10 Tips for Better Writing Better RFP Responses

Hello folks!  Upon returning from the Mirren Conference in NYC this week, I thought I’d share tips on improving your responses to proposals.  This article was inspired by a session which was presented by Lisa Colantuono of AAR, a search consulting firm specializing in the advertising industry.  The session focused on ad agencies, but I’ve pulled out some advice that applies to any business, and added some of my own as well.

1.  Double and triple check you have spelled the client’s name(s) correctly, throughout!  Have someone else edit and check your work whenever possible.

2.  Keep the proposal in the SAME ORDER as the RFP asks.  This makes is much easier for the evaluator, and gives an impression of cooperativeness.

3.  Don’t include (or at least minimize the presence of) your “patented process” – evidently, all firms think they have a unique patented process, but they’re all the same.  Clients don’t really care about the process as long as it gets results.

4. Include detailed case studies in the PISRR format: Problem, Insight you provided, Solution, Results, Relevance. Too often, companies focus just on their more prestigious clients, which are totally irrelevant to the project at hand.  A photo/logo with each case is nice as well.

5. Pretend the reader has ADD.  Short copy and bullet points are preferred.  Try to include white space to make it breathe.

6.  Offer insights at the category or industry level, not just client-specific insights.  Show you understand their industry by including a little research, or interesting facts in the “sidebars” of the proposal.

7.  If you include “extra stuff” not requested, try to fit it into ONE page – and show your philosophy, personality, people, and culture.

8.  To present credentials of a team, a chart is a good idea.   Put the clients you’ve worked with down the left, and the scope (or years of experience) across the top.  Include the year(s) the work was completed as well.  You might also consider category groupings instead of specific clients.  Regardless, the chart can give a quick visual of your experience and strengths.

9. Focus the introductory letter mainly on your results, not on your history or your process.

10.  Relevant work experience from previous firms CAN be included as long as the employee which did that work (assuming they had key role in it) is to be included on the team.

Got any RFP tips of your own? We’d love to hear from you!

The Vendor is not Always WRONG

Almost all businesses know it’s important to keep their clients happy, and be the best vendors they can be.  But when it comes to dealing with their own suppliers, they let all their flaws hang out.  Payments are late. Demands are high. Instructions are sloppy. And constant favours are the norm.

The problem with this is that when when you need the supplier to pull hard to help you, they balk. And that could make or break your ability to deliver on your promises, and kill your competitiveness in the long run.

In dealing with hundreds of businesses over the years, I have never once seen a business that was completely dependent on one client.  And, if they ever were semi-dependent, they were actively working on changing that situation.  This means that when push comes to shove, you as a client do not have absolute power over the supplier. So, maybe it’s time to fine tune your “clienting” skills.  Here’s what I mean:

• The “We haven’t paid because we’re not really happy”  scenario. Come on! If there’s an issue with quality, get in touch with the supplier immediately and tell them what’s wrong.  Letting the issue slide until the invoice is overdue only makes you as the client look unprofessional, not the supplier.   If you don’t like the bill or the services, complain about it NOW, not after you sat on it for months.

•  The “We can’t pay you until the client pays us” line.   Well, thanks for now announcing what the real payment terms were. It’s your job as a client to have sufficient credit that you can pay your supplier no matter what.  Your slow paying client is your problem, not your suppliers’.

• The “It’s always your fault” attitude.  If ever a job is late, or screwed up because of poor communication, acknowledge your part in it, instead of blaming it all on the supplier.   If you won’t do that, that supplier is going to question everything you order in the future, and not necessarily in the kindest manner.  They may even take liberty to raise your prices.

• The “schmoozing the clients, abusing the suppliers” scenario.  Why not include a thank you note with your cheques? Or if you’ve been a real pain in the butt, send over gift card, testimonial or fruit basket. The supplier will feel proud they stuck by you, instead of feeling like the doormat under your feet.  It also makes it a lot easier next time you have to push them hard.

The upshot is, being the person who hands out the cheques never gives you absolute power.  Be kind to your suppliers, and they’ll be kind to you.

Do the World’s Biggest Marketers Actually Avoid Marketing?

Call it my crystal ball prediction, but I think the world of advertising is in for a major shift… if today’s Mirren conference discussion is any indication.

A bunch of the world’s top advertising agency CEO’s were on a panel, imparting their knowledge to other advertising types as to how they got where they are, and how they bring in the big fish that have put them where they are.  In other words, what do the big agencies do to market themselves?

Here are a few quotes I jotted down as they spoke:

“Money follows talent.”

“I don’t look at it [pitching].  I don’t want to look at it at all.”

“I surprise clients with the bigness of our ideas.”

“Avoiding pitching is the smartest strategy of all.”

“We sometimes roll the dice.”

“If you are doing all the right things the growth will come.”

and, regarding making a marketing budget for the agency, “We just look at last year. Did it feel right?”

And these are people who supposedly know more about marketing than anyone else in the world.  Paradoxically, they don’t like it.  They don’t believe in it.  They guess at it. They avoid it at all costs.

I’m sure that if their client said, “We don’t need marketing.  We do good work,” there would be guffawing and eye-rolling and lecturing, and condescension.  But that’s exactly what these guys are doing.

So, dear clients, I challenge you this:  before you hire any company to advise you on marketing your business, ask the marketers how they are marketing themselves.   If they don’t walk the talk, walk away.  Because they will never understand the pain they are about to put you through.

 

But even for Marketers, Change is Good

If you’re a marketing company, advertising agency, or even an in-house marketing professional, you probably know what when the going gets tough in a company, you and your projects get axed first.  It ought NOT to be this way, but it is.

On the other side of the fence, which people CAN’T a company easily walk away from? It’s the computer-savvy IT-oriented people – the ones technical enough that, without them, no one has a clue how to run things.  These people have job security.

In light of the above, consider what happens when IT types and marketers must converge to build business-driving initiatives through online marketing and e-commerce.  Some marketers will run and hide.   And others, the ones who learn to work with it, and stick it out, will have power  – power to drive new business, and the metrics to back it up and keep their jobs.  Yeah!

I’m here in New York City learning about how the world of marketing has been completely turned on its ear as a result of the growing importance the internet.    Coming from Cowtown, Canada, I expected that most of top agency people here in the Big Apple would be well ahead of what we’re doing in little old Canada, but I’m quite surprised to discover that this is not the case.

Not one has yet shown how online metrics can be used to uncover competitive positions and build strategy.  No one has really cracked which kinds of content really drives business, or shown ways to generate it quickly and inexpensively.  Even a company specializing in market intelligence hadn’t heard of social media sentiment monitoring(?).  (I gave them Canadian-based Sysomos‘ name!) But I’ve got two days to go, so the jury’s still out.  Did I mention there are loads of people using Blackberry phones here (yay Canada)?

While there are some very forward thinking speakers here, I was surprised to see that so far, not many of the attendees were really deep into online integration yet.  So the coming days will tell where the Canucks stack up, and where we’ve got to go next.

The morning began with a fellow who goes by the title of “Digital Prophet” at AOL,  David “Shingy” Shing.  His appearance is the first thing that catches you – a young Asian fellow with hair spiked in every direction, black leather and high top sneakers with big yellow wings – a strong resemblance to Edward Scissorhands, actually.   But the second thing was the pace at which his presentation zinged by.  He went so fast, blasting through websites, technology, etc. that everyone just shut up, trying to catch as much  information as we could while it was all flying past.   Shingy whizzed by tons of interesting stats about user growth and endless examples of what a few elite tech-savvy digital agencies had accomplished before most of us knew what a hash tag was.

On the other hand, it was kind of neat to have a speaker give you a high-level taste of what was to come for the weekend, and the pace certainly added to the feeling of “gotta know this – yesterday!”

The overall message:  People don’t want to be pushed ads anymore, they want to interact and engage with your brand.   Whether you take a print or billboard ad and create an “augmented reality” element, get people to use a QR Code to scratch and win, tag your images with “Stipple” content, or simply write good blogs so that you stimulate meaningful online conversations, the direction is clear:  Marketers must go beyond  “brand awareness” and get people into an experience that connects them and excites them to want to share it, and come back for more. 

Yes, it’s difficult for most companies to learn this, at least quickly.  However, if we do it, we have an opportunity to really take that interaction, and grab that data off of it as never before – and use it to prove that it’s working, vital and valuable.

The model, as I see it, is like this:

And even without the initial “Reality” interaction, the point is that when you get an online interaction, you get data, and the data gives you the GOLD:  proof of what’s working and what’s not.  And as long as you get it right, the proof is a positive thing!

So as marketers, we should see this as a good thing:  Don’t learn it, and get early retirement.  Or learn it, and get a serious chance at job security.

I’d write more, but I now have about 15 web sites I’ve gotta look at NOW!!  Stay tuned for more blogging and tweeting  in the coming days!

What are your thoughts?  I’d love to hear from you!

Could Social Media Monitoring Have Better Predicted the Alberta Election Results?

After reading Joanne O’Connell’s post “Why Were the Polls Wrong?”, I was intrigued by her insight and wondered if social media could shed some light on why there was such a difference between the polling vs. actual results. As Joanne stated, this election had a large undecided vote (which I believe were mostly former PC voters) that were conflicted emotionally.  With that in mind and with the Wildrose controversy that played out near the end of the campaign, it reminded me of a US case study that examined how real time sentiment in social media can help overcome negative events quicker where traditional polling falls short. So did the negative events surrounding the Wildrose party leading up to the final week sway the undecided voters to vote PC?

To investigate this further, I used Sysomos Map and looked at sentiment over time and examined the first week of April vs. the last week of the campaign. What I found was different than the pollsters. According to mentions in blogs, Twitter, forums and online news, the PC Party seemed to always lead the Wildrose with fewer negative mentions and more positive mentions. (Red=Neg, Gray=Neu, Green=Pos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To look at how this might affect voters, we have to look at each party’s reach and how that reach affected them based on when it was being utilized and what the sentiment at the time was. To best illustrate this, I looked at each party’s Twitter reach and when it was most impactful. This reach is defined as the total amount of users potentially reached by all tweets mentioning the party. As we can see, the tweets mentioning the PC Party had more reach than the Wildrose Party but not by a large margin.

PC Party Twitter Reach

Reach:  8.0 million impressions

Total Tweet Count: 4956

Wildrose Party Twitter Reach

Reach: 7.7 million impressions

Total Tweet Count:  5,576

With both parties having a large Twitter impression, it really came down to when each party made the most of its “impressions” to decide if it indeed had an impact on voter’s decisions. Reviewing the data below, a comparison of the two parties Twitter results shows them neck and neck for most of the race until the final week where some controversy hit the Wildrose Party. PC then took a giant leap on the final day, possibly due to the last few hours of the evening after the vote was decided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In conclusion, using social media as a form of polling and with the benefit of hindsight, the social data suggests the Wildrose party made a bigger impression during a time when their negative mentions peaked. These negative mentions coupled with the party’s reach could be responsible for creating doubt in the Wildrose Party and thus swaying votes to PC or convincing undecided voters to stay put and have a movie night.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  “Popularity” in the line graph is the total number of tweets pertaining to the subject.  It includes positive, negative and neutral remarks.  The Redford numbers consolidated above also include tweets related to PC and Conservatives in Alberta Election.  Smith numbers include mentions of Wildrose party for the Alberta election.  These charts, although created after the election for purposes of this blog, can be generated real time throughout the course of the election, making them a more immediate way of measuring immediate voter sentiment.

Starting a Business while Keeping your Day Job

 

To be a bit of a fortune teller, here are ten words that I think guarantee business failure. “I’m starting a business, but I’m keeping my day job.” Hmm…it may be an obvious mistake to some people, but it’s sure something I’ve heard many times.  Actually, what’s more common is that people do intend to leave their day jobs, eventually, when the business grows enough to support them. Then they look at me as their marketing consultant to make it happen, and I have to say….right! (not)  Here’s why.

 

• Any new business actually needs at least one person’s full time dedication….if for no other reason than just the pure amount of pavement-pounding involved.  And even that person will end up really working hard to survive in the first year.  If you cut that person’s effort down to say 20% because they were keeping their day job, the business would never amount to anything that would ever support the person…assuming it’s a legitimate business, of course.
• What about the business owner who works all day at his day job, and then switches gears to working all night at his business? Well, I did have a client like that once, and he had pretty good employees actually, running the business during the day.  But I never saw a business more riddled with financial problems, conflict, and pure exhaustion. The guy also lost his marriage trying to keep things glued together.  For some reason, he never believed his business could support him without his day job…and perhaps it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
• What if you keep the overhead low, and just work from home? Well, yes, you can make a little money on the side…doing anything.  But, when your day job gets demanding, and you’re tired, your business could sit for months with no activity.  Any such period in a business will put you right back at square one….and it is essentially a hobby, not a business that is there to support anyone.  And there’s nothing wrong with money-making hobbies, just don’t expect it to support you until you give it your full-time dedication.

So what’s the best way to deal with day jobs and starting businesses? Use your day job to stock pile the cash you need, and pay off personal debts before you start the business.  Keep the day job while you plan and research the business idea.  Then when you have the idea ready, and a strong enough financial position to support yourself for say, a year, completely quit the day job.  That’s your best chance of good fortune, bar none.

Have you tried starting a business while keeping your day job?  We’d love to hear your comments, questions or insights!

How much should you spend on marketing?

As a marketing consultant, the most common question people ask me when they call is, “What’s it going to cost?” Which is kind of a funny question, because although I can generally ballpark the cost building a marketing or business plan, what people really want to know is “What’s it’s ALL going to cost…as in…ALL this marketing stuff I should be doing…what’s THAT going to cost?”

But really, how do I know whether they want me to help them get one or two new clients, or make them  famous around the whole of North America? While planning costs will vary somewhat, the implementation costs are what’s really different.

Now, some marketers will tell you there should be a rule about it – like 3 to 7% of revenues. And that’ll work for perhaps maintaining a level of sales for a well-established business. But a lot of clients are looking for big growth – as in, “Let’s see if we can double ourselves in the coming year” – or more. And do you think 7% of existing sales is going to do it? Probably not.  Furthermore, if a company is new, and has no sales to speak of – does that mean they should spend 7% of nothing? Of course not.

Here’s an example. One of my clients recently realized they needed a brand new client base – they’d been relying on one big account for too long, and that big account was looking shaky. They knew they needed a major change to make their sales targets – so we put a business plan together – and then they went out and convinced an investor to lend them a large wad of cash which they invested entirely in advertising. Yes it’s taking a chance – but it paid off – many times over. And the cost of the campaign worked out be about 8% of the initial sales it brought in…mind you, those new customers will be customers for years to come, and the real cost vs. sales is therefore much lower. But they had to dive in first, and the sales came after.

So the answer to the “what’s the marketing going to cost” is this: “invest whatever you can get your hands on” and base it on “the sales you need to make” or on “what you can reasonably deliver” with the people you have (or can easily get).   If you’re still dying for a rule of thumb, I believe that a growing business should expect to spend 10% or so of what they WANT to make in revenue for the UPCOMING year.  But that can still vary widely based on your industry and profit margins.   If someone is willing go for 20%, then I’d be hoping the results could well be paying off for 2 years or more to ensure a good ROI.

So go ahead and make your own rules about what you should spend, and what you need to make in revenues (and margin) to ensure it’s worth your while.   If you spend wisely – and the marketing works – you can spend as much as you want. The cost really is up to you.

PS.  Visit our FEES SECTION  if you want to know our costs of building your marketing or business plan.

12 Tips for Starting a Business in Calgary

So you’re ready to start a business in Calgary? Good for you! It’s a giant leap. Calgary has for years been reputed as Canada’s most entrepreneurial city. As a business owner myself, and having helped hundreds of other entrepreneurs get started, I thought I’d give you a few tips on how business is done in Calgary.

 

1. Work at getting an original name – and head straight to a registry to get it reserved. The registry services are all over town here in Calgary – and they’re independent businesses too – so they’re easily accessible. Also, while you’re there, check out their little books on how to start businesses – lots have all sorts of forms and sample proposals/contracts to get you going.
2. Get the right address. Calgary has lots of business centres where you can use their business addresses, boardrooms, and telephone answering. If you want to, you can also rent individual offices. Search for “secretarial services” or “virtual offices” and you’ll find many options.  For $100 – $500 a month (depending on whether you include phone answering – and yes, they can answer calls and then forward the caller on to your cell), your business can appear much more well-established than if you use a home address on your cards.  If you really want to focus on oil and gas, downtown is the place to be; many people walk to meetings all day, and being there makes you part of the clique.
3. Get a real graphic/web designer to create your logo, cards, website, and digital letterhead that you can open within Word (our designers can provide this.) A first impression counts.  Get a good writer to edit all the material you write. Spelling errors are fatal.
4. Don’t undercut.  Decide whether you’re as good as your closest competitor. If your quality beats theirs, price a little higher than they do. If you’re still learning, price a little lower. If you price too low coming out of the gate (more than 15% lower), your clients won’t take you seriously.  In Calgary, a higher price generally means you have a better offering, and there plenty of wealthy people here willing to pay for the best.
5. Don’t copy the competition. People in Calgary shop – usually using the web. So if you lift text and content off a competitors’ web site, you’re just going to be found out – and that’ll make you look like a “me too” business instead of something original.
6. Don’t think that because you’re small and new, you can only chase small businesses. Go ahead and go after the best possible clients based on the areas and industries you know best. Sometimes small business clients are harder to deal with than larger companies.  Go with whichever segment will appreciate your value.
7. Don’t hire unless you really need to. Best to build up a steady stream of work first. Remember, many tasks can be outsourced – warehousing, delivery, specific parts of your process. You don’t necessarily need to hire. There are plenty of small businesses in Calgary that price low enough that you can make a little money even if you subcontract and mark-up their services. And some of them will offer you volume discounts for ongoing work. Add some value to the package and it can work very smoothly.
8. Be honest, and keep your reputation CLEAN! The Calgary business community is a small network of people who know each other. Most of the industries here seem to have evolved something like this: There’s an industry leader, and there’s a runner-up generally started by people who left the leader, and then there are many other competitors who have been trained by the larger players, or are from other places. There is no room for burning a bridge…word just spreads around too fast. If you have to walk away from some money to keep your reputation, it is probably worth it. When selling, it’s fine to say how you are different, but do not bad-mouth your competitors. If people come to me saying they had a bad experience with another marketing firm, I’m actually more likely to suspect there is something wrong with the client than with the other marketing firm.
9. That said, it is just as important to treat your vendors well – as well as your clients. Sometimes vendors are even more important than clients. Pay them on time and treat them well. It can take years to cultivate a vendor relationship to the point where they will work until dawn for you without charging you rush fees…but it is worth having the relationship there when you need it. I’ve found price to be one of the least important factors in choosing a vendor. Yet still I see businesses choose cheaper vendors, and flip vendors constantly, forgetting that the best-reputed vendor would have been the one to actually help them out of a jam.
10. There are amazing resources online if you want the lay of the land in Calgary, the best one being the City’s website.  If you would like the rundown of the demographics, community by community, CLICK HERE and scroll down on the page.
11. NEVER WEAR BUSINESS ATTIRE DURING STAMPEDE.  (You’ll look like you’re from Toronto, which gets many Calgarians’ backs up!)  That’s the spirit of this town.  The beauty is that all the business people “seem to disappear” because they all look like cowboys and rodeo queens.  Even just blue jeans and boots will do the job; but if you really want to impress, get an authentic western shirt, a Smithbilt cowboy hat and a nice belt buckle.  Do it right.  There are tons of places in Calgary to get good Western Wear (even the thrift shops!).  Don’t talk too much serious business during Stampede week, just go party with your clients and make them LIKE you! And don’t book a meeting downtown on parade day (The first Friday morning), because you won’t make it anyway – downtown gets shut right down!
12. Be prepared for the swings.   People here make a ton of money when petroleum pricing is high, and then crash when things get low.  Make sure you save during the high times, and prepare to deplete your savings when the low points hit. Resist hiring in favour of contracting wherever you can.  Or, work to diversify outside the province so that your client base isn’t completely dependent on the economic swings.

Will you succeed and get rich in Calgary? Probably -the odds here are great!  But remember the first few years you are generally learning, and not making much money. So if you give up within the first 3 – 5 years, you’ve probably have taken only the hard part of what your business had to offer, and given up just before things got profitable. In Calgary, you can succeed in any business. It just matters how keen you are, and how long you can stay keen! You can out-do others based on a higher commitment, and doing a better job. There’s not a lot of “who you know” here – it’s how hard you work to make it happen! If you want to know someone, call them right up and impress them. Word will get around, and soon you’ll know all the right people.

All the best in starting your new venture! Please give us a call to learn more about how we can help you.  If you’re already doing business in Calgary, or have tried in the past, and want to add your thoughts and tips, drop us a line!

Mass Marketing Fraud, and What Needs to Be Done About It

Last night I was surprised to receive a note in my email inbox notifying me of a direct message (DM) from Twitter.  The message was from a high-profile businessperson that I follow; a CEO of an industry association.  The message read “Hi someone is posting terrible things about you…”  and it contained a link.

I clicked the link, and it took me to what appeared to be the Twitter login page, and asked me to enter my Twitter email address and password.  This is where, as a person who has studied fraud, my “spidey senses” were tingling.   I recalled reviewing fraudulent messages appearing to be from the Better Business Bureau, saying someone had made complaints about a company, which were also an attempt to lure the receiver into giving personal data.  However, this was the first time I’d seen someone clone an identity on Twitter, and then used it to send a phishing link.

I sent a tweet to the Federal Trade Commission, and an email to our own Competition Bureau in Canada doesn’t as yet have a twitter account. (As well as notifying the CEO whose account was cloned). My own studies in fraud have taught me that fraud evolves quickly and creatively, and it does so at a pace that authorities have great difficulty in matching.   As fraud is typically connected to organized crime, results can be major financial losses, humiliation, thievery of a complete identity, and even brutal violence.

In 2011, I completed a major thesis on Mass Marketing Fraud (MMF]. The purpose of the thesis was to figure out how to measure MMF.  You see, there are countless varieties of scams, and since people are sometimes unaware that they have been scammed (or won’t admit to it), this makes it very difficult to measure.

Up until now, the only technique used measure MMF in Canada has been surveying – in other words, asking people the question “Have you ever been a victim of..[various types of scams]? ”  But given the fact that few are aware, and others won’t admit, this technique greatly understates the problem.

The thesis proposed a unique method to identify and catch perpetrators.  My concept was to carefully arrange a type of “bait” system; where numerous emails/phone numbers/addresses would be purchased and used by authorities.  These contact points would then be forwarded to a well-trained staff with who would answer calls, pick up mail, and collect email.  That way, all such solicitations would be collected and monitored on an ongoing basis.

The strategy would provide not only information about the volume of solicitations, but their very nature, and provide quick, immediate evidence.  This would facilitate early warnings and rapid arrest. This would be effective for social media as well – setting up social media accounts is very easy, and it does not take a great level of skill to monitor them.    A variation of this method that I also proposed was to enlist real volunteers with real identities into the program, and simply train them to watch for, record, and then forward fraudulent solicitations.

As of the current time, the Competition Bureau of Canada has no immediate initiatives to consider implementing this proposal (although they have received it, and told me it was interesting.)  You see, because the problem has not yet been measured, no one knows how large is it, nor how much money should be invested in determining its measurement.    I have several ideas on this in my full report, such as sponsorship from major telecommunications/internet companies, but as of yet, the proposal waits.

Meanwhile, I hope that authorities in Canada will at least get on the social media bandwagon quickly and start tracking such issues.  Furthermore, it is certainly easy to imagine the potential for Competition Bureau to quickly disseminate fraud warnings on Twitter – a terrific resource to spread information globally, for nearly zero cost.

If you are studying or working in the area of white collar crime, and would like to receive the full content of the thesis on Assessing the Magnitude of Mass Marketing Fraud, please email me directly at jdrew@tenato.com.  TO REPORT A FRAUD, contact info@antifraudcentre.ca.

Insights on the Alberta 2012 Election

The poll slippage in last night’s election was certainly extraordinary, and all the pollsters on the evening newscasts were saying how surprised they were.

There are several common reasons why polls are “off”. The pollsters are going to have to (and they will) do their own research and then duke it out as to what happened. Pollsters live by reputation and their reputation rests partly on congruence with election results. So they will look in hindsight to see what happened. Because I personally didn’t poll this election, I can’t comment on the specifics. However, I can speak to where the reasons usually lie, and give some hints as to where to look.

First reason for “off” results is that there was a large undecided vote until very close to the election, and the polls closed down too soon to pick it up or account for it. That might have been largest factor this time. Several of the serious concerns about Wildrose surfaced only in the last week before April 23.

Second is – that the large undecided vote was conflicted emotionally, and in truth the undecided didn’t know how he / she/ they were going to vote so they couldn’t have told you anyway. That is very possible in this election. Many were very very offended by the PCs (an emotional reaction) but were also very very wary of the closest rival, the Wildrose (also an emotional reaction). And the PC campaign played up words like “scary”, “frightening”.

Third is – methodology matters, and relates to the other two. Some pollsters used telephone interview. Some used online. Some used “robo calls”. Some monitored digital and / or social media. All have their pros and cons. Telephone usually has a larger time gap from field calls to report. Robo calls are more immediate, but lack explanatory comment. Social media monitors have demographic biases. That’s what the pollsters will be duking out. How much to rely on single research media and how much to triangulate between multiple media? The best projections from poll results take all into
consideration.

Fourth is – projections. Pollsters, unless they are hugely sophisticated, well-financed and poll very large samples, usually poll to “popular vote” statistics. The real issue, of course, is how that translates into seats. In Alberta, we of course have a “first past the post system”, and many of the poll results we saw tonight were very close. In other words, a small difference in popular vote made a big difference in seats.

Fifth is – pollsters (and others) were predicting a greater-than-average turnout. Early results (and I write this very early in the evening after the election) are that the turnout was not abnormally large. So some of the “intuitive” or “experiential” predictions (yes, pollster project their data intuitively and experientially as well as mathematically) were off again because the “don’t-usually-vote” people didn’t show up. This could affect the demographics of those who in fact voted, which likely relates to party
choice.

Sixth is – again putting previous points together, it is quite possible that the undecided vote turned to PC due to fear of the unknown (i.e, Wildrose being seen as “this dangerously upstart part with no governing experience”) and fear of the possible damage to the economy and good governance from “reactionary” Wildrose. Habit and the familiar won out in the polling booth.

So put all this together. In this 2012 Alberta election, we had an unusual situation with conflicted platforms, personalities and parties. It is very possible that the pollsters used traditional methodologies which weren’t strong enough to pick up the underlying dynamics.

I definitely expect one or more of the affected pollsters to do the research needed to find out what happened. How to do it? Maybe one or more of the pollsters did exit interviews (i.e, asking people after they voted what their choice was, and why) at the polling stations, and the exit interviews will eventually be made public. Or maybe the more experienced pollsters will relate the 2012 Alberta election to earlier ones when the results were “off”. In truth, however, there aren’t many such. Polls usually predict very well!

Alberta 2012 was an anomaly.