Summary
Issue advertisements are advertisements designed to change public opinion about a social issue rather than advocate or oppose a candidate or ballot question or sell a product or service. What effect do these advertisements have on perceived importance of the advertised issue and attitudes and knowledge about the featured policy? Results from an online experiment studying the effect of online issue advertisements suggest that issue advertisements can increase the salience of and knowledge about an issue. Issue advertisements can also persuade about the merits of a policy but only among individuals without attachments to major political parties.

Summary
The first large-scale piece of experimental research on the political influence of social networks published in September 2012 revealed that Facebook sharing can encourage people to get out and vote. During the US Presidential election, Mitt Romney's team were the surprising winners in deciding to examine more deeply who these people were and what would be most likely to make them take an action more meaningful than a 'like'. With the 'Commit to Mitt' app, Team Romney was able to use information about the geography and behavioural history of users to identify who they thought would be most influential in shifting the dial at the polling booth. This highlights an important, but subtle shift in attitude towards social contagion.

Summary
Advertising regulation in China contains political and ideological nuances. Despite evolution of its advertising law and years of practice dealing with various codes, advertisers still find it daunting to decipher the regulations after years of practice. The ideological components of China’s advertising law require careful analysis of political correctness and cultural appropriateness. In this paper, the authors use semiotic analysis to consider both advertising that has violated ideological rules and advertising that has successfully transmitted desired ideological messages. And the authors have selected four advertising cases that help clarify the perceptions regarding political ideology in China.

Summary
This presentation details research findings on bringing news videos and articles into social conversation and the effect on engagement when online content is an extension of personal interactions. In previous research, Innerscope Research found participant conversations creating higher levels of emotional response than the content itself. CNN expected that stories shared through social media would experience a lift similar to that created in recent usability and redesign work. The study results, however, place the impact of social media in a fundamentally different category with extremes of lift in both the influencer and their friend network.

Summary
On the night of 7th May 2011, Singapore's general election was held. Many people turned to Twitter for their news updates, there they were frequently broken before they were broadcast on television. The 2006 election had been hailed as the 'internet election', but 2011 marked the first time in that use of social media by political parties in their campaigns was permitted, and while traditional media channels have tended to ignore the opposition parties; in the digital sphere, these parties found it much easier to spread their message. At the same time, Singaporeans used social channels to debate issues and share opinions. The role of social platforms is covered, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Lessons for brands include tips for handling negative feedback and dealing directly with customers.

Summary
Not even one among the top 100 star celebrities in China, is a son or daughter of anyone famous – they are all virtually self-made success stories. It is surprising to note that many marketers and advertisers still do not really understand the Chinese nuance to celebrity endorsement. As a result, every time a celebrity is signed up for the next multimillion-dollar marketing campaign, what has been done in the past is repeated with predictably mediocre results. As China guns for glory, the Chinese are looking for hope in the thousands of unsung heroes and millions of talented and yet unknown people who are looking for a way to break in and make a mark.Unlike many other markets in the world, China today offers a rare opportunity for brands not just to grow but also to contribute to the 'construction of values'. In the end, brands could actually stand for something much more than just things we consume.

Summary
The recent UK general election was not, as claimed, the first social media election. Politicians who are avoiding honesty on key issues, such as spending cuts, cannot have a clear an authoritative voice in social media. Contrast this with Obama's election campaign, which was marked by a strong sensse of authenticity and passion. As well as honesty, social media responds to the creation of currency - the appearance, of real things (songs, posters, events, ideas) with the cultural spark to be part of the real consumer conversation. brands must have this candour, passion and creativity to succeed in social media.

Summary
In his regular column, Jeremy Bullmore uses the example of the Tory party’s manifesto for the next general election to illustrate two of his pet hate phrases. Although of course the manifesto hasn’t been published yet, he imagines it will almost certainly contain ‘yetisms’ and ‘whilsts’, where the aim is to make two contradictory things apparently harmonious. He contends that it didn’t work for Andrex, when the brand tried to suggest that toilet paper could be strong yet still soft, and it won’t work for the Conservatives unless they can find their own Andrex puppy.

Summary
This case study describes an online qualitative research project that used innovative study design, interviewing technologies (multimedia interviewing, mobile research), and voice analysis in an effort to refine public policy for the U.S. presidential campaign of Barack Obama.

Summary
In this article Geoffrey Precourt, WARC Online's U.S. Editor, reports from the American Marketing Association's Mplanet 2009 conference in Orlando, Florida, on a presentation by Larry Grisolano, a leading Democrat Party strategist who served as the senior communications strategist on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. His campaign is largely perceived as the most politically savvy media/marketing American election effort, and Grisolano argues that several key factors contributed to Obama's victory. These include: consistency of message (focusing on "change" from the beginning of the campaign to the end); campaign leadership (ensuring that key individuals worked together for success, which results from matching marketing to production); successfully engaging a target audience (as Obama did with young voters via a range of non-traditional media); and exploiting digital to its full potential (from search engines to online video). This approach will also inform Obama's strategy while in office.