EU referendum campaign... my opening pitch!

There are *sales* campaigns, and there are *education* campaigns - they are very different things.

Sales campaigns persuade people to 'buy' something based on being impressed by other people who are buying the product (celeb endorsement).

Education campaigns set out information clearly and verifiable - knowing that people will buy the thing if it makes sense to do so.

Where there is a time limit, you will always end up with a tail of a sales campaign to hoover up the final undecided, uneducated - but where time is available, an education campaign will not only convince people irrevocably to one conclusion, but those people will become ambassadors for the cause too.

Traditionally the 'great and good' approach to the referendum campaign would select the 'big guns' on each side to lead the campaign - expecting to impress the plebs into deferring to the 'great and good' and following the side with the most impressive lineup, and voting as they are told.

However, this 'great and good' approach is half a century out of date.

Wide ranging media access today means the 'big guns' are already well known to the plebs, anyone who could be convinced by them probably already has been... They will add almost nothing to gaining votes for their 'side'.

The big guns are needed to be there in the background - but the real work of gaining new votes will be done by educating individuals who are perfectly capable of making a rational choice, but don't have the information available (and they *know* they don't have it) to make an educated/informed decision.

Yes, Farage, Hannan etc... they will be there on the out side. On the other side Cameron and other huge names/job-titles. The out campaign probably can't trump the people on the 'in' side - many very rich/famous people make a lot of money from the EU - its the mass of plebs, those who pay the price of our EU membership that need to be reached and educated - so they can ignore the 'pizazz' of the sales pitch by the rich, famous supporters of 'in' and vote in an informed way for their (and the countries) own best interest.

Need to get going - and not rely on the supposed 'great and good' to do the job for us...

(first published at http://free-english-people.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/eu-referendum-campaign.html )