Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Taking ownership

While there have been a few bits and pieces done to celebrate the NHS reaching 60 years of establishment, the above is interesting. It arrived as a link by email inviting subscribers to "celebrate this milestone, and to show our support for the doctors, nurses and other NHS workers who play such an important part in our lives". Interestingly it is not from Labour, the party that for 60 years have been synonymous with the maintenance and protection of the NHS, it is from the Conservative party and it will be "printed out and presented by David Cameron at an event on Monday to mark the NHS’s 60th birthday". And so the Conservatives have ownership of a Happy Birthday NHS website and can claim some element of ownership of the NHS while also demonstrating their commitment and support for its institutions.

Labour have created a similar website which acts as a flash page to which all visitors to the party homepage are redirected. What is the difference, the promotion. Labour are not the first to encourage people to sign up by sending the email out to subscribers. Similarly the Conservatives ask people to sign a card, it is below that users are informed that this means the party will contact them. Labour ask people to sign up using their emails, it seems more corporate. But it is the dissemination by email that is genius move: it acts as a visual prompt that the party support the NHS, in encourages signing a card to thank Doctors and Nurses and not sign up to the party; thus it pulls subscribers closer to the party as well as allowing them to circulate the link and get others to sign up.

1 comment:

Praguetory said...

It's mainly for data harvesting. On the same theme, I started a similar thread on a local website.