Should comms take a page from the populists' playbook?
Stories of innovation have always needed a clear and compelling message which resonates…
The ‘White Heat’ that won an election
Harold Wilson’s ‘White Heat’ speech at Labour’s 1963 party conference went down in history as one of the most consequential of the century. He said Britain stood at the dawn of a technological and scientific revolution and the choice was simple: embrace change or we’ll be left behind.
The message was as simple and clear as it was urgent.
He wasn’t alone in his forward-looking messaging that decade. Across the Atlantic, Kennedy had already launched his ‘New Frontier’, calling on Americans to tackle challenges across science, space, poverty and civil rights. And a generation later, the iconic ‘Silicon Valley’ moniker would take the clout of California's tech pioneers global.
What they share is the capacity to make people feel they are part of something bigger, that the future is something to run towards and not shy away from.
It begs the question whether today's political communications is missing a trick and whether our slogans are up to the job.
The populists have been listening
In his book, Why Populists Are Winning and How to Beat Them, Liam Byrne MP has looked closely at populism, its funding, audiences, foot soldiers and crucially, its genius when it comes to comms.
Interviewed on The Rest Is Politics, he said populists are winning in part because they are simply better communicators.
In the book, he writes: “Today's populists are amongst the best communicators in the world; better than mainstream politicians and better masters of new digital channels. Why? Because good communication requires one thing above all: clarity about what we are trying to say.”
While mainstream parties create committees and word salads, populists offer simple solutions and stories for the complex times we live in. They cut through the noise with clear and often emotive messaging.
His solution isn’t to copy the heady mix of populist nostalgia, grievance and blame, but instead, what he calls "plausible optimism about the future”.
It’s a call to progressive political leaders to step up, but it’s also a challenge, I feel, facing comms in the UK’s industry and innovation space. What story do we want to tell about ourselves and where is the comms strategy falling short?
What's in a name?
Whether in the Northern Powerhouse, Golden Triangle or Oxford to Cambridge Arc, the UK’s certainly not short of its place-based monikers.
Playing to the industrial strengths of these regions, the names give a feeling of economic ambition and collaboration. But if you ask someone outside the world of industry and economic development what they mean, you‘ll likely be met with a blank stare.
It might seem like a small thing, but it’s crucial we get this kind of thing right, because it tells a community what it’s standing for, what they’re capable of, aiming towards and why it matters. When Wilson said ‘White Heat’, he wasn’t just describing policy, it was big picture messaging to bring people along and an invitation to the country to come with him. Do the names of these innovation clusters inspire the same?
Avoiding the ‘talking shop’ trap
Of course a cracking name is only the starting point. The harder challenge is the one that follows: using comms to build a cohesive narrative over time and evidencing it with proof points that are credible to audiences beyond the echo chamber.
The risk for every innovation cluster with aspirations to become a "superpower", is that it can just as easily become a talking shop. It starts with a glossy strategy document, builds into a launch event with a keynote and a buffet, followed by a drip-drip of press releases to keep it ticking over.
It seems areas that have avoided falling into this need three things:
A name that resonates (not just with government and industry, but the public too)
A story that is ambitious and clear
A steady stream of proof points that evidence real progress to the public, not just to the converted in the room
This is perhaps where we could apply lessons from the populist playbook. They don’t just say the system is broken, they point at the broken hospital, the closed factory, the empty high street. Whilst they might not necessarily have the solutions, their examples are clear and immediately obvious.
More optimistic comms about innovation could emulate this, showing clearly:
What’s been built
How many jobs have been created
What breakthroughs have been discovered and the impacts they’ve delivered
It’s a narrative that must be fed continuously and one which will need to connect back to the public’s lived experience.
Is the government's comms ambitious enough?
That brings us to the government itself. Labour’s ambition is to lean on the eight IS8 Industrial Strategy sectors so Britain can become a ‘science and technology superpower’.
Both have their merits. ‘IS8’ gives detail and sector clarity (clean energy, advanced manufacturing, financial services and so on), but feels a little clinical, detached and does little to drive public excitement.
‘Science and technology superpower’ has the opposite problem. It’s bold, but too broad. Superpower in what technology? Doing what, for whom, by when?
The challenge for government and industry is to strike a balance. We need campaigns which are backed by evidence, specific enough to be credible and engaging enough to inspire the public.
Taking a page from the populist playbook
The good news is that an optimistic and compelling counter-narrative already exists. The stats show Britain genuinely is home to world-leading science, extraordinary universities, deep industrial expertise and places doing remarkable things.
It seems that the substance isn’t missing, it’s often the story and the story-tellers.
We’ll no doubt see more regional clusters emerge in the coming years. They’ll need a memorable name and a strong narrative arc (for want of a better word) . They’ll need proof points that resonate and are understood by people down the pub.
It will also need communicators willing to borrow, somewhat unapologetically, from the populist playbook: not that of grievance and blame, but comms with clarity, urgency and conviction for a future vision.
