We almost made political history on Twitter, until they pulled the plug Artwork

Embracing Marketing Mistakes

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.

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Embracing Marketing Mistakes

We almost made political history on Twitter, until they pulled the plug

March 05, 2026 • Prohibition PR

0:00 | 4:49

I’m joined by Stuart Bruce, who is internationally recognised as the PR Futurist. He is a thinker, strategist and hands-on practitioner in modernised public relations, communications and corporate affairs. Stuart specialises in AI, communication technology (CommTech), measurement and evaluation, and crisis communications. He helps organisations embrace digital transformation and future-proof their communications in a changing world.

In this episode, Stuart tells the story of how he tried to bring Twitter into mainstream political campaigning during Alan Johnson's 2007 Deputy Leadership bid. It was an ambitious and forward-thinking move that nearly made history, but a sudden change by Twitter threw the plan off course.

• Joined Twitter on January 2nd, 2007 when the platform was brand new
• Nearly became the world's first political campaign to use Twitter with a senior figure, beaten only by John Edwards by two weeks
• Used Twitter primarily to generate media coverage through innovation, successfully getting a full page in The Guardian
• Planned to leverage Twitter's SMS functionality to send free text messages to 200,000 Labour Party members
• Twitter discontinued their SMS service between printing campaign leaflets and their delivery to members
• Key lesson: don't rely on free services for important campaign communications
• Few complaints received due to Twitter's limited adoption at the time

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Political Campaign Twitter Strategy

Stuart Bruce 0:02

So am I going to talk about the fuck up .

Stuart Bruce 0:03

Yeah , go on .

Stuart Bruce 0:03

Okay , you've got to , you've got on the show , you've got to so back in 2007 , I was the Director of Communications for Alan Johnson , who was standing for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party , and Twitter was brand new . You know I'd only joined it in kind of December Actually , no , no , on the 2nd of January 2007, . I can remember when I joined On the 2nd of January 2007, . I can remember when I joined , and by about March April , I had this idea of how we could use it in a political campaign . We would have been the world's first using it with a senior figure . But Senator John Edwards in the States then used Twitter to announce his bid to be the Democratic candidate for president and he beat us by about two weeks .

Stuart Bruce 0:40

We already had the plan and I was like oh we're not going gonna be the first anymore and you could have just done a tweet saying this is my first treat , yeah , before hashtag ed bombs .

Stuart Bruce 0:51

So anyway , so we had this plan to use twitter , but there was , and there were , several reasons for it . So one , so we . The fact is , twitter was so new so you weren't going to reach your , your , your stakeholders , your audience with it . It just you know it wasn't a platform you'd use for that . So people say , why on earth would you use it then ? Well , we used it for kind of two main

The Twitter Text Service Failure

Stuart Bruce 1:09

reasons . One was to actually get attention for the fact we were doing something innovative and we were pushing the boundaries of campaigning and we were willing to learn and experiment , and that would become a news story , and it did .

Stuart Bruce 1:22

You know , we , you know , we had things like a full page in the Guardian about it . We had like other news stories . So that was one of the objectives . It was to drive media coverage because it was innovative . The second was and this is the fuck-up is at the time Twitter had you could actually get tweets by text message Okay , yeah , sms , or send them by text message message , sms . You didn't actually need a smartphone or the twitter app . So we had to reach about 200 000 or maybe even more , I can't remember the number labour party members , and one of the things we were doing was good old post . We were posting a leaflet out to them . But how do we keep up that communication ? Oh , I know we can send them free text messages using twitter . So we included details of how people could subscribe . Um , in the gap between us printing the leaflet and it going to go into the post and it arriving on people's doormats , twitter withdrew the service . How long was that ? What ?

Stuart Bruce 2:20

was that it was like about . It was like about a week , because uh , okay , so literally when , so not long then . Oh no , no . When we approved the copy , this was a blooming good idea . By the time it lands on people's doormats , it was a bloody bad idea , or 200,000 of them , yeah , and that was an example . So lesson learned don't rely on free services or something important yeah .

Aftermath and Lessons Learned

Stuart Bruce 2:50

And did you realise , after the mailer had gone out , did you get loads of complaints ? I mean , at what point did you realize ? Oh shit , um well , no , no , it was . Yeah , it was when the news story came out , because it was like , literally , as it was like the day or maybe a day before that , they were due to land on people's door , uh , doormats that . Did we get many complaints ? No , because actually this was kind of early day , yeah , exactly , it was early days .