Correcting the Record in London

BSD has been very grateful to so receive many accolades for our work, including press attention around the world. Here at home and abroad, the increasing diversity of our client portfolio has piqued the interest of reporters of business, politics and culture news alike. And while all the attention is usually flattering and beneficial to our clients and friends, it sometimes gets out of hand. Such is the case today.

In today's UK issue of PR Week we are profiled for our expanding reach and early success in the UK. For regular readers of this blog, you know of our work with Hope Not Hate, Unions Together, the Communication Workers and others. Our expanding team on the ground in London, which is deeply integrated with colleagues here in the US, deserves every bit of credit for this early success. But as the country gets ready for a general election next Spring, intensity is high and the press is all too keen to make shocking headlines and accusations.

Today's PR Week feature comes under the unfortunate headline "Barack Obama presidential campaign guru Thomas Gensemer slams Labour" and deserves to be critiqued:

1. I didn't work for Barack Obama's campaign. The company I run provided the technology for the campaign and the party, and my business partner Joe Rospars ran the digital side of the communications, organizing and fundraising efforts full-time from Chicago. He had a big team of talented people working for him, including many who have since joined us at BSD.
2. At BSD we believe the term "guru" is absurd and is wildly overused. We are practitioners of authentic, transparent online engagement campaigns. There are no secret formulas, no magic gurus.
3. My statements on Labour and their online efforts so far have been that the team in place is both very competent and accomplished in their own right but need additional support and resources (i.e. budget, staff, creative freedom). This isn't news, and for those paying attention has been a subject of panel discussions and speeches by many people at conferences for at least a year. And it's not unique to Labour -- the same issues persist at large charities and membership organizations in the UK and here in the US. So while the longer version of PR Week's story does accurately quote me, the headline is inappropriately shocking and deliberately misleading. And for this I'm sorry to our friends working hard in Victoria Street every day.

For our clients big and small, political and commercial, we advise on and help execute digital campaigns that have the power to transform relationships with individual members, activists, voters and customers. Our goal as an agency is never to build the coolest Web site with the latest and greatest tools but to, instead, offer the power and unmatched scalability of technology and social networks to build broad-based support for our clients offline initiatives, be it fundraising, targeted advocacy, volunteerism or sales.

As our friends at Labour ready for what will be a hard-fought campaign, we see great progress on their online efforts. From the recent relaunch of MembersNet, which opened online tools to non-Party members, to the growth of their volunteer phone banking tool, we see them using familiar tactics and lowering the barrier to entry to participation by Labour members up and down the country, online and off. And the polticians are getting it too -- from Blackburn Labour Party to Tom Harris or Ed Milliband, figures within the Party are using new technology to reach out to audiences and engage them in a genuine two-way relationship.

But to maximise the Party's return they need more staff, more resources and more latitude to experiment, and they need it right away.

We are and will continue to be supportive of Labour's efforts and will help in any way we can. Meanwhile, we continue our work with an increasing number of progressive and pro-Labour organizations, all of which will play a critical role in the election contest ahead.