What standing for election in Southwark reminded me about good communications and engagement
You might be aware that London, along with other areas of England, had local elections earlier this month, as did Scotland and Wales for their respective Parliaments.
Once I knew my role at Eurostar was to be made redundant at the end of 2025, I was pleased to have another project to throw my energy into. Not because I didn't want to look for a new professional role, but because with the four-yearly cycle of local elections, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to stand up for my community.
It wasn't a decision made in haste – I was already courting the idea whilst I was still at Eurostar, but as the campaign intensified towards polling day in early May, I was grateful to have the time and space to put my all into it.
The lessons I took from my time in political campaigning were also what secured me my role at Eurostar. And in short, the question for all communications professionals is how to best communicate with and engage an audience to ensure results – we can learn a lot from politics.
So, how does a campaign for becoming a local councillor compare to a corporate communications plan for an international business, such as Eurostar? There are lots of similarities, though I used this opportunity to also refine my experience in areas I hadn't managed to in my former Internal Communications Officer role.
One: Become known and trusted.
As a team of candidates, going up against three incumbents, one of our challenges was to build name recognition, not only personally, but for the Liberal Democrat party too. This meant that we needed to reach voters where they were, and more often than not the best way to do this is through letters and leaflets.
To support this, and allow voters to find out more, we also created a social media presence on both Facebook and Instagram, as well as a page on the local party's website. This not only provided opportunities, but cemented our candidacy and campaign with official, accessible information.
One opportunity I took to develop personally was that of social media video content. We chose an issue that residents locally would care about, and planned a series of short videos to explain what was happening and our approach, and to ask for their support.
The same is true within a communications and engagement role – you need to be a trusted person, not only to leadership, but to the audience you're targeting. If not, then why should they listen to what you have to say? It leads me onto my second point.
Two: Regularly speak with your audience.
Knocking on doors and speaking with voters is bread and butter in British politics, but to others new to the UK it's a fascinating, unique approach to campaigning. In the six months prior to polling day, we spoke to over 30% of residents on the electoral register in Rotherhithe to understand the issues that mattered to them, but also to track feeling and be able to analyse any trends.
It's something that communications and engagement professionals could certainly learn from, instead of looking solely at open- and click-through rates, actually gauging from an audience their sentiments. Do they recall what we've been saying? Can they articulate it back? Or is there a missing piece we need to go back and review?
And at the same time, it also helps to build relationships and trust between different colleagues, allowing for them to start coming to you to ask for your help, rather than simply seeing the Comms team as a resource to forward on a press release. The earlier you can make solid relationships, the sooner you can, as a business partner, have your expertise listened to.
And whilst lots of companies deploy annual HR/People surveys, or monthly/bi-monthly pulse surveys, are employees actually engaged? My experience would say that most don't believe that the results will change anything, and the only way to rebuild this is to speak directly, where possible one-to-one.
Three: Reflect on the data, and adapt where needed.
The results might not always be within your control, and that's okay – but data is data, and helps you refine your communications and build for the next programme.
In this campaign, we were speaking to a wide market of potential voters, yet had no insight to predict the size of the Green Party's surge. The best we could do was to maintain our share of the votes – though we actually increased the number of votes we received by 629 to 2,712 (up from 2,083 four years ago), thanks in part to an increased turnout this time.
There will always be curve balls thrown: a regulator's decision on access; a standards authority's ruling on your marketing campaign; an unplanned disruption that brings your business to a halt. The key is to understand what is within your control and, where possible, to stick to your message, adapting it where needed.
If your target audience isn't reading emails (or they're not clicking through), it's about understanding where they find their information and going there instead. Or it could be about building something new, like a 'Space' on Workvivo (like a site on SharePoint) which becomes a single source of truth. If it's useful, and people see its value, they'll start to use it ('build it, and they will come').
Try things out, don't be afraid, and if they work, continue to finesse them; if they don't, there is no shame in quietly dropping the approach and moving on to the next! Or retry in the future with a different topic, a different audience and a different time!
Conclusion
Ultimately, despite talking to a wide market of potential voters, no one was able to predict the size of the Green Party wave, mobilising hundreds of voters in hundreds of wards to turn out. In Rotherhithe, where I stood, this increased turn out by 8.27% – it seems clear to me that this surge was hiding with the 70% of the electorate we hadn't managed to speak with.
Yet despite this surge for the Green Party (15.16%, compared to 2022), our campaign was successful in maintaining our share of the vote (-0.09%), whilst Labour lost a significant share (-23.78%) and the Conservatives were down too (-5.45%). And as mentioned above, we actually won over 600 more votes for the Lib Dems this time in spite of this.
The same is true in lots of corporate communications and engagement programmes – what might appear as a disappointing or surprising result often contains vital information that can be used to improve our approach.
But, as a word of warning, without good and trusted leadership at every level of an organisation, whether that's a supervisor, manager, head of department or director, the majority of people will dissociate and disengage completely. People, employees, volunteers all need to have a vision they buy into, whether that's for the ward, for the country or for the organisation they work for.