Progressive Alliance
The Progressive Alliance is an historic campaign that began at a time when many progressive people had just about given up hope that British politics could change.
Due to the nature of a snap election being called by Theresa May on June 8th 2017, with just 6 weeks to build & execute a campaign, a team was created with a focus on agility and innovation, who could react to events instantly and steal a march on the narrative.
The campaign used digital tools as a means to make meaningful connections offline, and to allow ordinary people to understand the complex ideas & politics of the 2017 General Election. Working closely with Ali Blackwell, who built the amazing Vote Smart tool (see below to find out more about that), and the Small Axe team, we acted quickly to create a unified experience that connected content from multiple sources.
As well as developing & designing the various pages for the site, we also created explainer animations, videos, micro-sites and more.
Long live the Progressive Alliance!
- Client : Progressive Alliance
- Website : progressivealliance.org.uk
- Issues : Progressive Politics, Democracy, Fairness, Justice
- Services Offered : Web design, Strategy, Development, Animation, Video
The challenge
The Progressive Alliance's campaign had to be launched as quickly as possible, and we decided to go for an iterative approach where we as a team would get pages & functionality up and running, and then make improvements to them as the site was live.
The first iteration of the homepage went up the day before we joined the project, and it was a balance between making necessary improvements and not alienating people with changes that were too jarring.
Vote Smart Tool
The Progressive Alliance team created the Vote Smart tool which, using sophisticated data modelling from Compass, allowed people to type in their postcode and receive detailed recommendations on who was the best candidate to vote for for the best chances of ushering in a Progressive Alliance.
Dynamic Content
The Progressive Alliance was far more than just the Vote Smart tool, and we wanted to make sure that when people used the tool they were not being asked for, or given, information that wasn't relevant to them.
We had a dynamic sidebar that was personalised to each user based on whether they'd registered or not. There's no reason to ask for their email, name or phone number, for example, if we already had that information from a previous registration.
Multiple Homepages
With the General Election 2017 campaign changing rapidly and at short notice (like all political campaigns really...) - we had to move fast and create dynamic content that was ahead of the curve. We would constantly adjust and tweak homepages, petition pages, donation pages etc. to reflect the changing political environment.
Poster Generator
After noticing that people who had committed to voting tactically in the General Election 2017 were making their own posters and displaying them outside their house, we decided to create a tool on the website where people could choose who they would normally vote for, and who they were voting for this time around, and it automatically generate a beautifully designed poster.
It was a huge success and Progressive Alliance posters started popping up all over the nation!
Shareable content
A big part of the Progressive Alliance campaign was focussed on social media and creating content that was a bit of fun in the context of a generally serious and heavy election campaign.
We created and came up with ideas for a wide range of informational & fun graphics / mini-sites & videos that would be highly shareable and generate discussion around the idea of a Progressive Alliance.
MEMES & ANIMATIONS
Tactical Voting Video
We created a simple and easy to understand video that explained exactly how tactical voting worked. One of the easy things to do when working on a political campaign, especially during the heart of a General Election, is to assume a level of knowledge that excludes a number of people who you want to appeal to.
The video got 499k views on Facebook, and had an overwhelmingly positive response!
Running through a field of wheat
We came up with the idea immediately after Theresa May’s interview, where she confessed her deepest darkest secret of once having run through a field of wheat, of spoofing the old Wizard of Oz style 50s movies.
Damiaan, a brilliant designer at the small Axe, put the video together and we immediately shared it through the Progressive Alliance Facebook page. It took off, and got close to 300k views!
Doom Loop
We created a fun site that showed the impending Tory Doom Loop of bad decisions and bad ideas, and that there was a way to “reset politics” – a slogan of the campaign!
One is too many
With the help of disability groups, we created a website called One is too many where the names of people who have died either directly or indirectly as a result of the Conservatives cuts to benefits in the last 7 years.
