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Communicator of the Week: Ruth Davidson

Tone is so important in getting a message across and connecting with an audience. Global brands spend many millions in perfecting their look, feel and tone in verbal and written communications. Focus groups test draft language which is then tinkered with until it is deemed to work.

Politics is sometimes like this but, despite the perception that all politicians are rich, more often messages are created on a whim and a gut feel. There simply is not the money to chisel out a killer campaign in the style of a global household name.

Sometimes a politician arrives who knows their audience, knows how to make an argument relevant and speaks in a way you and I do. This is handy in the days of direct connection via social media when chatty irreverence will go so much further than shrill points scoring.

So to this week's award winner who is a party leader in Scotland which, if you believe the BBC, is the focus for us all at this General Election.

In a rebuttal come cheeky put down, Ruth Davidson - the Tory leader in Scotland - tweeted "you ok Hun?" in response to a furious tweet aimed at David Cameron from Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy accusing Cameron of "being a cheerleader for the SNP".

Within minutes twitter was sharing and favouriting the Tweet alongside approving comments about Davidson herself. This Twitter exchange has subsequently been the subject of a broad range of favourable traditional media coverage which is hard to grab during a national political campaign.

Teams of press officers and campaign managers would be ecstatic at this kind of coverage which communicates a policy position but using a tone and language voters understand. This is why Ruth Davidson is my Communicator of the Week.

Communicator of the Week is written by Ed Staite.

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