Much has been made of the Tories’ foray into the web on a national stage. There’s an in-depth feature about the party’s on-line strategy in this month’s edition of Wired – print version only so rush out and buy.

The Conservative Party is clearly also taking the fight to the doorstep.   Marginal seats are where the election is lost and won.  This poster site was snapped at Hazel Grove station at the weekend. Hazel Grove and Cheadle, the constituency immediately adjacent are both marginals.  On the bottom left there’s a URL for http://www.annesleyabercorn.com a site dedicated to Annesley Abercorn the Tory candidate.  This strategy is being replicated across the marginal seats.

A quick look at the site and you can see that it’s rich in social media content.  Centre stage is a YouTube clip featuring a constituency pub, a local pie-shop and a quick interview with the Coronation Street stalwart Bill Roache (Ken Barlow to you).   There are interviews with local people and a clip with the party leader sounding as if he actually know a bit about the place.  There’s also a link to a Facebook page.

Slightly less compelling given that Annesley is a Londoner is the endorsement from Boris Johnson, oh and the London Bus that they have given him for the campaign.  I guess there’s local and local.

The user-generated mashup that has been the scourge of pre-election advertising campaigns this year is also coming to a video clip near you.

There is a wonderfully irreverent site called Speechbreaker.co.uk that allows users to re-edit speeches by the three main party leaders. It’s quick and fun and you can post the results to YouTube.  Some enterprising users are using alternative videos over which to dub the audio with some almost disturbing results, as you can see for yourself.