Shrek in sunglasses, a groovy llama and a reference to the 2006 Pixar movie Cars — how is it possible these memes weren’t enough to win the federal Liberals a term of government?
Liberals have savaged their own digital campaign following Saturday’s defeat, with several contacting Crikey on the condition of anonymity to say the party’s social media efforts were “cringe” and “our worst asset” in the campaign.
“They were putting up photos of Albanese as a muppet, and running ‘funny’ memes about cost of living while at the same time saying it’s a serious crisis,” one NSW Liberal said.
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A few of the examples party faithful pointed to included a picture of a capybara with the text “vote Liberal”; a closeup of a cat with the same message; and an image of Shrek, the ogre from the 2001 movie of the same name, captioned “omw to vote liberal for a stronger economy.”
The image with the Cars reference had the caption: “On my way to vote Liberal … that 25c off every litre feeling.”
In a leaked WhatsApp group chat for NSW Liberal councillors, including more than 100 people, one person wrote: “Young people have no interest in taking our [how-to-vote cards]. They are becoming a bigger voting base and will keep growing.”
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Another responded with a bunch of the campaign meme posts and wrote sarcastically: “Yeah the young ones loved social media… We’re killing it,” followed by three laugh-crying emojis.
Another Liberal source defended the social media strategy, saying the sillier variety of memes were only posted in the final days of the campaign in an effort to reach new audiences.
“On election day you want to throw a couple of memes out there to break up people’s content feeds and get some eyeballs,” the person said. “A lot of people don’t engage with political content until election day, so you throw some memes in there to break through the noise.”
The Coalition reportedly leaned on its typical advertising team at KWPX Agency and Topham Guerin for its campaign. The majority of social media posts throughout the campaign were directed by the strategists at campaign headquarters in Parramatta.
That didn’t stop disgruntled NSW Liberals — already furious over the local division’s structural failures in the lead-up to the campaign — from blaming state director Chris Stone and his chief of staff Luke Nayna for what they considered an ineffective social media strategy.
“[The posts] would have been developed by an agency, but [Stone and Nayna] would have been involved in the creative strategy/approval process. Just because an agency suggests something doesn’t mean it’s correct — we used to reject stuff we thought was bad all the time,” one Liberal source said.
Nayna, who put his hand up for Stone’s job last year and is tipped as a likely candidate to succeed him, declined to comment. Stone is likely to keep his job at least until June 30, the current end date for the federal takeover of the NSW division.
A campaign source said most of the social content had been of a more serious nature, but as election day grew closer, the need arose to try to sell the party’s policies in a new way.
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“[It’s a question of] how do you sell the same political message every day for six weeks,” the person said.
The Liberal Party’s 2022 federal election review called for the party to use “highly trained professional expertise” and to stay across “newly emerging platforms”.
It’s digital campaign this time out leaned heavily on the “meme warfare” idea of previous elections, repurposing popular trends and pop culture.
This included a significant amount of absurdist, AI-generated “slop” content that Macquarie University researchers labelled “slopaganda”. (This wasn’t unique to the Liberal Party. Labor mimicked its opposition’s themes). The party was active on newer platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts and WhatsApp Channels.
The Coalition took a different approach on Peter Dutton’s social media pages, sharing short video clips of the now former member for Dickson campaigning, and smiling snaps of him with his family and with voters.
The Liberal Party’s digital campaign did have a few high-profile mistakes. It took down a video it reposted from a Greens-linked influencer and enraged an international TikTok star after lifting his posting-style and blocking him.
It’s difficult to say which parties’ digital campaign was better. Labor significantly outspent the Coalition on paid digital advertisements in the past few days — whether that was a strategic or resourcing decision is unclear. Albanese’s personal TikTok performed better than Dutton’s over the campaign, too.
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The Labor Party employed many of the same meme tactics as the Liberals, including images of Barbie saying she’s “on my way to vote 1 Labor”, a reference to the video game Animal Crossing, and a spoof of the poster for the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You edited to say “10 things I hate about Dutton’s nuclear scheme”.
Tim Riches, group strategy director at the brand consultancy firm Principals, said the Liberals had suffered from what he termed the “Steve Buscemi problem”, referencing a popular meme of the actor holding a skateboard and wearing youthful clothing saying, quipping “How do you do, fellow kids?”
“Any branding effort — including both the campaign strategy and its overall execution — has to be seen relative to the overall positioning of the brand,” Riches told Crikey. “The Liberals don’t have a strong franchise with younger people, there’s not a natural connection there. It becomes a question of credibility — is this believable — and of authenticity — do you seem like you’re really you, or are you spinning bullshit?
“The risk for the Liberals [in employing a meme strategy] is that they lose both authenticity and credibility. They haven’t put in the work to build their audiences and develop an engaged community of people who look forward to hearing the stories the party wants to tell.”
The Labor Party had the “Buscemi problem” too, in Riches’ view, but to a lesser extent.
“Despite research that says younger men are gravitating towards more conservative views, progressive values probably sit more naturally with younger people. And the Labor Party is probably better at mobilising their grass roots with universities and the trades.”
What did you make of the Liberal Party’s meme strategy?
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