Now, unless you’ve been living on Mars or with that recently discovered tribe of rainforest indians, it can’t have escaped your notice that the economy’s in trouble.

So how can Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling’s comments in the Guardian be blamed directly for a fall in the pound and the FTSE?

Commentators have been banging on for months about the likely longevity of this financial crisis, so how do the Chancellor’s words have such a direct influence on the markets?

Well, maybe they do; maybe they don’t. But, the point is, the confluence of these two events is too tempting not to connect in the eyes of the media. That might be exposing my somewhat rudimentary grasp of international finance, but it goes to show that loose talk - if not costing lives in this instance - may not help Mr Darling come Cabinet reshuffle time.

I posted yesterday about the efforts that the Democrats/Google are making to facilitate ordinary bloggers at the Democrat National Convention in Denver. There is a huge resource called the Big Tent, sponsored by Google, complete with broadband access, editing kit and access to the politicians. 

Guardian have posted a cracking video report from inside Google’s Big Tent. Its 4 minutes+ so it won’t eat up too much of the day.  Last year I had a press pass for the Labour and Lib Dem conferences, so I spent a lot of time inside the facilities they provide for the UK mainstream media. Their bloggers tent is a 5 star hotel versus our political parties’ version of Fawlty Towers!

I often talk about how politicians can use new media to connect better to Party members. Here’s an enterprising Tory who has set up Tory Radio, an online radio station dedicated to doing just that. In the spirit of Tories online, here’s Iain Dale  interviewing him on Telegraph TV.

The eyes of the world’s media are trained on Denver, the scene of the Democrat National Convention (DNC), where Barack Obama aims to show everyone that he can hold the most powerful (elected) role on the planet. You would expect it to be a media circus but lets peak behind the curtains a bit.

This race has seen relations with the blogosphere professionalised in a way that holds many lessons for corporate and public bodies over here in the UK. Here’s an example. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is investing big in a media centre for bloggers at the DNC. Highlights;

 Google Inc. will help set up a two-story, 8,000 square-foot headquarters for hundreds of bloggers descending on the Democratic convention in Denver next week, and it will offer similar services at the Republican convention in September, as new media gain influence in politics.With its financial support for the “Big Tent” blogger facility at the Democratic convention, Google stands to gain exposure and goodwill from 500 or so bloggers who paid $100 for access to the facility, run by a coalition of bloggers. Google’s software and services will be featured, including a kiosk in the public area of the tent where anyone can post videos on YouTube. “Four years ago, YouTube hadn’t been founded yet. Now, it will have booths at each convention to help delegates and bloggers upload videos taken on the floor or at events around town.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for us. You don’t get all these people in one place but every four years,” says Robert Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications in Google’s Washington office and a former Clinton administration official.

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.

The fascinating bit is that McCain’s team actually have set up base just a few blocks from the convention centre to counter the messaging! What does that involve? Well, you hire a big venue, invite all your mainstream media chums (don’t really have to invite - they’ll come automatically once you tell them where you’re gonna be), give bloggers free hotel rooms, and make sure you’ve got big trucks with satellite dishes on them.

Also bring along a few protestors who have some beef with Obama (either they’re “pro-Hillary” or “pro-life” or something or other), and then bring a few far left anarchist protestors as well (just to spice things up). Then go around the city and shake hands and kiss babies, making you look like the man on the street, and the black guy is made to look like an elitist rock-star.

They’ve set up this site as a focus for the ‘counter-messaging’ (great American-type term that will inevitably surface here!).

They’ve posted the reaction from Fox News’ Brit Hume on the home page:

“What’s interesting about this to me is I have never seen the campaign that is idle, if you will, during the other candidate’s nominating convention have as much of an impact before, and I think it owes something to the phenomenon of these what we call ads, and I guess in some broad sense they are. But what they really are, are Internet videos that are being published to the Internet and they spread around in this day and age very quickly and are probably as good as paid ads and I guess there’s some paid advertising going on. But, this is, wouldn’t you say Carl, from your experience, that this has been remarkable the extent to which the McCain camp has succeeded in intervening, so to speak, in this convention?”

You may remember the story of the graduate who broke the bank!? Not a story about unpaid library fines but an enterprising young guy who used new media, particularly Facebook, to organise a protest against HSBC levvying charges on its graduate accounts. View our interview with him here. He found many, many people who felt as strongly as him and they organised petitions, flash-mobbed flagship branches, got mainstream media interested and HSBC blinked first.

Well he’s up to his old tricks again! He’s working as Campaigns Officer for the Burma Campaign  using new media to mobilise protest against human rights abuses in Burma (check out their activities and huge member base on Facebook). Finding supporters in the country who feed stories out that he uses to funnel to UK media, who then build up trust a mutually beneficial relationship with him. It also keeps people talking and focusing attention on what’s going on ie a truly terrible situation that can easily be forgotten about due to its geographical distance from here.

His latest trick is to name and shame British insurers that are profiting from doing business in Burma. Already two insurers, XL and Chubb, have pulled out of Burma and it’s causing a kerfuffle amongst the bowler hats in the City of London. They’ll keep up the pressure by exploiting their supporter base on/offline. They recently asked over 20,000 supporters to contact the ‘Dirty Insurance Companies’ via email/post, urging them to pull out.

Also check out the kinds of people they’re getting behind their campaigns.

There’s a lot of hesitation when it comes to joining in conversations online through blogs, forums etc. Questions I get asked include - are there enough readers to make it worthwhile? will we get a barrage of abuse from other commenters?

An organisation I occasionally work with is the Centre For Cities, a think tank spun out from the IPPR. Their media strategy is innovative and I often natter to Claire Hibbit and Rosi Taylor, who head up their PR team, about innovating in new media channels.

The last couple of days has seen cities policy shoot up the agenda thanks to the Policy Exchange’s, ahem… contraversial report suggesting some Northern cities be closed down and the population bussed down to the south east.

The reaction of Centre For Cities was interesting. They responded via traditional media, as you’d expect. But they were also savvy enough to realise that opinion is influenced via online discussion. You can reach your opinion leader audience by joining discussion online, just like meeting up for coffee or speaking at a conference or being interviewed on the Today programme.

You just have to understand the media you are dealing with. Rosi was monitoring discussion and offering the expertise of Head of Policy, Adam Marshall, to contribute insight to the discussions. Adam is genuinely an expert here and has done some high quality work but he remembered that this was a conversation. He was using accessible language and then linking off to an epolitix article for anyone that wanted a more in-depth analysis.

By posting, quickly, here, here, here, here and here, many MPs, councillors, journalists and policy wonks (ie their target market) have quickly got Centre For Cities on their radar, what their expertise and knowledge is and that they are responsive.

Just thought it was worth sharing as its an example that can be applied in any area…..

Social media is still vastly under-exploited as a tool for empowering individuals and groups behind a common aim and actually getting them to DO something. Picket, canvass, attend an event or raise money. To make it work though, you have to bring people with you, motivate them and not just use the web as another channel to ’send’ them things.

The prospect of getting funds in, that are not donated by a powerful interest group, has been the incentive for US political campaigns to cede a bit of control down to grassroots. Howard Dean/Joe Trippi did it with devastating success in 2004 and now Obama is taking that on. British politicians have been skeptical of the potential for ordinary folk to bring in cash so have shied away from any attempt to engage properly in new media.

However you CAN motivate people behind specific appeals or campaigns. As long as you target properly and show people they can make a difference so a SPECIFIC aim that they care about. Step forward Compass, the left wing pressure group. They sent an email to a targeted group of supporters asking them to donate a small amount towards a small sum, needed to do some research that might unlock a campaign for a windfall tax on energy companies.

edited highlights…..

“Our windfall tax campaign is really gaining momentum. Thanks to your lobbying we’ve now got over 55 Labour MPs supporting us and the number is still growing! We’ve also received a wave of new media coverage in recent days.

We urgently need YouGov to run a poll of UK voters to demonstrate electoral support for a windfall tax, this will cost £1000 - the same amount in profit that Centrica, BP and Shell make every second of every day, but unlike them we don’t have any budget for this. Fortunately UNISON has kindly pledged £500 on the basis that our members and supporters collectively pledge the same – this is a call to help us release this funding.

Please donate to our campaign today. Don’t let the oil and energy lobby win – we need just 50 people to donate £10 today - less for those on tight incomes, or more if you can afford it, any surplus above £500 will fund more campaign work. Go to the website now and make a special donation to this important campaign: http://www.compassonline.org.uk/donate.asp. Or make cheques payable to ‘Compass’ and send first-class to the address below.Please do it this second and don’t leave it to someone else to do! Its time to ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’.”  Well it WORKED! The email went out midday last Friday. So far they’ve raised £3,500  from individual donors in addition to the £500 pledged by UNISON. That includes 76 donations that came in immediately by Paypal included in above figures. Donations are still coming in. Given the email went out on a Friday / over a weekend in August they are quite pleased with this response.

Full marks to Number Ten comms team for producing a witty response to a petition on the No 10 website calling for Jeremy Clarkson to be Prime Minister. It got 49,447 signatories. They could have offered the usual toffee-nosed response. But No!

They have produced a witty spoof video that didn’t cost much time and money to make and proves those guys do have a sense of humour. As it gets passed around the web it might, just might be the kind of thing that draws a few ordinary people into the Number 10 site. They could then be encouraged to engage more with Gordon in new media ways. OK it might take a few of these kinds of videos to whizz round but its a great start. Reaction has been fairly good.

So all good for Gordon? Well, check the date on the Clarkson petition. It closed in April this year. I have it from a well-placed source that this idea was raised with Gordon back in April. A light hearted, quick and easy viral. Gordon went away to consider and consider and then refused to countenance it going out.

Interestingly, according to my source, as soon as Gordon swapped his tie for bucket and spade and went off on hols, the staff decided just to go ahead and do it….

Have just taken a first proper look at Politics & The City the website created and newly launched by June Sarpong (best known for presenting Channel 4’s T4). In case you can’t tell it’s aimed at women, with the hope of making politics a bigger topic of discussion than perhaps it currently is amongst the fairer sex. Coupled with other, slightly lighter content, I guess it’s a one stop shop for the noughties woman and, on first glance, the website itself is well designed and easy to navigate and I think the concept generally is a good one.

The only gripe I have is whether it’s absolutely necessary to couple stories on Westminster and the global political stage with stories on David Beckham collecting another teen award; whether Obama should give his daughters a new puppy or a rescue dog (and asking viewers of the site to vote on it) and the best of this season’s LBDs as seen on the backs of the A-listers.

I’m not suggesting that it’s not possible for women to like one and not the other but I also wonder whether the website wouldn’t be just as affective and impressive if its sole focus was the political arena (and the personalities within it) and it left itself open as a forum for women’s views and opinions. There are tonnes of other female-focused websites, magazines and newspapers that dish the dirt on all the other stuff that strikes a chord with women, so why not leave that out of Politics & The City?

Anyway, will be interesting to see how it developes and evolves and discover which breed of dog - hypoallergenic, rescue or otherwise - Barack finally plumps for if things go his way in November.

You can’t escape the fact that David M has this week had what we call in the trade a well orchestrated media media strategy.

He’s been getting help from a well qualified source, Google Head of Comms, DJ (David John) Collins. I think its only on an informal basis but he’s a smart guy. I saw DJ speak at an event at Leeds Met, and as you’d expect from the chief media guy at one of the world’s most successful new media companies, he’s a genius when it comes to understanding the changes taking place in society in terms of how to connect with audiences and who people trust.

 Never has this been more important in politics, especially for a government seen as tired, tainted and out of touch and a (potential) candidate who is not a natrual man of the people.

Also on board is David Lammy MP, former beau of June Sarpong, and a believer in using new ways to engage with voters.

Music to my ears. Am more excited by all of this than I was on Wednesday morning.