Silly Season

Summer in the City used to mean in coms terms “the silly season”. It was a time when journalists wrote or recorded pieces in advance, media combined their July/Aug issues and everyone had holidays.  

With the birth of 24 Hour Content the ability to slow down has ceased. The content calendars continue to be full, consumers of content continue to want new and interesting snippets whether they are lying on a beach in Kos or trekking up the Inca Trail.  Content has never been so much in demand.

But how do we make that content relevant? Engaging? Not fake yet frequent?  How does it turn into more than just a diary of our day shared out on a social platform? And as a business how do we weave our key messages without becoming a bore?

Content from the heart
The best content comes from the heart. It comes from people talking about their experiences (expertise) and their learnings (knowledge). Even if it is a product that is being promoted it is about how that product is being produced – the where? (where the idea came from), the why? (why it came to market?) and the how? (what makes it different).

We need to start with stories and share them. With larger companies with more employees the stories can evolve from factory floors out to the field, from board rooms to breakfast seminars. For smaller enterprises there are still many stories to tell, you just might have to look a little harder, maybe scratch a bit deeper.

People (that’s consumers and customers) like a story that they can resonate with. So that means bringing in emotion -whether it is empathy or passion. Tell them what motivated or drove you to what you are doing this week, this day, this hour.  They understand emotions and situations. They understand actions and consequences. The left handed teapot born out of the frustration of spilling tea every morning. The taxi share service saving money and time that you discovered when you were in a new city.  Sharing your business goals and journey can help them become interested in your company, your ethos and your service or product.

Considered but not curated
Don’t overthink it. Don’t oversell it. Content needs to be in the moment but considered. It needs to be relevant to today but not a masterpiece ready for peer review (although often will be read and hopefully shared by peers). It can be opinion led but should not alienate the opinions of others. It should be inclusive and ask for comments and thoughts.  It of course doesn’t need to be read. It can be watched, listened to or interacted with. It can be live or recorded. 

The end of Silly Season means that you don’t need to await September to start the conversation again. Yet it does mean you need to think your Summer Content plan thoroughly.  Look at the stories. Allocate the authors and think about why the end consumer might be interested in that story.  That way you can ensure you continue your content flow without losing brand awareness and engagement over Summer.
 

Complementary Customer Content

One of the most challenging parts of our jobs is creating content for our clients. Let me rephrase that, it’s not the actual creation of it – the copywriting, or the putting ideas into words, that’s the bit we love. But more helping clients understand the transition between what they do and what is of interest to the media, or general public.

Many companies, or those working for companies, understand the need for content.  Especially in this changing world where creation of content helps drive awareness, traffic to websites, credibility and of course SEO. However, what they often fail to understand is the need for interesting, relevant, non-promotional content.

So, as it’s nearly July we thought we would give our Summer Guide to What Makes Good Content (and what does not).

1.         Think like the customer

All good content starts with the customer. To attract customers you need to talk in their language. You need to address a need, a requirement, help them solve a problem in their business, or enhance their lives for the better. Building a brand is about making your product or service feel like part of that customer’s life, that they can’t live without it.  That’s why you need to personalise your content. If you have more than one customer group, talk to them differently. Just like you wouldn’t recall the same story to your granny and your best friend in the same manner, neither should you talk to two different customer groups in the same tone.

2.         Don’t assume they are interested in you

To keep a relationship going you need to be interested in each other. A client/customer relationship is like any other, if it is too one way, the other person will tune out.  Shouting about your business, telling them all about YOU. ALL. THE. TIME. Is not going to make them like you more.  Ask questions in your content. Find out about them. Have some interaction and most importantly, give them a voice in your conversation. In the literal sense this means open up your content for comments, invite threads in your social media and bring in guest speakers.

3.         Be topical

If you want to know what is of interest to the media, read the news. It’s as simple as that. Just as you should personalise your content to your target audience, so you should personalise your content to your media. Read the blog/website/magazine/newspaper that you are interested in placing an article in and write for their audience.  Listen to the radio programme that you want to be/get a spokesperson on, and pitch according to their editorial interest. That means thinking topical and linking a service/product to something bigger than what is happening with you. For example, run an accountancy business, link financial advice to Brexit. Challenge an assumption, and have an opinion about something current and then explain why you are credible to have that opinion.

4.         Have your own voice

Which leads on to having your own voice.  If you want people to listen to your opinions, make them your own and different. No-one is interested in the same thing said over and over again. Ground that voice in your values, your culture and your ethics. Make it credible and  believable and consistent with your brand and your service. Don’t be a me-too. Be yourself.

5.         Don’t sell your product or service

And finally, and the thing that most clients fail to really understand, but don’t sell your product or service. Audiences want a conversation, they want information and they want opinion. They don’t need a sales spiel.  So many clients want to use sales collateral for blogs and social media content that in 99% of the time, really isn’t relevant. Sure, there is a time and place for pure sales, but content platforms generally aren’t it. This is about collaborative selling, discussion and building a relationship.  Weaving in your company, what you do and how you do it when appropriate is great. But blatant selling is back to the guest sitting next to you shouting at the dinner party.

Everyone has a well of content within their company. Many have more content that they could ever use in their lifetimes. However, the trick is to think about what bit of content complements your customer. What topic, piece of information and message will engage with them and make them want to have that further conversation with you.

What's the Story?

Storytelling has been around as long as the hills from days of yore when people sat around their fires to chew the fat to the posting of daily events on Facebook.

It is no surprise that with the transparency now generated, and expected, around how we live with the onset of 24/7 social media and 360 degrees web exposure, there would be an obvious overspill in how we work.  The Millennial generation who have shared their thoughts, opinions, actions and even meals, since they are old enough to swipe left and right are used to telling their stories to those they know and even those they don’t.

So, it is no surprise that as they enter the workforce they still want to tell their stories – be it in the workplace than at home, and be it with their work colleagues, rather than their family and friends.  

As the personal stories spill out of every company, organisations are beginning to realise that the corporate stories need to be talked about too. The background to who we are, what we do and why we do it, and most importantly why we do it differently, is key. The raison d'être of a company (“purpose”) needs to be explained if we are going to take our clients on our customer journey to fulfilment (becoming an advocate of our business).  They need to buy into our ethos, our values, our way of doing things. And to do this they need to understand us, to hear our voice and to understand what has shaped us to get to the corporate place we are in. That comes from storytelling.

For us at Antelope, this is part of the territory that we find exciting to explore with our clients.  Not just finding out, for example, who set up the company, but what drove them to set it up?  Not just the year it was formed, but what was happening during that time? What was the political climate? Did this shape their values?  Was it the lack of opportunities for women that made them to strive to be really gender equal? Was it a personal frustration that led to their innovation? These are the stories that excite and ignite us. And we believe excite and ignite their potential customers.

Delving into the recesses of a company to find these stories and working out which stories are of interest to what audiences, are what make us tick. Taking the stories and retelling them in a language that generates customer engagement, employee engagement and media engagement is what we offer to our clients.

Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a route from their past to their present. What many don’t realise is what might be interesting to others in that journey. What might resonate or help others who are still on that journey or who might need to learn from your experiences, your discovery on the way.  Sometimes it is the simpler things, or sometimes it is the complex things and simplifying them through shared experience and learnings.

We might not sit around the fire telling stories much anymore but sharing experiences is still fundamentally one of the most important things we do as humans. Acknowledging this and using your stories in your business is one of the most important things you can do.
 

Having a voice...

The broadcaster, Sky recently revealed that it pays its male employees an average of 11.5% more than their female counterparts with a bonus gap of 40%.  The news is shocking, yet not surprising.

The last 18 months alone has seen “progressive” countries elect a President who is set on eroding women’s rights and the #MeToo movement opening an unprecedented dialogue of gender inequality not just in the world of entertainment but in offices worldwide.

Many social anthropologists claim this return to the patriarchy was a given following on from September 11th 2001.  The attack on the US had repercussions beyond the physical, mental and psychological devastation causing a significant shift in the societal plates.  As the dust settled over Ground Zero those peacock feathers of the alpha men wanting to protect their country, their women and their fellowmen started to ruffle.  

Antelope is not a political organisation.  We are not commentators on society. However, what we know through our work with organisations big and small is that societal changes and the needs and desires of those who live in it change the way companies need to communicate.  So how do brands remain relevant and deal with changes that are happening in their marketplaces, with their customers, with changes in cultures and ethos? And more importantly, should brands have a political voice?

Brands build their credence and reputation on their values and their personality. Who they are, what they say, how they say it and what they do shapes whether a customer feels engaged with their product or service and wants to be part of their brand experience. Making strong political statements will surely unite some but alienate others and although many brands have the platform, how many have the substance to really be political?

Some brands in the past have nailed their colours to the political flag. Take The Body Shop whose social activism extended to Save the Whales campaigning, community trade and testing against animals and Patagonia, whose mission statement is “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis”. They have a social conscience.

However, what about brands whose social purpose is secondary?  How do they mix politics with purchasing and should they?

Consumers need to know that companies care. There is no doubt that in today’s world consumers want knowledge of ethics and values and companies need to be transparent.

However, they need to be authentic and have depth.  To make claims the politics need to lie in their DNA rather than sit on the surface as an add on value to their marketing strategy.   We feel they need to:

1. Be authentic
Does it fit with the brand values and ethos?  Does the team share the passion for it? Will the brand’s customers?

2. Not be another Metoo
Choose a cause because you care (and your customers might care about it) not because everyone is talking about it.

3.Check the supply chain
Have codes of conduct and ensure all the way down your supply chain adhere to these values.

4. Do something about your stake
Put their money where their mouth is – just saying you back a cause isn’t good enough.  Give a percentage of profits, give opportunities within your workforce, raise awareness through your networks – there are many ways to make a difference.

5. Be in it for the long term
Continuity is key to building brand awareness. Companies should commit and continue a cause.

Having a voice is a great thing for a brand. Having a platform is even better to shout with the voice. However, remember your social footprint is with your brand for a long time so use it wisely.
 
 
 

Communication should be the most simple thing...

Communication should be the simplest thing in the world – normally it is one of the first things we do as babies and something we practice day in, day out.  Yet, it can also be the most complicated. 

Even when we know exactly what we want to say, and who we want to say it to, it can be, well, difficult. Think about it...

We have one day a year dedicated to communicating our enduring love to our nearest and dearest – but actually don’t tell them who we are. 

We have friends that we talk to all the time, know exactly what they are doing -  when and with who -  and yet we haven’t spoken to them for the last 10 years.

Meanwhile, our kids talk and (literally) write in code while we try to keep up they LOL at us.  

Communication and the way we communicate has evolved so much that it’s no surprise that on a personal level we can find it hard to engage our children, speak with our friends or tell family and friends we love them.

If people are struggling with talking to their loved ones, how should a brand then approach that person to talk to them about their needs and desires?

And should it at all?  

We live in a world of information – information about how far we have walked, our heart rate, our daily calories often pumped into our devices. We log on and share photos of our families, where we are through GPS and what we are doing with friends, colleagues and complete strangers. But is that communication?  Is that engagement? Is all this information producing the framework to be able to read what you are feeling, needing and wanting at any one moment?

In the old days of retail customers walked into a shop. The shopkeeper would chat and find out how you were, what was happening in your life. From that conversation, they could advise/recommend products and services to help how you were feeling right then.  Now we no longer need to leave the house to shop, work, socialise – is there anyone taking our social temperature?

Transparency and information clarity will become more and more essential come May when GDPR becomes legal. Understanding who your real friends are and who are those contacts who are not happy with you holding their details anymore will become apparent. 

We wonder if this means a sea change in communication is upon us.  Instead of quantity of communication will come quality.  Instead of number of followers, virtual friends and brand likes we will seek something different.

We have advocated personalised communications at Antelope for a long time.  We believe that to really talk to people you need to talk their language.  We believe that you should listen first before you speak and adapt what you are saying to the conversation rather than a blanket response to all.

Social etiquette is a funny thing and being able to judge a situation and how to react can be difficult for the most social skilled of us.  Take that into a business context where you want to speak to thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, can be hard. Finding the piece of communication that resonates with the majority is near impossible.  So, personalised campaigns where you identify need and desire and channel your efforts into bringing solutions to those needs and desires are far more effective that one message works for all.

Maybe by simplifying our data, we will learn to simplify our communications. By taking time out to think before we speak, what we say will become more meaningful.

Wanna be in my gang?

So here we are at the end of 2017 and on the cusp of another year – welcome 2018.  So, this is normally the time when we start predicting what’s ahead, what’s new and what’s dead in the waters of 2017.

We are no trend setters (we are in it for the long term folks) and don’t profess to have the insights into what’s hot and what’s not (hello WGSN, Gartner and all). However, what we do here at Antelope is try and keep our finger on the pulse of how to talk to customers, how to speak to them in a way that they might respond and how to help our clients understand what these ways might be. 

2017 has been an interesting year for those talking about brands.  To us it seems to have been the year that bloggers became the main gang to be in.  The year that instead of writing about products, writers are writing about bloggers writing about products and services (get that)? A casing point was The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine running their Xmas cover of the year with three influential bloggers on it (Freddie Harrel (www.freddieharrel.com), Kat Farmer (doesmybumlook40) and Erica Davies (the-edited). Great feature and some truly brilliant bloggers mentioned (personal faves of ours included Style Memos and The Frugality).  Some of these bloggers were once journalists and now are bloggers (so effectively created a larger platform to reach people than the people they once were employed by have achieved) and most of them have agents to manage their profiles, partnerships and PR.

Sure bloggers have been blogging for a long time now. As soon as social media showed its capacity to spread word of mouth so effectively, bloggers realised the power of their own brand. What has become more and more apparent this year is that brands are courting bloggers more than magazines, papers and traditional media outlets. The rise of the influence of the blogger comes as no great surprise to us. Bloggers by nature of the fact they blog about themselves embody the best of a good brand.

1. They totally understand their audience. They have thought about their blogger profile and who they want to read their blog and therefore are building their social audiences accordingly. They can request those who they want to read their blogs to interact with them (by following them on social media) in an attempt to build a relationship, and build a brand. 
2. They feed this audience regularly. Even if they are not blogging every day, they are normally posting photos on social media.  This, in turn, continues to fuel their relationships with their followers (who of course are potential clients).
3. They build their brand around a lifestyle. It is not a hard sell of a product or a service. They are selling you their life. Be it their gorgeous hair, house or family and friends.
4. They engage with their customers. Bloggers thrive off engagement - so they will answer comments to generate more. This makes bloggers happy as they are judged on number of interactions, and makes their followers happy as who doesn’t feel loved when their comment is replied to? 
5. They are trusted and transparent. This is an interesting one and definitely where the tides have turned in 2017.  From the days of bloggers being mouthpieces for products and brands as the trade off for freebies, they now hashtag “gifts”, are open about press previews and trips and normally state in small print about “earning” from cookie click throughs from website to website.

So, what does this mean for brands who don’t have the big bucks of those market leaders to attract their favourite blogger? How do you get your 15 mins of fame on their Instagram feed? Well for brands big and small the rise of the influence of a blogger is a great thing.

1. They are accessible. Even if they have a management agent on their websites, you can normally tweet/message them on IG to reach them directly.
2. They are all looking for new and interesting products to differentiate their feeds from their fellow bloggers.
3. They like independent brands and often will hero those smaller, less known brands.
4. They aren’t tied into The Man. So although often are “gifted” products they write what they like and even if writing a paid for partnership are in the majority unlikely to write about something just for the money (as remember they are their own brand so are more likely to not dilute their brand with a partnership not in line with their brand values).
5. They are like you and me and normally their blogs have grown out of a lifestyle and therefore if your brand is really of benefit to your target audience and you have targeted the right blogger, you have a good chance of them being interested in testing and possibly featuring your brand.

We think there is a place for everyone in the world of content. Whether bloggers, journalists, reporters or commentators, they are all writers. It is all about understanding your audiences and ensuring that you talk to those audiences in a way that resonates with them. This applies from the brand to customer and from the brand to the blogger/journalist/writer. Selling (be it a product or a service) is more than a transaction. It is about building relationships and this is something that the bloggers know and get right post after post.

Shout Loud and Proud

You don’t need to be a marketing guru to know that communication has come a very long way in a very short time. However, the latest figures released by Facebook are pretty astounding:

• Facebook now has 2 billion monthly users
• Instagram (owned by FB) has 700 million
• Whatsapp (also owned by FB) has 1.2 billion
• Messenger (also FB owned) has 1.2 billion  
• YouTube (owned by Alphabet) has 1.5 billion.

For FB, that’s a 17% increase YOY, its fastest growth since 2012. Quite amazing for a company that started in 2004 and a pretty much unprecedented growth curve for a company that is in its 13th year (not unlucky for some it seems).  And what’s more – Facebook’s users’ engagement has increased to 66% daily usage compared to 55% when it hit 1 billion.  

To cut a very long statistical story short, Facebook is now one hell of a communication platform. With its combined assets well established brands worldwide, its reach is larger than the populations of China and India, the two most populated countries in the world and the combined populations of England, Germany and the United States.

The discussion about the part Facebook played in the US Elections and the fake news furore that continues to raise debates about the power of social media yet show the strength of the platforms available to use for us communicators. As much as the old news messengers shout about the follies of the new messengers we also have seen these powerful platforms being used for social change and giving people a collective voice with campaigns such as #MeToo, highlighting sexual abuse against women.

Galvanising troops and word of mouth has always been the most effective way of communicating and one that is as old as the hills – Jesus and his 12 disciplines anyone? Adding an influencer to this messaging – be it a celebrity, a head of state, the most popular person in the school playground – brings credence and more weight to that message. 

We are creatures who like to observe and follow.  René Girard calls this “mimetic desire” or the human need to look around us at what other people are doing, and wanted, and copying them.  Outside of the fundamental necessities of life including shelter and food, our next basic instinct is to watch our peers and imitate them.  Thousands of years ago this meant following the crowd, sheep like, to battle, to celebrations, to gatherings and social occasions. With social media platforms available to us today we need no longer physically follow but with a click and a swipe can be gathering virtually with a rallying online cry.  

So, what does that mean for those wanting to influence? Those with messages to communicate and those with something to share. How do we jump on board and get people talking about our brands, our products and our services?  How do we make some of that 2 billion Facebook family be brand ambassadors for us?  

We can’t and we shouldn’t. As we have found forcing people to think things they don’t – be it through fake news or other methods – normally means being seen as just that, fake. What we need to do is the obvious - talk to our audiences through these communication channels, acknowledge the good things and thank them for their custom and acknowledge the bad, listen, resolve, if not convert. 

Communication certainly has come a long way in a short time. Who would have thought 50 years ago that you could build a platform that could shout to people as far away from Andorra to Australia to more people than you could ever imagine. How lucky we are to have these tools in our communication arsenal. Now we just need to know how to use them properly.

Battle of the Sexes

With the start of the school year now up and running, the BTS (Back to School) marketing comes to a close. Having extensive retail experience here at Antelope (and many of us parents ourselves), we know how getting the kids back to school is Big Business.

This year’s onslaught of BTS advertising isn’t anything new, but what has been marked this year is how wrong some of the larger organisations have got it when it comes to gender marketing.  While schools nationwide have been embracing the dilemmas of how to evolve their environments, policies and practices for those who do not identify with the traditional “male” or “female” label, some advertisers have failed to acknowledge this societal shift let alone move their campaigns forward.

Exhibit 1: Isa Academy in Exeter 

Firstly, we saw the young people at Isca Academy in Exeter rebel against their school’s policy of boys not being able to wear shorts in hot weather by wearing skirts. Brilliant PR, and brilliant nonsensical red tape that they stuck their two fingers up to the Establishment at.

Exhibit 2: Clarks

Clarks’ Dolly Babe and Leader shoe debacle. For those of you who have been away all Summer, a quick resume. Some great thought leader in Clarks felt it would be good to call the school shoe traditionally marketed at girls as 'Dolly Babe' and the traditional boy one as 'Leader'.  Social media and parents went wild and Clarks, rightly so, withdrew the Dolly Babe.  Interestingly enough the Leader remains available. There were two issues here – one was sexualising a shoe as Dolly Babe as if suggesting the wearer is aka Jodie Foster’s Iris in Taxi Driver – and secondly why market the shoe to one gender rather than another? Isn’t rough and tumbling sort of fun about the child than the gender? Shouldn’t the shoe be reflective of the activity the child is likely to do at school?

The gender debate goes far and wider than school related marketing of course. For years retailers have been producing Gift Guides “For Her”, “For Him”, with gender corny gifts within each sector.

Exhibit 3: Disney Princesses

The most recent insensitive gender piece of marketing that has exploded across the social media screens is that of mummy blogger Hayley McLean who writes Sparkles and Stretchmarks whose son, Noah, was initially refused a place on Disneyland’s Princess of a Day makeover. Was he deemed too disruptive? No. Was he deemed too little? No. He was a boy. And of course, boys can’t be princesses.  Disney saw the error of its ways and has since apologised and offered a place for the three year old.

What all of these cases highlight is not that many marketers can’t see the woods (their products) for the trees (their audiences). To me it is more about how we are evolving as a society and the parameters are changing and as marketers we need to reflect the world we live in.  

As our channels of communication change from print based to online, from Facebook to Snapchat, from text to photos and videos, so does the way we need to communicate to our audiences. Marcoms is about talking to our audience in a voice they understand, with a message they relate to, engaging them in conversation that is relevant to them.   Where all of the examples above failed are that they alienated, rather than engaged. They didn’t reflect the lifestyles of a proportion of their audiences or the language they spoke.  Instead of having a positive effect on their audiences, taking their customer from awareness, through consideration, to purchase and advocacy on their journey they took them from awareness, to anger and frustration, leading to them to take action to generate negative publicity for them and become an opponent rather than an advocate.  

The gender debate illustrates the point of how important communications are in your marketing strategy clearly. How essential it is to get your messaging and language right so that your customer journey continues down the right path rather than the adverse path from day one.

Photo credit with thanks: 

Alysa Bajenaru Phoenix, United States

The Big World of Coms

We have just had our annual work experience student with us here at Antelope, a 17 year old digital native, Millennial, straight out of sixth form college to learn the ropes of the exciting world of marcoms.

What was interesting was not the fact that she knew how to build a brand on social media (although of course she wouldn’t call it building a brand) or the fact that she could multi-task by typing while she listened to music and chatting to us in the office, but more that her view of the world felt so fresh.  

It also reminded us how big the world feels when you leave school or college.  Big in the sense of so much to discover and explore and big in the sense of learning, questioning and working out your place in the world. So here’s her diary of her week with us and how she felt about fitting into our bit of that world. 

Monday

First day of work! Well not actually my first day ever at work as I already have a weekend job working in a pub at weekends, but my first day in a job that might end up being part of the rest of my life. No pressure there then! Hayley, the MD at Antelope met me and spent the whole morning running me through what Antelope does – marcoms, marketing, communications, PR, B2B, B2C, the POEM approach– there are so many terms and acronyms that I think I might need a glossary.   

Tuesday

A day out at one of Antelope’s clients – Nice Media. Nice Media undertakes video for learning for companies to help their employees learn. My day here was a whirlwind of casting for actors (one of the best things ever), undertaking some market research and helping clean out the props cupboard. Such a fun and creative company – and the team so live up to their name – they are so nice. 

Wednesday

Up to Birmingham for a client meeting. One of the main things I am learning from this week is how diverse and interesting the world of marcoms can be.  From video learning one day to construction management the next, they all need communication plans and support to help tell their customers and influencers about their brands and services. 

Thursday

At last a home day in the office.  As well as the client work, I realised there is internal work to be done too – from logging expenses, to updating the website, blog and social media feeds. As much as Antelope helps its clients build its brands, it needs to keep its brand alive too. 

Friday

Can’t believe it is my last day. From boardroom meetings to brainstorming stories for clients, drafting blogs to logging numbers, from calling journalists to networking with other specialists, the world of coms never stops.

Back to Basics

With the current state of the nation I feel it would be remiss not to blog about the recent General Election here in the UK. However, with the 1000s of column inches both online and offline given to the discussions and debates about the who, why and what, another pundit throwing their two penneth worth of political opinion is probably of no value.

As one of those casting my vote last week, and someone who has worked in the world of marketing for the last 25 years, what I found even more interesting than who gained what constituency was how the two parties planned their campaigns, and how the Tories fundamentally got the essentials of communication so wrong while Labour worked it to their advantage.

Even those starting out in their marcoms career know the 3 step plan:

1.     Know your audience, and don’t underestimate them

2.     Raise your profile

3.     Define and refine your messaging.

Know your Audience and Don’t Underestimate them

Understanding your audience and the customer journey that they will go on from Awareness, through Consideration to Customer and then Advocate is one of the first steps of generating customers and building a brand.

YouGov’s survey (below) post the Election is no shocker to anyone as it shows how the youth came out and voted for Labour and it only swung in favour of the blues at 50 years+.  What is the shocker is how the Tories underestimated the youth's vote and when in the 11th hour realised that they needed to engage them, then alienated their core audience with their 'dementia tax' policy. Whereas Labour set out its stall in talking to those who felt they hadn't been heard in the Brexit debate.

Raise your Profile

If Trump was the first President to really exploit his social media platform as propaganda for his thoughts and opinions and to spread his word globally, then this might have been the first General Election to have used the power of the personality, or lack of it, to win votes.  For many this was a vote for or against May or Corbyn. How many voters could recall the Shadow Chancellor?  Although there is no doubt that May had good awareness, and definitely faired well with her core audience in terms of credibility, in my opinion one of her biggest mistakes was to substitute herself with Amber Rudd in the crucial live debate.  Given the best chance to regain her popularity with her core audience, she opted out.  Interesting how those with the profile - Boris, Gove and all – have reclaimed their seats around the table and those whose opinions are not so loud do not seem to have held onto their hats for as long.

Define and Refine Your Messaging

If you understand who you are talking to and have the profile and the platform to speak to them, it is about what you say. You would think this is the easy bit. Finding who might buy into your brand, or vote for you, and finding where they hang out, or what social media they use, papers they read, influencers they listen to, to help build your profile, is the hard part right?  Knowing what you believe in and selling them your brand promise, or in Election terms, why they should vote for you, should be the part you have rehearsed and are pitch perfect in.

However, this is where it all seemed to go wrong for Theresa May, as it does often for brands in their communications strategy.  Let’s look at the Conservative's campaign.  There is no doubt that Theresa May led her campaign on a negative messaging. One of the letters post Election in the Telegraph, whose readers are traditionally seen as more right wing, was headlined “Theresa May’s negative, uninspiring election campaign repeated the mistakes of Project Fear” while The Independent reported that the Tories “spent more than £ 1m on negative Facebook adverts attacking Jeremy Corbyn.” Instead of talking up their own policies and party’s manifesto, they talked down the opposition. Instead of making the customer feel good about their brand, their strategy was to make the customer feel bad about their competitors. In the other camp, Corbyn’s slogan “For the many, not the few” gave hope to those who felt that they hadn’t been served by the incumbent government, while still remaining true to its values.  The messaging was positive and inclusive, rather than negative and alienating. 

I am no political commentator, and this is not a political blog pro or against any of the parties. However, I do believe that to engage an audience you need to cut through the complex and make your brand, your message and your purpose simple. I think there is a lesson for all of this in this Election and that is to remember however big the campaign and whatever the starting odds are, remember not to forget the fundamentals, and most importantly your customer.