The Gleaner Editors' Forum | #RiseUnited banks on digital media to boost campaign

The campaign team of Peter Bunting, the man seeking to wrest leadership of the People’s National Party (PNP) from Dr Peter Phillips, is betting on superior skills at communicating through new-age media to give it a major advantage in his bid for the presidency come September.

The new campaign, labelled #RiseUnited, is a call to action, both to improve cohesion within the membership of the PNP as well as Jamaica as a whole.

Bunting’s campaign team said its message is to modernise, organise, digitise, energise, and mobilise the party.

“It’s really digital media that we focus on, so, yes, Facebook; yes, Instagram; yes, Twitter, but we’re also making use of the other platforms,” said Bunting’s chief of staff, Nikeisha Burchell, during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum at the newspaper’s North Street, Kingston, offices last week.

The importance of communicating has always been important to Bunting and his team, said Burchell as she noted how strange the idea of not utilising the platforms a large segment of the population uses to communicate with would be in the current social and political climate. YouTube videos and targeted Google ads will be involved in the campaign process.

Tiara Thompson