It was social media wot won it
Ed Kitchingman, social insights director at MEC, dissects the Remain campaign’s social media strategy – and explains why Leave had the edge
Nothing highlights Remain’s failed communication strategy than the Leave camp’s success at transforming social media from a left wing echo chamber into a highly effective bat for Brexit, led by a veritable army of silver surfers posting, engaging and sharing online.
Given the post-result hand wringing among those who wanted to Remain, it seems bizarre that the left’s activism on social media wasn’t deployed as one of Remain’s strongest communications assets. One problem, perhaps, was the Unholy alliances formed (on both sides) between the Tory blues and the Labour reds.
Remain’s most visible spokespeople were David Cameron and George Osborne, long the bête noire of the vocal, active left – and it’s hard to mobilise a force on social when it’s a perceived enemy that an audience has to unite behind. Doubly so when the message of economic caution is resonant of the last Tory manifesto.
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Remain’s conflation with Cameron (in both the mainstream press and on social) confused its followers and resulted in a vacuum of activity on social. In its place came an older, vocal, pro-out demographic. It is the middle aged and older generations who used social channels – previously the preserve of the young – to do so.
Take Facebook, for example. Despite the majority of active Facebook users being aged being aged 18 to 34, only 4% of the audience posting about the EU referendum were 18 to 24. It was the 45 and overs, with an affinity to Brexit, who shouted the loudest.
Compare the rival camps Facebook pages: Vote Leave and LEAVE.EU posts each achieved over 1m shares, from May to the first week of June, compared to Vote Remain at just over 300,000 shares.
It’s a similar story on Twitter. From March 2016 until the first week of June there were nearly 309k tweets to Vote Leave versus just under 149k for Remain. And 87% of those Vote Leave tweets were from the 35+ age group.
Of course – as we saw in both the Scottish independence referendum and last year’s general election – it is easier to get people excited with the promise of change, rather than more of the same, but when it came to the count, it didn’t count for a bean. Passivity on social doesn’t necessarily translate to patterns in voting.
Yet, on such a crunch issue – one that will set Britain’s course for generations – would you not employ every strategic tool in your armoury? Using paid targeting to reach the young and Labour supporters, personalising the messaging to the audience, for example to clarify issues on say immigration, and cut through perceived disinformation in mainstream media.
Traditionalists might smirk, but in the build-up to the referendum Labour supporters were still wondering what the official stance of their party was and for young people, as YouGov found, 79% of 18-24 year olds relied on online news sources for information about policies, and 60% on social media for the opinions of others.
Instead, what we got is the Leave camp mobilising social media through Silver Surfers, the Leave camp making the case of Brexit to the Labour core on social media, the Leave Camp dominating referendum discussion on social media, while Remain struggled to ignite what should’ve been its strongest communication platform.
It might not have counted for anything, but as own goals go, it’s not a bad one.
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