As public sector communicators we can expect deepfakes to try and throw elections… but as satire?
In the final days of Euro 2024 a rash of fake videos involving England manager Gareth Southgate were posted. But rather than derail a campaign these were so obviously fakes that it’s worth asking what’s the point.
Here’s one after England beat Holland.
Would an England manager celebrate drug use? Of course not.
The quality of the deepfake isn’t the best. The audio doesn’t quite synch with the video and it’s fairly easy to spot the joins.
Of course, it’s tempting to disregard AI deepfakes like this.
But not so long ago there was a Gareth Southgate-related clip that really had me guessing. This was an interview with an Arsenal defender who had ruled himself out of being picked by the England manager.
This time it was believable and skillfully edited with cutaways in the style of a Sky Sports package. I’ll confess I went looking online for corroboration.
That video is this…
So, what does this mean?
The technology is there, getting better and bad actors need to base what they do in reality for it to really cut through.
Change can be radical and the incoming Labour administration shows no signs of letting the grass grow.
In a few days time the Kings Speech will set out the new Government’s plans for the next Parliament and there’s plenty for public sector comms to think about.
For me, the most significant of the 30 bills expected to be listed is the long awaited Hillsborough law. In short, this puts an expectation of candour on public officials and bodies at a public enquiry. In other words, to be honest and transparent when things go wrong.
This recommendation was first made seven years ago by the Government report into the 97 deaths into the football stadium disaster of almost four decades ago. It is high time it was enacted.
Why is this significant?
In very simple terms, a lack of transparency from some public bodies has led to justice delayed. South Yorkshire Police for decades blamed Liverpool fans for the Hillsborough disaster rather than reflected on their own actions.
There’s a catalogue of errors that reputation management has had a hand in.
What’s wrong with reputation management?
In itself, there’s nothing wrong with the comms team looking after the best interests of the organisation. Reputation management is presenting the best side of the organisation to the public.
The problem is reputation management can label everyone who isn’t happy as the enemy.
In the NHS, the Francis report highlighted reputation management as one of the problems with the running of Mid Staffs Hospital in Stafford. Findings highlighted: “An institutional culture which ascribed more weight to positive information about the service than to information capable of implying cause for concern.”
The report into problems with East Kent’s maternity department highlighted reputation management singled out “denial, deflection, concealment and aggressive responses to challenge.”
The Lucy Letby murders also highlighted reputation management as one of the issues in the case.
Then there’s the Post Office sub-post master prosectutions.
Every organisation makes three types of decision
Let’s be honest. Any organisation makes three types of decision.
First are good decisions.
Second are good decisions poorly explained.
Then there are bad decisions. They make no sense, they’re unpopular and lead to flak.
The role of comms in decision making
Of course, the ideal is to be at the top table helping the decision makers and flagging up problems. But the world isn’t like that. So, the role of comms is to play back the online feedback to the decision makers. If there’s a 20 comments in rapid order calling the decision out do you need to better explain the decision? Or is this something for the organisation to reflect on?
The answer to this is often above our pay grade but we comms can help give information that will help shape their answers.
A more healthy approach to reputation management the Hillsborough Law introduces can only save lives.
It doesn’t need a disaster for you to start doing it.
Many council comms people began on newspapers and know the Russian rouletteof the walk-in. That’s the member of the public who wanders in with a story. Sometimes they have and sometimes they haven’t.Here’s an insight into what that looks like from the author Alex Morrison of an excellent book on the subjectThere’s Someone in Reception.
What should a journalist do when a member of the public walks in with a complaint about “the council”?
First, take a deep breath. Grab a coffee. Maybe cancel your next meeting. These stories are usually complex, and are often backed up by carrier bags full of discoloured documents.
Take the man who walked into the Surrey Daily Advertiser in Guildford in the early 1980s.
The visitor was partially sighted, and reporter Alan Jones had been running stories about the lack of accommodation for disadvantaged groups in Guildford.
The man said the council had ignored his repeated pleas for housing.
Determined to help, Jones phoned the council there and then.
The council’s housing officer asked Jones to describe the man.
Jones: “He’s late fifties… long hair, he has a white walking stick. Oh, and appears to have a glass eye.”
Housing officer: “Ah, it’s him again. He’s been claiming disability benefit fraudulently… Has he taken out his glass eye yet and bounced it on the floor? It’s something he does when he doesn’t get his own way.”
Jones ended the call and turned back to the man, explaining that the council couldn’t help.
The man said: “You don’t believe I’m nearly blind, do you?”
Then he removed his glass eye and bounced it on the floor, to screams from the receptionists.
Recalling the scene, Jones told me: “It took a while to find his eye, give it back to him… and send him on his way. I didn’t answer calls from reception for a while after that.”
But what is the lesson from this story? Never trust the public? Assume claims against “the council” are usually unfounded?
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. My book on local journalism – which focusses on “walk-ins” such as this – contains over 100 stories, from the 1950s to the 2020s.
There are no solid rules. Some walk-ins told unbelievable stories that turned out to be true (I just windsurfed from Swansea to Devon). Others told believable tales that turned out to be lies (someone shot us with an airgun – in fact these visitors shot themselves in a bizarre bid for compensation).
For council comms people asked to respond to such stories, things could be even more complicated.
Should you lend the story credibility by commenting on it? If you know something’s untrue – or more complicated than the way it’s been presented to a journalist – can you quietly steer them towards the truth?
Again, there are no easy options.
In my own time in local journalism, a walk-in claimed the councillors of Crawley were werewolves.
Disappointingly (for me at least), the council declined to comment.
There’s Someone in Reception by Alex Morrison is available in e-book, paperback, hardback and audiobook via Amazon.
‘A new dawn has broken, has it not,’ Tony Blair famously said as he addressed supporters at Royal Festival Hall in London as its new Prime Minister.
The Labour operation had deliberately waited until the first golden rays of the morning sun had reached over the Thames to brighten the shot that framed the 1997 Labour landslide.
Their approaches of message discipline and news management became the textbook of how to communicate.
Yet, everything changes, as Take That once pointed out. In 2007, The Sun sold 3.1 million copies and the News of the World shifted 3.5 million. Today, one doesn’t exist and the other no longer publishes circulation figures.
In 2024, The Sun’s intervention to support Labour with a lame football-themed frontpage that called for a new manager was met with general indifference and a shrug. It was a bulletin from another era.
Eighty per cent of the UK population has a social media account where we will graze our entertainment and news will come and find you if its important enough. The very idea of cycling to the paper shop to find out what’s happened belongs in the 20th century.
My General Election from a different perspective
In 2024, free of being politically restricted I volunteered to work on Labour’s campaign in Halesowen. It was professionally eye opening.
My first General Election was that Blair Labour triumph of 1997 where I covered it as a reporter for the Halesowen News. Labour fought and won that Black Country seat that fringes the Worcestershire countryside.
As a reporter, the phone would be ringing with calls from candidates most days in the six months beforehand. In the last six weeks, we would have a theme and invite the candidates to tell us what they’d do to handle crime, the NHS, jobs and other perennials. One week, we even got each candidate to submit an example of handwriting with their permission to a retired company director who was the UK head of a graphoanalyst society.
In 2024, The Halesowen News, is no longer based in the town, featured the Labour candidate a handful of times. Print media was an after thought to the campaign.
This was the meme election
But if it wasn’t local media driving the debate what was? I think I’ve got a meme that can tackle that.
Memes are sharable pieces of content that can make an observation, crack a joke or make a point. Agree? Hit like. Disagree? Fall into the trap and start an argument that will boost the original post with the algorithm.
Both Labour and Conservatives used memes as the sharp spear point of their election message. Activists were signed-up to spread local-themed and national messages across their networks.
Politics has long moved on from 19th century beer-laced election festivals to hustings to newspapers to the mobile phone that you scroll through. Had Blair, Churchill or Attlee being campaigning today they would be all across the meme.
The Conservatives had an app while Labour had a website with downloadable imagery.
But for all the officially-shaped content there was also a blizzard of combative unofficial content that would never have got past the approval process. Reform have a downloadable profile picture that’s all about spreading the branding.
The Sun boasted in 1992 that ‘it was The Sun wot won it.’ In 2024, if there was one thing more important than another maybe it was the meme election.
But…
This was also the anti-meme meme election
Need a message? Here, have one. Then move onto the next thread. To counter that there’s the anti-meme meme. You’re making this point? Here’s a meme that pricks your balloon.
There was plenty of this in the meme wars that raged across the internet and in particular in community Facebook groups and Nextdoor.
As the campaign went on, it was clear that even more subtle ways to get past the admin gatekeepers was needed. In particular I was impressed at the Stourbridge resident who offered the olive branch that this really was all about love and used the highly incendiary shot of Matt Hancock kissing an aide during COVID in breach of COVID regulations.
Nextdoor were particularly adept at throttling the algorithm on content that may have mentioned elections.
This was the AI election (sort of)
In 1924, the Daily Mail printed the Zinoviev letter. This quoted an emissary from the newly-formed Soviet Union that spoke in support of the Labour Party which was knocking on the gates of Downing Street. It alarmed Middle England. It was a fake. But the public didn’t know this until after the election.
A century later, there was no AI-generated equivalent that pointed an accusing finger at a Labour Leader poised to take power in then last few days. This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t AI if you went looking for it.
The big warning that AI was going to flood our timelines with misinformation and disinformation didn’t land this time.
What we did see was a lot of ‘patriotic’ right wing AI art of Reform’s Nigel Farage and more racist content that was also called out. It was clearly artificial. But both Conservative and Labour also created memes that showed opposition figures in unreal scenarios. Labour using Rees-Mogg’s face to show what it would look like to wake up next to him if there was five more years of a Conservative government.
Was the Rees-Mogg image made with AI or just PhotoShop? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell. But that’s just it. It’s supposed to be hard to tell. It was definitely not real.
There was also the fake TikTok videos of leading politicians playing and commentating on Minecraft. To be really effective in their manipulation they have to carry a grain of truth. This couldn’t have pulled the wool over anyone. So, harmless then? Yes, largely. But it does nothing for building up politics as a worthwhile and noble profession.
More worryingly, The Guardian pointed to one example of AI tools being used to manipulate audio recorded on a Ring camera. This footage was shot which captured Labour supporters calling to deliver a leaflet. The candidate who posted it alleged a racial slur. An analysis of the recording showed anomalies.
Aside from that, the parties themselves were active creating content specifically for TikTok that looked and felt unlike video from other places.
This was the podcast approach election
I heard an episode of Radio 4’s ‘The Westminster Hour’ during the campaign. It was dreadful. Set piece lines to take deployed against each other by rival MPs not yet famous enough to have won their spurs.
The only Leaders’ debates that looked anything other than painful was Sky News in front of an audience whose laughter stripped past the lacquer of pre-prepared interviews. I cannot think that the set piece interview as it stands has any life left. It has been sanitised to death buried with a green pharmacy cross on its grave.
Yet, the informal podcast approach taken by programmes such as Electoral Dysfunction with Beth Rigby, Tory Ruth Davidson and Labour MP Jess Phillips or the genre-defining The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart are far more engaging.
It was the clipped-up news election
So, if print media is largely irrelevant does this mean that journalism is dead? Of course it doesn’t. It just means that the news will find people in clips that are seen online by far more who watched the original.
Keir Starmer’s stumble on Bangladeshi immigration cost his Party a big chunk of the Bangladeshi population across Britain, for example. Even the local journalism turned into sharable content.
And finally
If you think all this is just political communication and it won’t affect you as a communicator think again. Political campaigns, as I’ve said many times, are a petri dish for innovation.
The memes played a role but so did other factors. I can focus on the digital element but the door knocking, data gathering and get the vote out operation was all part of it.
Several of these approaches with a degree of imagination I can see working across the public sector. History shows that new tools which are at the bow wave in an election often become firmly part of the toolkit.
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.
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.
Battleground: TV news clips
First, there was the TV interview.
Rishi Sunak sits down with an ITV reporter and one almost throwaway question was centred 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 shool education.
There are 3.2 million viewers for the TV bulletin. But this is the start.
Almost four million people saw the ITV News clip on X, formerly Twitter where Rishi confessed he missed out on Sky TV.
‘There’ll be all sorts of things that I would have wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have – famously Sky TV'@RishiSunak reveals the sacrifices his parents were forced to make when he was young
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.
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.
Battleground: Memes
That’s the thing about memes. They often plug into something in the 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.
Party created sharable content
What’s interesting, is that the political parties are also switching into sharable content.
What would have once been branded and on message is often now more subtle.
Here is a Conservative-made official meme.
Yes, there is official messaging that apes the meme but you have to squint to see the fact that this has been published by a political party.
But what’s even more interesting is that political parties are creating sharable content that’s aimed at supporters to share.
Yes, supporters can like and share the Party’s page content. But more than that, they are being directly asked to download and then share content on their own profile, into Facebook groups, WhatsApp, Instagram and onto Nextdoor.
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.
The Conservative Party have an app called Share2Win where you can log on with your social media account which then posts the images you select. Every time you post you score points. Your performance is then measured against others in a league table and as you wrack up more posts you unlock badges.
Labour have their own operation and I’d be surprised if the other political parties hadn’t cottoned on.
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.
Battleground: Meta ads
The eyebrows stay raised when you look at the number of ads created by the Labour and Conservative Parties on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
A visit to the ads library shows 77,632 different ads for Labour. Most have £99 put behind them. Many ads share the same text and images but with refined targeting.
Yes, there are more than two political parties in this General Election. But often the digital communications approach rom the minor parties does not have the reach or brown of their far richer rivals.
Have you noticed? There’s some campaigns that lights the blue touch paper with some people.
During Pride events supported by fire, NHS, council or any organisation there’s often a minority of trolls.
‘Why are you doing X’, they’ll ask. ‘It’s a waste of money, it’s the Metropolitan elite, it’s the wokerati and you can’t say anything nowadays.’
But, let’s be honest, its not just the rainbow event is it? There’s a shortlist that triggers the easily triggered events that can include Christmas, International Women’s Day, Eid, Ramadan, Easter and any religious holiday.
If anything doesn’t look exactly how they look then it’s a problem.
The decision for a public sector comms person is quite tricky. Do you post about it or don’t you? I’ve heard of people actively not posting because they’re so worried at the response.
I understand that but I don’t agree with it.
So, what do you do?
Well, the first thing is to get a set of social media house rules. I’ve blogged about this before and it’s good to see these becoming more mainstream.
However, there is something else you can do. Think of it as a planned response list.
Basically, this list brings together all the things you can say in response to explain what you are doing. But the important thing is to get your broad response signed off so you know where you stand and you’re not
Forward planning for the win
West Midlands Police plan ahead on their socials. They’ve been doing this this since the English Defence League’s first trip to Birmingham. Then the extremist group sewed misinformation about a knife attack by a gang of Muslims on a white teenager. It never happened but the fall out raised tension.
So, next time the far right protestors came there was an officer armed with Twitter in Gold Control seeking and destroying the information. It worked effectively and became part of their regular response.
The result was, a duty press officer could shoot down rumours in real time without having to go through the lengthy process of getting each tweet signed off.
Royal British Legion have been excellent about this in the past. Poppy Day can bring out the bigots with evergreen disinformation around poppies being banned. They plan ahead and take a careful look at the comments on their channels.
Often, I find that the Police are the most on the front foot of all against trolls. NHS people are the most reticent.
Timing when you make the post
Help is at hand. The answer is to plan ahead.
When the Pope came to Coventry about a decade ago the council posted the news late on Friday. When they returned on Monday morning war had broken out over the weekend between the factions of people.
Nick from Leeds City Council has spoken about posting at 7am. Thinking about it, there’ll be a moderator around for the first few hours. People will be sober, too.
Leaving it to a passer–by
Leaving it for a member of the public to step into has worked in the past.
However, sometimes there just isn’t a member of the public around who can be like the Green Cross Code Man and save the day.
This should be a bonus rather than your whole strategy.
Draw up your own list of lines to take
If you are looking to post a campaign on a topic that may spark a needlessly unpleasant reaction here’s an approach to take.
Ask yourself these questions ahead of time:
Have you done this in the past?
If you have, what comments have been said about this in the past and what did you learn?
Has an event like this been done by others and what did they say in response?
If you haven’t, what’s the worst level that people can potentially stoop to and what would we say and do?
What tone do you want to set?
What key points do you want to make?
Do you need to make some assets in advance?
If you have a set of social media house rules, under that, what comments do you allow and what don’t you allow? And where’s the line that if crossed you can start blocking people?
Once you ask yourself these questions you can start to build a list of responses that acts as your armoury ahead of the event.
In particular, deciding the tone in advance is useful. It gives you the confidence to operate on the day. Inevitably, comments like these can land outside office hours or when senior people aren’t around.
Do all this and you can better navigate choppy waters.
General Elections in the UK used to be so simple. It was a party political broadcast, poster sites and leaflets. Not any more.
In 2024, there will be no defining ‘Labour isn’t working’ ad poster on every roadside poster site.
What’s happening instead is 14,000 tailored social media ads in the six weeks before the first three days. Each of those will be delivered to you based on your age, habits and beliefs as you scroll.
Much of what will drop through your timeline will be video. That’s certainly the message of an analysis of Labour and Conservative ad spend so far.
As a communicator, elections are rather like the World Cup for football fans. Stories are told and new heroes and villains are made. But most of all I love that they are a petri dish for new communications tools.
In 2008, it was a creative use of email that gave the edge to Obama and social media that took him back to the White House.
But what will 2024 bring?
It’s absolutely not all about the posters
In 1979, analysts pointed to one single comms tool that made the difference for Margaret Thatcher. It was a roadside poster. Saatchi & Saatchi’s clever play on words ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster captured a national mood.
Even in 2010, the poster was still a vital part of the election armoury. Strategists of the governing party would book key poster sites to get a headstart and squeeze out the opposition.
The poster ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit not the NHS’ was the defining image as Labour lost power. In the image, there is the fresh faced David Cameron. The Brexit vote was still ahead of him and everything seemed possible.
But in 2024, where are the posters?
Have you seen any?
It’s all about the troll
Social media has democratised the information process.
When Rishi Sunak called the snap General Election 2024 in Downing Street he did so in a downpour. Umbrella-less his words were drowned out by a soundsystem playing the 1997 Labour anthem ‘Things Can Only Get Better.’
Of course, the footage of the Prime Minister being drowned out went truly global and truly viral. It’s noticeable that none of the main leaders have gone anywhere near members of the public. There have been no walkabouts through home countries shopping precincts. No wonder, with smartphones everywhere a heckler can command the news headlines.
This audio trolling only reflects the trolling and noises off that are posted across the broader internet. Sometimes this is good natured heckling. Sometimes it is abuse.
It’s absolutely all about the meme
Bleeding in from the Rishi Sunak announcement it’s clear that the internet meme has become a key way to shape opinion.
There were many memes marking the damp Downing Street moment.
This one inspired by the cult British classic ‘Withnail & I’ caught my eye.
In the film, a bedraggled Withnail, the unemployed actor flags down a passing farmer on tractor. “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake,” he says before begging for fuel and wood. He is the piteous city dweller out of his comfort zone and suffering from his lack of planning.
In the meme, it pokes fun at the Prime Minister’s rained on appearance.
It’s fascinating to think that in 1979, it was ad execs who were capturing the mood visually. Now, its being done for free by a battalion of people armed with smartphones.
Indeed, it’s not just people who are looking to tap into this instant and ephemeral way of communicating. They are not built to last. They are built to click.
But, wait. The main parties are at it too.
Here’s a piece of content from the Conservative Party that steals from the Scoobedoo meme where someone is unmasked as the real culprit.
I’d say it saves on the bill for creatives. However, I’d expect that the sentiment captured in the meme will have been shaped by focus group feedback. Then the feedback will have gone through the creative process. The answer is different because we as media consumers consume differently.
But stopping to think about it, this isn’t just a preserve of a political party. I’ve started to see this tactic used in other places online, too. TikTok is to blame. The platform is all about taking content and then remixing it. TikTok’s own editing tool Capcut allows you to do this easily by giving you a library of memes to work with. What may have taken hours now takes seconds.
It’s about the email to supporters
Each political party uses a variety of channels. For supporters, the parties are using email to motivate the troops and encourage them to get their credit cards out.
Every message has a call to action to donate. Which can be wearing.
It’s about the screen grab
This is bad news for the Prime Minister but the launch image of the wet politician in Downing Street feels like it has the makings to be epoch-defining. The screen shot taken from the armchair is out running round the world before the rebuttal team have got their boots on.
It’s not about the party political broadcast
Before the internet, the only way a political party could get a film in front of people was the party political broadcast.
The main channels were obliged to carry a short film from the main parties. Like this on in 1997 by the Liberal Democrats featuring John Cleese.
They were, looking back, almost universally loathed. The words from the channel announcer ‘there now follows a party political broadcast by…’ prompted mass channel switching. The themes of these films were more of interest to political correspondents than the average punter.
Ofcom still regulates them under the Communications Act 2003 but I’m struggling to see the point.
It’s absolutely about the social media ad
The battleground for political messaging has never been stronger than with the political ad.
However, Facebook’s ad library shows that this is not about one image to rule them all. This is about creating and posting multiple pieces if tailored content for different audiences.
I run a report of the Conservative Party’s ad library. In less than two months they have created a staggering 2,887 ads across Facebook, Instagram and interestingly WhatsApp. Each one has a tailored audience and a tailored message. Some were aimed at 18 to 24 while others were marked 65+.
Meanwhile, the Labour Party have posted five times as many ads in the same period with 10,405.
Annoyingly, there isn’t an easy way of seeing the level of spend as the data just gives upper and lower levels of ad spend. But a trawl through the data shows each ad is often supported by a few hundred pounds.
The construction of such an effort requires science, money, research, ad creation skills and more money.
It’s possibly about AI
The smart money talks about elections being especially vulnerable to bad actors who may use tools to create fake content that can derail a campaign. Fake audio will be the biggest threat. But with the pace tools are developing it will be interesting to see how they may arrive.
Conclusion
Things are changing and continue to change. That’s just how it is. Communicators would be well served to be watching how the political parties use the platforms. What was once experimental can quickly become the norm.
But while our eyes are taken by the new approaches and new tools there remains an army of foot soldiers who are out delivering leaflets and knocking on doors. The actual landscape of streets, houses and flats is mapped and logged into supporters, don’t knows and absolutely nots. This off-line battle will be taking place alongside the online one.
There are only two types of football manager, the famous line says, those who have been sacked and those who are about to be sacked.
Add to that is a rare third type of manager who calls time on himself.
In that gravity-defying list is Jurgen Klopp who has left Liverpool after nine years with a Premier League, Champions League and five other cups.
He is an astonishingly good communicator but what makes him so good?
I thought I’d look at two set piece pieces of communication that bookend his time at Anfield. His first press conference and the Instagram post he made before leaving.
The new manager press conference is one of the traditions of football. An introduction to the new man at the wheel and a mix of easy and hard questions. Brian Clough used to talk about making all the hard decisions in the first three months because that’s when you are most powerful.
Let’s look at what Jurgen Klopp said in his first press conference.
“I’m not a genius. I don’t know more than the rest of the world. I need other people to get perfect information,” straight away he was calling from help from those inside the club.
“It’s important that the player feels the difference from now on. They have to think they can reach the expectations. You have to change from doubter to believer,” he addressed the players.
“It is the biggest honour I can imagine. It is one of the biggest clubs in the world. It is a good moment to come here. How the people live football here. It is not a normal club it is a special club,” straight away identifying the fans.
“I’m a football romantic. I love all the stories and the histories. Anfield is one of the best places in the football world I thought about how it would be. We start to play emotional football. That’s important at Anfield, it has to work together,” he was sealing the deal with fans and those who love the club.
Merseyside is an emotional city. My Mum was from Liverpool, so I know this. It is also a city where community is at the heart. You work for each other not for yourself. Their club anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ underlines this.
A Hillsborough disaster campaigner described their fight for justice as ‘they picked on the wrong city.’ It points to the emotion and working together to support in adversity as well as success.
“I’m the normal one. I was an average player, I was a trainer at a special club in Germany,” in perhaps his most famous line.
Football clubs are weird. Some managers fit and some don’t. I was a student on Tyneside when Kevin Keegan first became Newcastle United manager. His success was built on football knowledge plus the foundation of knowing how the fans thought. They were passionate and wanted a fighting spirit.
Barcelona’s slogan is ‘more than a club,’ because it represents Catalonia.
It’s telling that one of his last pieces of communication was an Instagram post on a freshly created @kloppo account. He wanted to create an account to stay in touch, he said, and gained more than a million subscribers in less than 24-hours.
He shot the video as a selfie alone in his office overlooking the training ground surrounded by boxes of things he was moving out.
“So, here I am. Last day in the office. Last session done. It was kind of strange, I would say. A few coaches got emotional. I didn’t. I told myself ‘tomorrow is a game and then it is holiday.’
“Obviously, I decide what I think until I get overwhelmed tomorrow. So, I will leave this place today which is… an interesting experience I would say.”
There is a pause as he dwells on the emotion of leaving Liverpool.
“Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye… See you tomorrow.”
The audience is primarily those who love Liverpool. He addresses those inside the club but makes it far wider. It’s the merging of the audiences here that’s most powerful. The fans and the players and the board are as one.
He sets up the game ahead beautifully. He hints at bigger emotions and a bigger message but first there is a football match to play and a job to be done.
Without him knowing it, Klopp has actually mimicked an earlier Liverpool manager in his pioneering use of communications channels. When he was starting out as a manager at Carlisle United in the 1950s Bill Shankly would use the tannoy to address the crowd to tell them what his plans were.
For all Jurgen’s Klopp’s communications skills, it’s important to say that he also needed a football brain and an ability to communicate to his players and coaches what he wanted.
The announcement of his departure three months before the event was made by an emotional video.
In his first press conference he spoke about the stories, the histories and the emotion of playing at Anfield and now it has come full circle and he is part of those legends.
If you can learn anything from Jurgen Klopp it’s the emotion and the story telling.
When I was a reporter I would spend two seconds working out whether that letter, email or fax was worth looking at.
Yes, I know a fax. Well, I am very, very old as my daughter keeps reminding me. It’s not the only thing she’s right about.
The two seconds I’d spend as a reporter would be looking to see if there was an answer to two questions:
Is this my patch?
Is this a story?
Now, the email inbox is the place where interesting stuff lands. If you are looking to send out email marketing then the subject line is the key to the door.
I’ve blogged about Democratic Party subject lines before. I’m returning to them because I find rhythm absolutely fascinating.
In an election, channels can be a petri dish for communications. In 2008, Barack Obama’s campaign made a real difference by using email. Before this, political campaigns had email addresses that were never monitored that would send the same message from the candidate.
The joy of Obama’s 2008 campaign was that multiple emails were tailored to multiple types of supporters.
Here’s a week in subject lines
17.5.24 The Democrats / New Senate Polling
17.5.24 Team Joe / $1 before midnight.
16.5.24 Democrats.org / Less than six months out
16.5.24 Democrats.org / to flip the House blue?
16.5.24 Joe Biden / One thing my grandpop used to say
15.5.24 Team Biden-Harris Alert / Show President Biden you have his back
15.5.24 The Democrats / By the numbers…
15.5.24 Barack Obama / Sweetening the deal for you
15.5.24 DNC Headquarters / We cannot overemphasise how critical this is.
14.5.24 Sam Cornale, Team DNC / An explanation
14.5.24 Joe Biden / I am inviting you to an event with some special guests
14.5.24 DNC HQ / You’re invited: May Supporter Briefing
14.5.24 Democrats.org / You (yes, you!) have a role to play this November
13.5.24 Democratic HQ / A special day:
13.5.24 Joe Biden / Because you’re a member of this team, we wanted you to to be the first to know about our new contest
12.5.24 DNC HQ / 23 states
11.5.24 Team DNC / The good, the bad and the…
11.5.24 The Democrats / Four quick sentences about the work we’re doing
11.5.24 Team Joe / Any amount you can pitch in today
What this can teach you
In seven days there’s 18 messages. Yes, you can contact supporters more than once ina blue moon. However, to lessen the repetition, there are several senders.
They’re not always direectly asking for money. They’re showing that yes, you are part of this campaign too.
The routine admin is things like Democrats.org or Democratic HQ. The more personalised messages are from Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
The Joe Biden messages are especially interesting. They’re longer:
16.5.24 Joe Biden / One thing my grandpop used to say
14.5.24 Joe Biden / I am inviting you to an event with some special guests
13.5.24 Joe Biden / Because you’re a member of this team, we wanted you to to be the first to know about our new contest
7.5.24 Joe Biden / Humbly asking, can you contribute $25 today?
3.5.24 Joe Biden / Me + Jill + Dan + ice cream
They’re not just longer but they’re the kind of messages you can imagine him hearing.
They’re human. You can sign-up for Democrat email alerts here.
There’s a moment when I’m delivering training that I tell people they’ll like the first part but they’ll hate the second.
The first part is talking about what makes people share with examples that show emotion and story telling. It’s joyous and people enjoy it.
Then comes the second part when I go through the algorithms and show how much all the platforms really hate links and will actively penalise you if you post links. Hey, it’s a real mood killer. People shuffle uncomfortably. There’s almost a thought bubble hovering over people’s heads with the words ‘but that’s what we do.’
Yet for all the uncomfortable feelings its important to know this.
Data shows link traffic from Facebook to news sites has collapsed
Those are the numbers from Facebook itself. The numbers from publishers themselves are also bleak. Data from Chartbeat publisher by the UK Press Gazette show that referrals are a quarter of what they were in 2018.
In basic terms, there’s been a 75 per cent fall in people navigating away from Facebook to news sites.
That’s a huge number.
Yes, news sites are feeling extra pain after Facebook has fallen out of love with news. But public sector people shouldn’t just hurry past and think this has got nothing to do with them.
Why?
Because if you are STILL posting links on Facebook then this has got everything to do with you. Facebook have told you that this is a bad idea. Now publishers are showing you that they weren’t messing about.
Firstly, this means a period of intense innovation in news sites. It’s reached a point of change or die and it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
A new generation of subscription email first sites have been attracting attention if not yet swathes of readers, for example.
But there are lessons to draw closer to home.
Stop posting links.
No, really. Really stop posting links.
The phrase ‘drive traffic to the website’ is as obsolete as ‘answers on a postcard.’
There are ways to change your strategy. Tell the story on the platform itself so people don’t click away. Or if you absolutely have to have a link put it in the comments. Or support the post with a Facebook ad.
