Sneaking in the back door

I got home the other day to find what I thought was a free newspaper in my post box – the Haringey Community News.

Brilliant, I thought, I love a newspaper.

I settled down to read it with a cup of tea. The front page read: ‘Lib Dems taking action to cut CRIME’.

Inside the paper there were stories including:

‘Help for Haringey residents as Lib Dems deliver Council Tax freeze’

LABOUR SHAME: Council’s ‘bonuses for failure’ scandal.

Not all of the headlines were so blatant. But it turns out what I thought was a newspaper, was in fact a piece of Liberal Democrat propaganda.

Cynical

I find this approach deeply cynical. It’s nothing short of dishonest to try and dress-up your 

campaign messages as independent news. I can’t find a single reference to it being a Liberal Democrat publication – it’s just called community news.

More importantly, I don’t think it works. If you need to trick people in to reading your messages, then as soon as they realise what’s happened, they feel cheated and immediately don’t trust you.

It also assumes that your audience is stupid. I take offence at that. Of course I’m not going to fall for this. Anything that’s in Haringey Community News, no matter how valid, has now lost all of its credibility.

Try harder please Liberal Democrats. Earn your right to be talked about in proper media or make your marketing so compelling that I want to pick-it up. Don’t trick your way into my front room, because I will just kick you out. And be sure not to let you in next time.