent’s reign so badly but Rudd just makes me squirm a bit.
Just a shame they’re not selling those ‘Tintin 4 PM’ shirts that the Young Labor Left were banging out earlier this year. That said, they used a doctered image of the real Tintin rather than the Bill Leak homage, so there would have been an even bigger sh*tfight with the Belgians on that one.
Would have been cool, though…
The blog is really capturing the imagination of the youngins.
From the blog -
Oh dear, and the rest of the list is the same – elevator music in most genres (and media). Nothing too challenging. Vivaldi/Simon and Garfunkel/… now if he’d said Bach/Dylan I’d say there was a chance he could deal with complexity or an edge.
Now the John Denver bit … yep see the resemblance, so don’t get into an ultralight Kev when your on that beach…
“Hogan’s heroes” …. yeah, that fits: “I’m saying nooooooothink”
Kevin07 spammed me this morning, and I didn’t even sign up for email updates. Maybe they are noticing bloggers!
Update: Tim Dunlop at Road to Surfdom is put in mind of jeff.com.
The youf respond!
so, how long will it be until we start seeing ‘Kevin 07′ wet t-shirt competitions…
or “Kevin girl” on youtube
Kevin ’07 is at least better than J Bro in ’03. Maybe we’ll see J Ho in ’07 since the Libs like to recycle tactics it seems.
It’s a pity they stuffed up the XML feed so I can’t subscribe to the blog. Now how am I going to know what’s going on?
Ummm,
How prescient of March to include “Megan’s” comment in the body of the post. It reminds me of the joke about the letter home: “I was going to include $20 but I had already sealed the envelope!”
I feel exactly like the Stoush blogger. The site kind of grosses me out, and doesnt really communicate any policy substantively. It almost reinforces the Howard message that Rudd is all show no go. Not the best move, I’d say.
I still bought a shirt though. >_>
It’s an update obviously!
I didn’t: they don’t have them in size 3XL!
Dolly should Talk
May I remind him of his leader’s use of Youtube to announce that bit of Porkbarrelling in thhe Apple Isle ? “Indigines Overboard” ?
“Mr Rudd is very good at stunts. He has a new American stunt today – T-shirts, caps, bumper stickers, as if he was running some sort of an election in California,” Mr Downer said on Sky News.
“I think this will reflect very badly on him because I think this will reinforce what is just beginning now to be a perception that he’s clever with stunts and very short on substance.”
Mr Downer said it was obvious the website was no more than a political stunt.
“It trivialises politics and pushes aside issues of substance,” he said.
“Australian voters will not vote for stunts and T-shirts, they will vote for substance.”
That website banner is so Ring of Confidence Smile and Coppertone Skin, so You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings, but definitely NOT GAY, it hurts my eyes to look at it.
Why didn’t they go with KEVIN 007 ? Or KEVIN DEVON, for the smallgoods fans?
Well, just to p*ss Dolly off, I’m going to buy a t-shirt (even if it’s not going to fit) and some stickers too.
Australians do too vote for stunts and t-shirts. Hey, bumper sticker!
I VOTE FOR STUNTS AND T-SHIRTS…AND I VOTE
So Dolly gets his talking points from Nabs?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/08/07/rudd-the-t-shirt/#comment-390598
$7 ….. with $8 shipping!
There’s Kevin’s tax policy right there!
Im sure ‘Howard-Empowered’ is on the way.
…”Australian voters will not vote for stunts” …
and Dolly will never have a blog, more’s the pity.
The t-shirt is wrong. Kevin Muscat plays in #2.
Ever since that Australia Story profile, I’ve suspected Dolly spends the majority of his time surfing the interwebs (presumably without beach friendly singlet). Lifting Nabs’ comment for his talking points clinches the deal.
As at time of writing there were 213 comments. Sorry to disappoint Alex.
It’s very slick (too slick for my liking), but it’s not directed at me since I’m not a youf and I’m beginning to wish the Democrats had buggered themselves up so badly. Sigh, I guess I’ll just vote Labor in the lower house and Greens in the Upper House.
Anyway, I’ll try to be a youf:
“Radical dudes, let’s go to the disco, but now before trawling the interweb for Kev07″.
I mean hadn’t buggered themselves up so badly.
Bugger me, Roger. Sorry for that.
And I meant to say:
“Radical dudes, let’s go to the disco, but not before trawling the interweb for Kev07?.
Crikey, that’s bad.
That sounds very 70s somehow, Darlene!
We await the Ruddian version of Puberty Blues. I can just see the panel van painted in Kevin07 colours.
With fluffy dice.
Ahh, those were the days.
Julia would be well cast as the surfie chick who decides that the boards aren’t just for the boys!
Very American… very cheesy… but hey I’ll jump on the bandwagon providing Labor WIN.
Some meta-notes:
K07 Comments aren’t a complete luvvie-fest, a couple of stray disenters have snuck thru the censors.
Trevor Cook reckons (theALP’s) “..willingness to publish criticism on its own site.. might prove to be a breakthrough”
Different story over at the ninemsn portal poll, sans minders.
As of 6 pm, google blogsearch says there are about 50 blogs posting with the kevin07 string.
(Aside: I wonder what meme has had the fastest uptake in blogstralia? Any hazarders?)
Google news search has about the same number of outlets picking up the story, at that time point ( sorted by date, with duplicates).
Obviously there is a inter-masthead syndication cross-post degeneracy factor there, , but i see that under the one masthead, the smh puts the same copy under two different urls, with the only difference being the ads. They get twice the advertising revenue opportunity/story that way? You couldn’t do that in hard copy publishing.
In fact, the smh has managed to squeeze 6 pages so far from the meme. No flies on fairfax.
Lets see how it percolates overnight.
How about “Thank heaven for Kevin 07″ ?!
I dig it…
I actually think what Kevin has done is great. I believe Kevin07 will get more people, especially young people interested in politics. The liberals are complaining because they are so out of touch with the youth of Australia, they wouldnâ??t dare try to do something similar. As for the complaints that Kevin07 is too â??Americanâ??, whatâ??s wrong with the American â??lets get excited about politicsâ?? model? Shouldnâ??t a more engaged population, ultimately deliver us more engaged politicians?
Anyway Iâ??ve gone ahead and created my own Kevin07 gear. I personally do not like the t-shirt style and wanted something more of my style. Check out my link to see what I have done. I would be interested in some feedbackâ?¦. Iâ??m still waiting to hear back from the ALP.
“With fluffy dice.
Ahh, those were the days.”
Kevin’s in the backseat of my panel van
Let me take you there
Yeah, yeah
Said Adrian, shamelessly plugging his product.
I reckon you might hear from their lawyers, Adrian.
As soon as I saw those “Kevin 07″ t-shirts, I was reminded of the “it’s time” t-shirts (pollbludger site has a photo of Gough Whitlam wearing one).
Then as now, the perception was one of new, fresh, and focused on the future, as opposed to the stale and tired government.
I think it will be very effective.
Hey look I’m all for getting excited about politics. I didn’t say there was a problem with being American or slightly cheesy! Hey let’s get involved.
I suppose the problem with the American model is that it is actually more about getting excited about celebrity politicians and figureheads, rather than with politics itself. The problem with this is that wealth, image and prettiness become the arbiters of political power.
You tend to get airhead politicians who get selected simply because of their popularity in a completely unrelated field. This is already a problem for the ALP, who has actually preselected parachuted-in ‘celebrities’ (defined very loosely) who couldn’t name a single ALP policy, or say why Labor was better than the Liberals. Obviously you can imagine how this could backfire on the campaign trail or once they got into parliament. Moreover, celebrity politics tends towards non-participation of the average member (who can’t compete in the image stakes).
I think the Americanisation is all part of a trend towards obsessing over style rather than substance. Unfortunately, the long term consequences of this are depoliticisation, rather than excitement about politics. But hey you gotta do what ya gotta do, and I’m completely with the Labor campaign – I just want them elected.