Leaders live

insight

I had been knocking around BTB HQ for about a month, still coming to terms with politics as it was not an arena I was comfortable with. I was constantly quizzing the organisation about potential opportunities to create our strategy. I was invited into a meeting with the CEO and head of policy of BTB and the electoral commission, when I heard something that changed the game. Michael Sani claimed to have the possibility of a Google Hangout with Ed Miliband in the pipeline. After the meeting I pulled Mike and Oliver (head of policy) to one side and asked if it was true, he said it was..

That weekend was spent sitting and thinking, why would we do a Google hangout with one leader of a political party? Why not create a series in which the leader of each political party would be live streamed on YouTube with an audience of celebrities quizzing them on things they care about. The three of us made it a priority from that point to see if we could pull it off, BTB had about 5 full-time staff and hardly any money. If Blackpool can get to the Premier League, we can do this.

Why?

I was looking for an idea, initiative or campaign to engage young people where they lived online, to kickstart our general election campaign. Young people hear the word politics and switch off, scared they don’t know enough, at BTB we believed this was due to their lack of knowledge and also hearing people they respected talking about it.

96% (or something like that) of young people in the UK consume content on YouTube with many of them subscribing to YouTube channels, commenting and liking/disliking videos on the platform. YouTube feels more natural to them than television, so it was time to take politics to them.

what?

The concept was to eliminate hurdles for the UK’s youth electorate and create a new channel of communication between the political parties and young people, on their terms and platform. Create an unconventional environment where UK party leaders were questioned by panels of young idols and influencers through live-streamed events that encouraged and incorporated real-time, social media debate.

how?

Believe it or not the first battle was to lock down the leaders of the political parties, you would think that in an election year they would snatch your hand off to take an hour to talk to the UK’s youth. BTB had never done anything like this however, not known for livestreaming or putting on a show, so I could understand some resistance. After months of hard work from CEO and head of policy, with me annoying them constantly asking if we had any leaders yet, we had a breakthrough. Natalie Bennett, Nigel Farage and Ed Miliband all agreed on pretty much the same day, unfortunately for us, it happened with four weeks before the proposed date of the first show.

Game on.

First call was to Dom Baker, a top top creative mind who introduced me to a mad Irish genius called Kym Adams and the three of us holed up for a day trying to figure out how to do this in 4 weeks. With no money. The name and concept of the show we’re pretty much locked down, one leader a week, an audience of influential people from singers, entrepreneurs and YouTubers who would quiz the leaders on areas of interest to a young electorate. They would use their mobile phones to ask their audience for questions to put forward in real-time, this would generate awesome engagement and drive viewers to the show through the influencers combined audiences.

One huge elephant in the room, well there we’re several but this was the biggest, we had no money, no set or streaming capabilities, but we had three leaders locked down and believed Dave and Nick would agree iminently. The early success of the channel BITE News, especially its comments and hugely due to Jamal Edwards being involved ITV News had sent their admirations for the interactions it was gaining. Mike had a brainwave, why don’t we see if ITV News would be willing to partner up and provide the things we couldn’t, studio, set and crew, livestream capabilities? It was a shot in the dark but well worth it! With help from Julie Ethingham it worked, Head of Digital for ITV Jason Mills getting us over the line, we have lift off.

Next up I knew we needed the social network's officially on board, or at least one of them. Myself, Steven Cole and Dom Baker headed to Twitter for an evening chat about BTB’s entire election strategy with the brilliant Joanna Geary and Steve Summers. It was a mesmerising meeting and Leaders Live really caught their attention along with a general disbelief we had managed to get the leaders on board. They would partner up and give us ad spend inventory, help out with planning, logistics, media and on the show nights.

Facebook wanted to partner up too, but taking Leaders Live to Facebook and not YouTube, and without Twitter. I lead on negotiations with all parties along with Mike on a rollercoaster couple of days full of meeting with top brass from the respective companies, if Facebook had the video product it has now I would have said them, but Joanna moved mountains for us and so it was Twitter and YouTube.

I lead policy and social teams to research the parties and leaders, concept the branding of content utilised for marketing via social channels. Myself and Steven Cole, the social lead for Leaders Live, worked out content calendar for launch, before, during and after the show. Writing creative briefs for the content team and monitoring the schedule.

We launched the initiative with a Twitter sponsored trend which was part of our partnership with Twitter, our asset banks of content being utilised throughout the day, all political parties tweeting out and generating huge reach and press coverage. I worked with the production team at BITE News to create a trailer for the show, featuring influencers who would be in the show.

The same influencers created 10 individual videos focusing on different areas of politics which the viewers would be able to quiz the leaders about the show. These would also be used in the show to give context before each new topic, whilst also serving as awareness for the show to a broad audience.

Each video linked through to the Leaders Live website on which people could vote on the fourth topic the leader would have to debate. Overseeing BTB team and Twitter team to build the site, we drove thousands of people to the site and the engagement was incredible.

Before each show, all the partners, political partners and audience were presented with pre-programmed tweets. This drove huge awareness and traffic to the live stream and generated excitement that it was live. One of the main points I stressed was that with it being an hour live stream, young people required to be properly engaged, instant feedback and interactive.

During the show I had a jam packed war room to manage, production teams from BITE and ITV, social teams from both and the political parties. Alongside a team who we're sourcing questions from the audience and sending down to the gallery and into the live show. It was chaos, just the right amount.

Another of the partners we brought on board and utilised brilliantly was SnappyTV, which gave us the ability to edit clips from the live stream and push to social in-real time. I believe we we're one of the first to use it this side of the pond, and especially in politics. We had three editors and myself directing the clips to chop and push. We also chopped all the these together to push out after the show as individual clips and a wash up of each nights show.

So what, and who gave a shit?

Leaders Live with all the constraints was possibly the most impressive thing i have ever delivered, and I believe put BTB on the map, BIG time. For such a small team, of course ITV News we're a grand help but we steered the ship and if I hadn't walked through the doors of BTB simply put, it wouldn't have happened. Through sheer force, determination, creativity and knowledge of getting shit done, we did it.

1. 2 million+ minutes of the Leaders live content watched to date
2. 80 million impressions (unique people) engaged via social media for Leaders Live.
3. 20,000 #LeadersLive mentions
4. 15,000 comments on Leaders live YouTube videos
5. 22 minutes average dwell time on the Live Stream
6. 4 of 5 episodes trended on Twitter

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