The new Conservative party campaigning website, launched on Friday  looked like a dud when I first arrived on its blue blog page (the one my Google search landed on). Its main purpose seems to be to tutor Tory campaigners via a You Tube video on how to conduct a telemarketing campaign from home. 

So here you have the odd scencario of one of the newest and most popular marketing channels – video, being used to organise undoubtedly the least popular and most old school marketing channels - cold calling.

This only added to my growing suspicion that political parties think online marketing is a type of intranet for posting information  and instructions to the party machine rather than an engagement tool for reaching voters.

Once I’d got beyond that landing page though there was clearly more to it than rallying the troops. There’s plenty of use of video for surely its main political purpose - candidate speeches plus lots of opportunities to engage through email newsletters and social media sites like Facebook and Flickr along with a blog to add comments to.

Go on to the Labour party site and it looks like they’re trying to recreate a print brochure online . The links for conference speeches go not to video, but to text.

Both parties are aware of Obama’s success in reaching out to voters online and based on this evidence, the Conservatives are winning the race to recreate that winning formula.

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