Politicians need to embrace Reels, Stories & TikTok
To be an effective communicator and reach voters on their level, political leaders must embrace social media, says Ben Guerin in the latest installment of the Politics for Drummies podcast.
Ben Guerin in conversation with Alastair Duncan
New Zealander Ben Guerin, who launched his agency Topham Guerin in 2016 and quickly became involved in political advertising in both his home country and the UK, explained that journey to host Alastair Duncan on the latest installment of Politics for Drummies.
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“In New Zealand, everybody knows everybody and if you’re interested in student politics, you’ll end up having a pint with the prime minister within a couple of weeks. It’s a pretty small place,” jokes Guerin.
“Because I was someone interested in politics and knew how to use a laptop and hold a camera, that was sufficient qualifications to take up a role working with former New Zealand prime minister John Key as a digital person, which involved everything from coding websites through to writing tweets and press releases, holding up a camera to do live streams and designing graphics and things.”
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After working on political campaigns in New Zealand and launching Topham Guerin, the agency soon found itself embroiled in UK politics and Brexit, where the agency played a key role in delivering ‘Get Brexit Done’ for Boris Johnson, which proved to be an enormous learning curve.
Reflecting on working with Johnson, Guerin says: “Boris is a brilliant campaigner. He’s a phenomenal communicator and what he had to say resonated with a lot of people. But I think it goes to show the difference between being a good campaigner and being a reforming prime minister. Changing the way that government works is really, really hard. It’s almost easier to persuade millions of people to vote for you than it is to persuade a few thousand people to change the way that they work in the British state. I think any incoming prime minister has to think about what got them there. And then think about a completely different set of skills and strategies that are going to help them change the way the government operates.”
Politics for Drummies exists to explore how politicians use communications to push their messages effectively and Guerin discusses his strong views on the value of politicians understanding marketing on the podcast.
He says: “New Zealand and the UK have a lot of things in common. When it comes to politics, New Zealand is a small place, but it is more likely to take risks. We had an opposition leader at the time, Christopher Luxon, who previously had one of the biggest corporate jobs in New Zealand. So, we had an incoming party leader who understood the value of marketing. He also understood what he didn’t know. So when we worked with him, we said, you know, you’ve got to be embracing vertical video formats, Instagram Reels and TikTok. We know they’re going to be really important.
“When it comes to talking to voters, you’ve got to speak their language. And you’ve got to be authentic and relatable. We often say that we have to get the politicians that we work with to unlearn things that they’ve learned to become a good politician and a better communicator. In the case of Christopher Luxon he really jumped on it all. Quickly, he was coming up with his own content ideas, he was really comfortable doing a selfie video and we even launched a TikTok game.”