Dan Slee – Future comms made easy: social media, PR and digital communications
Two things stagger me about what I’m seeing for General Election digital comms. Firstly, the number of memes. I’m swimming in them. I bet you are too. Secondly, the amount of targeted Facebook, Insta and WhatsApp ads. I had a look. Since the election was called Labour’s 77,632 ads are outscoring the Conservatives three to one. They are huge numbers.
The TikTok Election?
I’ve read some pieces about this being the TikTok election. I’m on TikTok. I use it a lot. I’m going to pin my colours to the mast and say that this is wide of the mark. Instead, I’d say this is the targeted sharable election. Let’s take the ITV News interview with Rishi Sunak as a case in point.
First, there was the TV interview. Rishi Sunak sits down with an ITV reporter and one almost throwaway question was centered around what the Prime Minister missed out on as a child. It’s a clever question designed to target Rishi’s middle-class upbringing and public school education. There are 3.2 million viewers for the TV bulletin. But this is just the start.
Almost four million people saw the ITV News clip on X, formerly Twitter, where Rishi confessed he missed out on Sky TV. A further three million saw the clip on TikTok while the same clip got 20,000 reactions and 500,000 views on the ITV Facebook page. Then it got chopped up and remixed by individuals and turned into spin-off memes.
Political Parties and Memes
People are not watching TV news bulletins from start to finish but the news is finding them as clips with lines from them as an ad. That’s the thing about memes. They often plug into something in popular culture. They can make a quick point cheaply and effectively. All the more so because they are usually not branded.
The Rishi Sunak interview has seeped into the popular consciousness. While people across the country are going without food, heat, and shoes, the PM’s answer jars. Here’s a meme I saw on Nextdoor. ‘Only Terrestrial’ and the ET character is a play on the Conservative leader’s Sky TV confession.
Trust in Politicians
This election has been about the recruitment of digital foot soldiers who are actively going out into the communities they live in to spread a message. The simpler that message, the better.
Given that trust in politicians is at a 40-year low it's no wonder that politicians are not front and center in delivering an election message.
Just nine per cent in the Ipsos Mori Veracity Index 2023 trusted a politician. If you live in London, the figure is a third of that.
Making Memes Count
But does a Meme on its own win elections? No. You need to plug the meme into something that’s happened in the campaign. If there is a crack then an army of memes will exploit that.
I entirely accept that there is no readily available data on memes in the way that there is for a Facebook ad. But they have been everywhere capturing the mood. The eyebrows stay raised when you look at the number of ads created by the Labour and Conservative Parties on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
