Isolate your Voters using Mobile – by the Conservatives

In marketing today, it is becoming commonplace for any which brand to build an iPhone app just to tick a box. To say ‘we have an iPhone app’ is deemed to be ‘cutting edge’.

Have brand managers and marketers completely forgotten the reasoning behind communicating with their audience, and the fundamentals of marketing?

I get furious when I see pointless applications hit the market from short sighted brands, with no consideration for market segmentation or consumer base, and the latest is no exception.

The Conservative party has just launched its iPhone application which will supposedly “help both existing supporters and floating voters learn more about their policies, connect with them on social networks and share political news with their friends.”

So the dramatic insinuation is that all (or a large proportion of) their existing supporters and the supposed ‘floating voters’ have iPhones. Utter morons.

As Paul Lomax, CTO at Dennis Publishing kindly argued “The Conservatives *are* a short sighted brand”.

With an increasing number of emerging and established mobile operating systems and app platforms now available, the invalidity of this application becomes even more apparent.

I am not just angry that they have done what so many brands have done and just jump at the chance of exhibiting on the platform; the anger is more directed at the complete disregard for the people they are trying to win over in order to ensure that they can run this country.

As far as I am concerned, if they can waste valuable donations on an app that segregates and isolates their voters, what will they do when it’s our/your money they are using?

So if anyone from the Conservative team in charge of this application should read this, I would love you to share all your research which showed that you needed to develop an iPhone application, and ignore the other platforms.

Don’t get me wrong, by even looking at mobile I agree it’s a step in the right direction, but this is without a doubt a box-ticker, and no real thought has gone into the parties objectives and how they can harness mobile to achieve those goals.

Any alternative views gratefully received.