What can digital marketers learn from the UK General Election?

Elections are marketing campaigns - with big consequences. We looked at what marketers can take away from the election so far.

Organic social rises

The first thing to note is that 2024 has become the ‘TikTok election’. Because the UK restricts political TV ads to only allotted official broadcasts and also caps advertising spend for political parties, the UK election has spilled intensely into organic social. The media report on 3M views for a campaign TikTok and which party has ‘pulled ahead’ for organic follows. The major parties respond to each other’s posts and try to alternate between being fun and being serious - capitalising on shareable memes with more political policy follow ups.

CPMs rising

With broad targeting from political parties kicking in, we have observed CPM rises for social advertisers.

Are the parties just blanket targeting the UK, or different constituencies and audiences? Cross-referencing data with Meta Ad Library, the research group Who Targets Me have noted:  ‘The Conservatives are very reliant on Custom and Lookalike Audiences, Labour prefers to target places’.

Attention trends

Google trends can show us interest in the leaders, policies and parties, but not of course why people are searching. Interest isn’t always positive.

During the first leader debate live on ITV on Tuesday 4th June, we can see a clear spike of searches for Starmer and Sunak. There were more for Starmer - our reading of this is that general awareness of Starmer is lower because he’s not the Prime Minister, so more people - who had just been watching The Chase - suddenly found themselves wondering who this guy was talking about NHS waiting lists on their screens.

Minimal uncertainty

As the opinion polls all point to a change of government, markets have already priced this in. So there are no shocks to the system expected or uncertain outcomes.

Consumers are also readjusting to lower inflation levels, so confidence is slowly rebuilding - inflation is a more powerful factor than feelings about the election.

Narratives win people over

If elections are intense high stakes marketing campaigns - we might call them ‘punctuated narratives’. 

Narratives change minds - a brand is a narrative, and that’s why companies have ‘goals’ just as political parties do. A narrative needs to move in time towards the future.

But explosive or dramatic moments give narratives momentum and direction. They can break or change the stories in play. The right slogan at the right time - or a mistake or unplanned ‘plot element’. 

As advertisers, we need to remember that narratives generate the context for meaning - allowing attachments and connections to flourish within their audiences .