Neil Shearing’s Internet Marketing Strategies

I follow the EUReferendum blog religiously. As far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the best blogs in the world because of the way Dr Richard North collates a massive amount of information, sifts it, distills it and adds his own personality and insight. It’s a perfect example of how one independent blog can provide more valuable information than a truckload of “mainstream media” websites and newspapers that all quote from the same biased press releases.

Yesterday, Richard announced that he and Neil O’Brien, the director of Open Europe had started a petition at the British government’s website calling on the British government to “respect the result of the Irish referendum and abandon the attempt to ratify the Lisbon Treaty”.

Within four hours the petition had over 7,000 signatures. Within eight hours it had over 10,000 signatures. At the moment, roughly 24 hours since launch, the total stands at 15,507, which is a superb result. If you sort the currently open petitions by size, the “Abandon Lisbon” petition is the third largest.

From a marketing perspective, it’s a powerful case study for the effectiveness of viral Internet marketing.

From a personal perspective, I hope the petition is acknowleged. It would be wonderful if Britain could extricate itself from the “ever closer political union” that most of the people of Europe don’t seem to want, judging by the “no” votes from the Danes (Maastricht, the Euro), Irish (Nice and Lisbon), French (EU constitution) and Dutch (EU constitution) in referenda.

I only wish the Brits could deliver their verdict in a referendum.

update The petition received over 20,000 signatures in roughly two days. It wasn’t enough. The UK government ratified the treaty yesterday, the first to do so since the Irish “no” vote. In theory, the Irish vote should have stopped the EU constitution Lisbon treaty coming into force, but this is the EU and they don’t take “no” for an answer. Perhaps the Irish will be asked to vote again, to make sure they come back with the “right” answer, or maybe the rule on unanimous ratification will just be fudged. Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 at 11:57 am and is filed under Current posts, blog marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.