London Elects

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The Mayor of London and London Assembly elections take place every four years, when Londoners are given the chance to vote for a Mayor to lead the city and 25 Assembly Members to hold the Mayor to account. The 2020 elections were postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so when they finally happened on 6 May this year, they were a whole year late.

The Greater London Authority (GLA) has a duty to inform Londoners when, where and how the elections will take place, so we were tasked with creating a campaign that put this information clearly to Londoners. The campaign was a big collaborative effort, with our in-house creative team working alongside a dedicated project marketing team, our media agency partner, the GLA’s Monitoring Officer to ensure political neutrality, as well as key senior stakeholders making sure everyone was invested in the approach. We also collaborated with an animator to produce a campaign video, and with voiceover artists and a recording studio to produce a series of radio adverts.

Our campaign idea made a feature of the postponement, adopting a playful, self-debunking tone to the creative – departing from the more familiar ‘straight’ public information content of previous election campaigns. We’d established that referencing the cancellations and postponements resulting from the pandemic resonated well with the audience in testing – as it was such a familiar part of the lockdown landscape – and gave the campaign a more relatable, down-to-earth tone.

We kept the new date front and centre throughout, as it was the main point we wanted to communicate to our audience. As a Londoner, it was immediately clear when to vote. The reference to the postponed elections added another layer of meaning. The result makes for a very human and engaging piece of comms and one rooted in recognition of the simple fact that sometimes things really are beyond our control.

Bold visuals showed the new date pasted over the old – resembling gig posters by using photography of textured and creased pasted paper for the background. Accompanying copy ran: ‘Mark it in the diary. Again.’ and ‘Let’s try that again.’ We continued this vein of tongue in cheek humour throughout the campaign assets, including a bus-side ad, which carried a date ‘correction’ message in the style of an LED bus stop timetable, using the media placement to provide the relevant context. We extended this creative approach to our radio ad. It centred around a slightly hapless voiceover artist fluffing their lines and having to repeat the script.

For our video on demand (VOD) ad however, we adopted a different approach, which better exploited the medium. Our media planners had told us that VOD subscriptions had doubled during the first lockdown and recommended to us that people were more likely to engage with our campaign from home. No surprise with so many Londoners finding themselves suddenly stuck at home bored and channel surfing. We created something with that particular audience in mind: an entertaining animated character that morphed out of the ‘skip’ button of on-demand media.

We commissioned animator Paul Smith who used computer graphics to give Mr Skip, as we nicknamed him, the feel of a plasticine stop-motion character. He also voiced the character for us, under our direction, as a familiar, straight-talking Cockney character inspired by Michael Caine. The result was both playful (in keeping with the tone of the wider campaign), and impactful. It showed Mr Skip morph into a megaphone broadcasting the date of the election at the end, before changing again into the date itself, making the most of the malleability of the Claymation-inspired medium. Paul also came up with the ingenious idea of inserting a Zoom call into the ad: “I thought people would relate to the Zoom call which has, for better or worse, now become prevalent in our lives, but unfortunately, I can’t often follow Mr Skip’s example and skip these calls in real life!”

Overall, the campaign performed strongly, exceeding its KPIs in radio, VOD and social media. Both 30’ radio and VOD spots did particularly well, with digital audio impressions delivered at +2.29% against the plan, and the VOD ad attaining a very strong CTR of 0.92% against the industry benchmark of 0.26%. Our radio plan enabled us to reach a range of demographics including some harder to reach audiences – with the ad broadcast across 9 of London's most popular stations. The VOD ad also received airtime on BBC local news on 22 March, in it's 6.30pm prime time slot. Social media assets had strong reach for the campaign with nearly 2m unique reach over Facebook and Instagram, exceeding targets by 6%, and assets posted on Twitter had strong video engagement exceeding targets by 5%. Nearly 2,000 posters displayed across London’s transport network and superside and megarear ads adorning several buses reached millions of Londoners. Campaign artwork was also featured on the cover of a candidate information booklet sent to every household in the city.

All campaign content directed the audience to the London Elects website for more information on candidates, where and how to vote. The site received over 4.7M page views (over 3.5m unique) in the seven-week period from the launch of the campaign to the announcement of the election results, greatly exceeding our targets and expectations.

The main campaign artwork featured photography of handmade creased and pasted paper textures, treated heavily using Adobe Photoshop to capture an authentic feel, and allowing the artwork to stand out. Laid out with Adobe InDesign, the posters also incorporated Pantone neon inks to achieve an appropriate striking pink colour in print, as well as in digital applications. The bus artwork was created using Adobe Illustrator, with a repeated pattern and appropriate font used to mimic a Dot Matrix LED display. The VOD ad was created and edited primarily using Adobe AfterEffects.

Double Royal format posters displayed across London's transport network: