On January 7, 2013, the City of Hamilton announced a campaign entitled Our Voice, Our Hamilton that aimed to engage Hamiltonians in a discussion about the city’s $195 million annual infrastructure deficit and how to deal with future public services. The campaign was managed by an Ottawa-based engagement firm, Dialogue Partners.
At 19:41 that evening, a McMaster undergraduate, Eric Gillis, tweeted to Dialogue Partners’ @OurHamilton account, advocating for “[t]he continuation of voluntary pay for [the] disabled on the HSR.”
Dialogue Partners responded asking “what is ‘HSR’ just so we can accurately capture your comment.”
To Hamilton’s Twitter users, Dialogue Partners’ question made the firm look ill prepared and unaware of Hamilton’s culture, resulting in a flurry of angry tweets that responded directly to the post.
Twitter user Michael Pett suggested to the Hamilton community that, akin to the #TellVicEverything campaign, that Hamilton Twitter users should share details about Hamilton with Dialogue Partners via #TellOHEverything. The #TellVicEverything hashtag had been created as a response to a House of Commons bill sponsored by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, which presented a potential loss of privacy to Canadian Internet users.
The #TellOHEverything campaign saw a total of 607 contributors posting 2898 tweets. The hashtag began trending nationally on Twitter within 45 minutes of Pett’s initial post. Even Dialogue Partners had to admit that things had “gone really wrong, really fast.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t by design, but I do commend [Dialogue Partners] on creating such awareness in a 12-hour span.”
—Sam Merulla, City of Hamilton councillor, Ward 4
Much of the anger over the Dialogue Partner’s HSR tweet stemmed from the fact that the city was asking for help managing a massive annual deficit while simultaneously spending $376,000 on a consulting firm. Adding further insult to injury was the fact that the money was leaving the city, going to an Ottawa firm that appeared to lack sufficient knowledge about the of Hamilton.
Independent journalist Joey Coleman was a key promoter of the #TellOHEverything campaign. He told local news outlet The Bay Observer that he has “long standing concerns about the City’s overuse of consultants. This was a $376,000 project in which the consultant did not put the effort forth to earn that amount. The objective was to call attention to misspending of our tax dollars and waste. My goal was solely to call attention to fiscal mismanagement. Our City claims it does not have funds to provide services, yet has no shortage of millions of dollars for consultants.”
Dialogue Partners apologized less than 24 hours after the fiasco began via their @OurHamilton Twitter account, but the apology fell on deaf ears, as more tweets under the #tellOHEverything hashtag continued to flood the @OurHamilton account.
“For us, our larger conceptual mistake is that we underestimated the power of people’s voices — of some people’s voices — and in doing so we did them a disservice.”
—Stephani Roy McCallum, Dialogue Partners
Many city councillors, including Sam Merulla (Ward 4) wanted to terminate the contract with Dialogue Partners after seeing the fury of residents on Twitter in the first 24 hours of the campaign. Other members of council defended Dialogue Partners, ultimately blaming Twitter and its users for making things spin out of control; councillor Brad Clark (Ward 9) referred to the actions online as a “public lynching”.
Dialogue Partners saw the #TellOHEverything campaign as an attack focused on taking down their firm, but Ryan McGreal, editor of Raise the Hammer (a Hamilton civic issues website) saw the situation play out as “a community self-organizing in an organic way to push for change.”
Two days after the Our Voice, Our Hamilton campaign began, Dialogue Partners shut down the project’s website at the request of the city because of “offensive and inaccurate content.” The city was concerned about malicious code, which had been added to the site. Dialogue Partners also unpublished their Facebook page. Finally, all communications stopped from the Our Voice, Our Hamilton; again at the request of the city.
The battle was essentially over; the Twitter crowd had won.
Dialogue Partners did not speak again until January 13th, when they issued another apology to the residents of Hamilton.
On February 4, 2013, the City of Hamilton, in an agreement with Dialogue Partners canceled the Our Voice, Our Hamilton campaign as well as all outstanding fees.
“I am amazed at the voice of these people in this community and I think it’s an indication of how passionate they really are for their community.”
—Stephani Roy McCallum, Dialogue Partners