6 things working for Jacinda Ardern taught me about campaigns.

Since I worked on Jacinda Ardern’s first election victory back in 2017, I’ve given this presentation to numerous campaigners — both party political and issue based. Now, with more time on my hands, I’ve finally written it up (better late than never!).

These are 6 incredibly simple, but crucial, lessons about campaigning that I probably should’ve known before flying to the other side of the world to be New Zealand Labour’s Head of Campaign Operations. Hopefully it’ll provide food for thought in your own campaigns. ??

1. Do more with less, through trust.

There’s much less money washing around in New Zealand politics than in the US or UK, so the parties have smaller budgets.

This means doing more with less is a necessity. And the way we achieved this was through trust.

It’s become fashionable to talk about empowering volunteers and distributed organising. Sometimes this can miss the inherent challenges involved or the reality that some things are always too sensitive to share. However, I learnt you can go so much further with transparency than I ever imagined.

Office volunteers were given responsibilities I’d been programmed to think dangerous to delegate. Junior staff members and key constituency campaigners were given polling updates and election scripts that are too often kept close to the chest of a tiny number of senior people.

This transparency was necessitated through limited staffing, but it was also values-driven and created the most aligned campaign team I’ve ever been a part of. That created huge dividends. And there were no leaks. Considering the stories coming out of UK Labour’s 2019 effort about internal distrust (for obvious reasons), this is a crucial learning.

In your own campaigns ask yourself: is there actually a good reason why you can’t be transparent with those who you are asking to get involved?

2. Target, target, target.

Whether a party or advocacy campaigner, targeting is crucial.

Our team targeted absolutely ruthlessly — partly also because of tight resources, partly because it just made sense.

All modern political parties focus resources, and Labour did the now-normal data modelling to identify persuasion, volunteer and turnout target voters.

But what felt different, to me anyway, was how well versed in (or at least willing to listen to) data those at the very top of the campaign leadership were.

This meant, for example, decisions on what sort of paid media to spend on and when was determined by the impact it would have, or that field organiser placement was based solely on target voter density, not internal stakeholder relations. In all of this, we kept a close eye on the newest scientific evidence coming from the Analyst Institute and others.

All campaigners must have a similarly laser-focused approach to targeting audiences, whether that’s voters or decision makers.

3. Voices matter…

For most of the year I worked for New Zealand Labour, things did not look good. We trailed the governing, centre-right National Party by a significant margin and, although the proportional voting system provided an outside chance of an upset, it was a tall order. Our polling eventually got down to an historically low 22% — which suggested even our leader could lose his seat.

And so that leader, Andrew Little, put the party first and made an admirable decision to stand down. By the end of the day (just seven weeks out from the election) Jacinda Ardern had taken the helm.

Within one week our polling was up by ten points, and within two it had doubled to 44%. Labour was in the lead for the first time in a decade. You can see the jump when Jacinda became leader here:

Very little changed apart from our leader in that time. We were making the same points, had the same policies and used the same techniques.

My conclusion? Voices count. Who carries your message matters to people, maybe more than anything else. This isn’t just relevant to political parties — charities and campaigners should be constantly thinking about who they get to speak to decision makers or represent them in a media. It may be that someone with lived experience, a seemingly unnatural ally or a voice outside of the NGO world fares best.

4. …but don’t forget message.

Just because message carriers are crucial, it doesn’t mean the messages we choose to communicate aren’t also important.

In the final phase of the campaign, National reverted to a tried-and-tested attack on tax. An unfair characterisation of Labour’s plans yes, but an effective campaign message nonetheless. For the last two or so weeks before election day, all anyone talked about in the media was tax. This culminated in a tv ad that jokingly claimed Labour would be introducing — I kid you not — a tax on farts. We started hearing about tax on the phones and doors, and Labour got stuck endlessly defending ourselves, thereby drawing attention to the issue rather than making our own case. As a result, our poll numbers slipped back into second place. The point is: messaging works.

5. Executing insights is as important as gathering insights.

We all know that the best campaigns use research techniques such as focus groups or A/B testing to hone their messages. But how to act on this information is just as paramount.

In our campaign, research showed that key voters didn’t hate the government but that, after 9 years, they did fancy a different way of doing things. So our talented creative agency expertly produced a campaign around the tagline 'A fresh approach', such as this ad.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this— it was an entirely sensible tagline delivered with excellent assets. The problem is I don’t think our leader or our campaign ever actually felt like a fresh approach.

Once Jacinda took over, we needed a new tagline and brand — fast. The team went with 'Let's Do This' (90 second ad here).

The ‘Let’s Do This’ brand embodied a fresh approach without it literally being our tagline. We’d been bending over backwards to shout at people we were new and different, but I suspect it didn’t land because our leader and campaign didn’t match. Jacinda, along with our new campaign identity and less formal tagline, communicated that we represented a fresh approach much more effectively.

Here’s the lesson I learnt: when designing a campaign, the hard work doesn’t end with gathering insights. Execution is equal in importance.

6. Visualise Victory.

When campaigning, whether for a party or an issue, you must picture how victory happens if you want to get there.

Our team knew that with New Zealand’s proportional system, the election might be ‘won’ in coalition negotiations. Labour formed a pre-election agreement with the Greens, kept relations with the potential ‘kingmaker’ party New Zealand First cordial, and campaigned hard to regain seats from the small parties propping up the government. This paid off dividends after the election.

The results on the actual night were mixed, with Labour doing better than anyone would have expected just months before, but failing to take first place in the wake of the assault on tax. Here's how the final seats ended up:

Labour was in contention to form a government because National’s existing allies lost their seats, because Labour and the Greens were a recognised ‘block’ and because New Zealand First (who held the balance of power) considered us a genuine option. After several weeks of intense negotiations, Labour formed a coalition government with New Zealand First and the Greens, even though we had come second in share of seats. Jacinda Ardern was now PM, in a position to make positive change.

The lesson here is we knew what victory could look like and campaigned accordingly. This is why in issue-based campaigning we always bang on about your theory of change and power mapping. As George Harrison once sang, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

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PS: If you want to know how it feels to help elect a Labour government, here's a gif of my reaction:

If you wanna chat more or, you know, hire me, then get in touch: [email protected]