This column first appeared on Broadsheet on Nov 4th, 2019 and looked at the weekend Fine Gael digital attack on Fianna Fáil which backfired badly and ended weak.
Being active on social media is not the same as being good at it. This is something Fine Gael learned yesterday morning.
At 9am it launched a digital attack claiming Fianna Fáil is not producing policies. Pretty basic stuff from a party in government, you’d have thought. Hard to screw that up. Attack the main opposition party for not doing enough. Claim they are just criticising you, trying to score points and acting like an… well… an opposition.
To be fair, Fine Gael got most of the basics right. They produced a decent digital video, loaded with graphics and charts and pumped it out across social media platforms. They backed it up with a press release in the name of Colm Brophy TD, hoping that the following day’s print media would pick up on it.
So far, so meh… yet, within barely an hour their digital campaign was not just misfiring, it was backfiring and going down in flames.
As part of the hoopla to mark Leo Varadkar’s first year as Taoiseach, Fine Gael produced a nifty 
Type #HomeToVote into Google and you will find pages and pages of links to news items from around the globe detailing the stories of thousands of young Irish emigres travelling back to vote at the recent referendum.
On the morning after the night before’s hyped-up #8thRef Claire Byrne debate: committed Yes campaigners are insisting that the Yes side won it while staunch No activists are declaring with equal ferocity that their side prevailed.
This is my Broadsheet opinion piece from June 20th, written in the aftermath of the horrific murder of Labour MP, Jo Cox. 
derekmooney.ie 
