With a local referendum in early 2016, a Police and Crime Commissioner election on the horizon, and the EU referendum on the cards, Bath and North East Somerset Council wanted to try new creative communications techniques to increase voter engagement. This case study forms part of our social media strategy resource.
Objectives – what did you want to achieve?
With a local referendum in early 2016, a Police and Crime Commissioner election on the horizon, and the EU referendum on the cards, we were keen to ensure everyone had the chance to have their say. We wanted to try out new creative communications techniques - particularly video - to see what works, increase voter engagement with those eligible to vote, Drive up voter registrations and encourage registered voters to turn out and vote.
Audiences – who did you target and why?
We particularly targeted harder-to-reach groups who traditionally don't engage as much with local democracy and the local media - such as young people and students.
Strategy – how did you make this happen?
In order to enhance our standard approach of issuing news releases to traditional media, our communication strategy focused heavily on creating and producing entertaining and engaging content which could be shared by advocates across social media - thereby increasing our reach.
Tactics – what channels, tools, platforms and content did you use?
Keen to capture the imagination with catchy imagery, whilst keeping things simple, we made a series of short videos (primarily shot and edited on smartphone/ Adobe Premiere Elements). Themes included drawing a link between marking your cross on a ballot paper and signing a Valentine's card with a kiss, along with pancake art following a similar theme. We ran our videos across the Council’s corporate Twitter, YouTube and Instagram feeds, as well as featuring them on the Council’s homepage and in our weekly email newsletters to residents.
We also built a bespoke PCC website in a little over 3 days – something that we understand was unique to us as an authority The website carried key information for voters across the Avon and Somerset Police area and was supported/ promoted by a dedicated Twitter feed with tweets including videos which were re-tweeted by partner councils from across the Avon and Somerset Police area.
The team also supported the announcement of the PCC election by creating an entirely bespoke online results service that gave live updates on the website as well as projecting the results by area and cumulatively when the results were projected onto a large screen throughout the count.
Periscope live video feeds were shot at the counts increasing engagement with local democracy and delivering the outcome of the votes live from the scene, ahead of the broadcasters.
Did it work? What were the outcomes?
We ran the "Love Your Vote: Don't Lose It" campaign from Friday 12 to Sunday 14 February. By replying to the original tweet with a screen shot of the video, it drew more attention to the linked short film. The reach was extended further by tagging a range of other Twitter feeds - including local media, universities and large online communities - with @mentions for up to 10 accounts embedded in each photo. Over the Valentine weekend, our tweets reached 38,500 accounts (with 135,000 impressions) and, more importantly, encouraged 500 extra voter registrations.
Similarly, our “Give a toss: mark your cross” pancake video helped dish up more than 8,000 new electoral registrations during the course of the short campaign, alongside news releases and tweets for the National Voter Registration Drive.
Spurred on by this positive outcome, we continued to create short, engaging video content; building on the momentum to remind voters of our local referendum day and encourage them to turn out and vote. Our series of Scrabble based tweets also gained a range of positive responses and shares to help spread the word.
The turnout in the local referendum was higher than anticipated at 29 per cent, which was five per cent higher than the turnout four years earlier when a similar referendum was held in Bristol.
The turnout for the PCC election across Avon and Somerset was also higher than expected and a significant achievement when there was little publicity from the candidates themselves. Our video creations are being cited as in training packages delivered to other public service comms professionals by comms2point0. This award-winning approach towards maximising digital comms was a first for the Council and is helping shape our approach to communications going forward, as well as being seen as an example of best practice by others in the communications industry, and the Electoral Commission.
What did you learn?
We discovered that properly planned videos don't necessarily have to take a lot of time and effort to shoot and edit (most can be produced and distributed almost immediately via smartphone). It can also add a level of authenticity if they don't look too polished.
We also found that people tend to like seeing their local council showing a bit of personality and humour (in the right circumstances).
Would you do anything differently?
We may have increased our reach even more by seeking greater engagement with the local media. We had tried tagging them into our posts on social media (with mixed results). This tactic may have benefited further from us producing news releases about our videos and briefing journalists on our approach.
Want to know more?
Contact Daniel Cattanach via email