Some hard lessons from the Conservative campaign disasterclass of 2024
by Ben Capper
So there you have it. Genny Lec 2024, done and dusted. And dusted very thoroughly.
As with much in life, there are lessons to learn from this whole experience about how organisations communicate. And with much of the commentary post-election focusing on how the election was more ‘lost’ by the Conservatives than ‘won’ by Labour, I really do think it’s a good time to reflect on the really quite impressively shambolic Tory campaign.
We’ll all have our favourite moments (the Titanic, D-Day, the lack of an umbrella). But I would argue that there are some big pratfall themes here that I have observed many an organisation make in their comms, only to wonder later, what on earth went so wrong:
Here are just five:
1. Obsessing over things that no-one but you cares about
If you’re trying to win people over, finding out what they care about and building a strategy around that – generally is a winning approach. Ignoring what people care about and obsessing about your own hobby horses isn’t.
Take the issue of tax for example. Look here. 13% of people believe this is the most important issue in the country. underneath 50% for “the economy (i.e. the cost of living), and 46% for health, and 40% for asylum and immigration. And yet for some reason it become their main campaign message.
I appreciate that matters of tax (in particular the type that mostly only wealthy people pay) is a huge comfort zone subject matter for the Conservatives. They’ve won before on it and so with their backs against the wall, they clearly thought “what the hell, let’s do that again…”
But it was so out of step with what people were thinking. And the data backs up the wrong-headedness of this approach. Don’t listen to me, listen to Professor Sir John Curtice.
It's a lesson in what happens when an organisation retreats to the comfort zone of its own obsessions, and stops listening to its audience.
2. Veering from random idea to random idea
Say what you like about Keir Starmer’s stewardship of the Labour party since 2020 (and I appreciate there will be differing opinions among readers), but the one thing I would suggest is inarguable is that he’s had a long-term strategy, and stuck to it.
Three stages: detoxifying the Labour brand, exposing the Tories as unfit to govern, making the case for change; all over the course of one parliament.
Yes, they’ve been helped along the way by Partygate, Truss, and the like. But this approach has, from even the most sceptical viewpoint, undeniably been successful (because, here we are with an enormous Labour majority).
And during the election campaign, the message discipline was ruthless. You’ve heard a lot about his Dad’s job (he made tools), the words “change” and “first steps to change”.
Their media spokespeople have been equally ruthless in their message discipline.
Counterpoint: the reliably renegade Emily Thornberry’s “mis-spoken” comment about state schools having to take more students from private schools on 10th June, which was rolled back immediately by Starmer and (then) Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.
Counterpoint to the counter point: Emily Thornberry is the only Shadow Secretary of State NOT to have been given the same job in government. It’s possible that these two points could be related.
Political and comms obsessives can find this kind of repetition mind numbing, and kind of annoying. But given, that we are officially “not most people” (who think of politics far far less than us) I don’t think that Starmer’s team will be losing any sleep over that.
Labour’s approach has been a triumph of long-term strategy over short term tactics.
The Conservatives on the other hand? Well where to begin:
Mandatory national service anyone?
A quickly and easily disprovable tax claim constantly repeated?
Angela Rayner is French (or something? Not sure….)
#Stopthesupermajority? (an actual hashtag used in official campaign materials by “the natural party of government”)
Put it this way, I find it hard to believe that when the election was called, they had a plan for the last week of campaigning to be focused around begging for voters to not kick them too hard in the guts.
They’ve veered from one mad idea to the next, one contradictory message to the next. It has been an absolute mess – with a predictable result.
3. Assuming that what worked before, will work again
The Conservatives are justifiably recognised as a formidable election-winning machine.
They were the masters of the 3-word political slogan (e.g. “Get Brexit Done”), and could always rely on the support of a friendly, helpful, and large proportion of the country’s print media to put their messages out to the public in the way they would like.
In recent years, they were ahead of the curve in mastering the dark arts of highly targeted social media ads; and in 2019 at least could also count on having a charismatic political rockstar as a leader (though his actual popularity is a matter of debate) who was kryptonite to even the most jaded political hack.
Alas, for them, none of these things were able to come to their aid this time – try as they might to activate them.
The nation’s print media is far less influential than it’s ever been. People are increasingly wary of big promises, that never get delivered. There is much increased scrutiny and wariness of underhand social media tactics employed by political campaigns. And their political rockstar is now forever associated with corruption, cheating, and the most disgraceful episodes of misbehaviour during one of the most traumatic periods of our national life.
Whilst he remains catnip to some Conservative supporters. He’s cat litter to everyone else.
It’s pretty obvious that nothing they’ve relied on before is going to work this time. So, time to think about a totally new approach? Not so fast…
Friendly headlines in friendly newspapers read by an increasingly tiny proportion of the electorate. Check.
A clumsy three-sentence slogan. Check.
Dodgy micro-targeted Facebook ads with highly spurious claims. Check.
And a last-minute intervention by the Great Eton Mess himself. Check.
Time has moved on. Attitudes and media habits have changed. People don’t take kindly to being lied to and having their sacrifices insulted.
And very, very unsurprisingly: none of it worked.
Just because something worked in totally different circumstances, in a different time, and in a different media landscape – doesn’t mean it’s going to work now.
We need to eliminate lazy, complacent communications from our work – lest our organisations suffer a similar fate.
4. Concentrating entirely on negatives
This is a trend I noticed during Sunak’s entire time as PM.
If you ever get the time or inclination, look back at many of their policy announcements from late 2022 onwards. You’ll see ever increasingly creative ways of saying what they’re not going to do.
There’s a high propensity of words like:
- BANNED
- STOPPED
Whilst you may agree or disagree with the policy proposals that such words refer to; together they create the impression of a party constantly on the defensive with no, or very little, positive vision for the country.
Whilst negative campaigning has its place in politics, it needs to be used sparingly, and with something positive to follow it up with.
Establishing dissatisfaction is often an essential ingredient in changing behaviour but, when that’s all you’re doing, organisations look impotent, at the mercy of events going on around them, and well, just a bit grumpy.
Yes your organisation has challenges. If you’re an NHS Trust or a Local Authority, you’re constantly fighting with tight budgets and massive capacity issues. But without being able to articulate what “better” might look like, and the clear steps to get there you’re never going to be able to bring people with you.
As was very much the case here.
5. Doing any number of these things…
The carnival of calamity that characterised the Conservative campaign has had many high (or low) lights. Here are a few favourites from my own personal stash, and the comms advice that they convey:
- If your pitch is that you’re a man with a plan, maybe check the weather forecast
- Don’t pose in front of a blank piece of paper
- Try and avoid the most obvious of visual metaphors
- Check what’s going on in the news before you put your hilarious new campaign out
- Never be photographed next to food
- If you’re going to talk to “real people”, try to have a clue what you’re going to talk about
I could go on, and I’m sure you’ll have your favourites too.
There (thankfully) won’t be another election campaign for at least another four years.
But the lessons that we comms pros can all learn and remind our colleagues about from the 2024 one should stay with us as stark warnings in our work every day.
Ben Capper is founder and lead consultant at Grey Fox Communication and Marketing.
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image via Ben
