How Jeremy Corbyn Is Using Influencer Marketing To Reach Millennials

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❌ This is not a political post.

✅ This is a look into an impressive Influencer Marketing campaign that we can all learn a thing or two from.

👇 In this post you’ll learn what Influencer Marketing is and how it can effectively be used to target millennials, using a real world example.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing has been around forever, but it’s only been given this ‘cool’ new name in the last few years.

Basically, Influencer Marketing is about getting people who have a significant influence over your ideal customer audiences, to promote your product or service to those audiences.

Think Michael Jordan with Nike, Gary Lineker with Walkers, Britney Spears with Pepsi. Influencer Marketing is all about grabbing attention, which is why Bloggers, YouTubers, Social Media Influencers and more are now grabbing a piece of the pie.

How is Jeremy Corbyn using Influencer Marketing to reach millennials?

Being a millennial myself, I recently noticed some pretty cool pieces of content online featuring people I respect + Jeremy Corbyn.

My inner Digital Marketing geek kicked in and I knew I had to write about it. If we break up what Jeremy Corbyn has done, he’s used the following 3 steps to effectively reach millennials via Influencer Marketing;

🎯 Step #1

He has identified who millennials relate to (grime artists, popular singers, young social media content creators).

🎯 Step #2

He has influenced those people to create a cool, positive piece of content with him or about him.

🎯 Step #3

He has distributed that piece of content natively across large communities over the internet (Facebook groups, publications, Twitter).

Let’s look at some examples and why they are so successful…

Native Facebook Videos

JME (2.5 million views)

In this Facebook video, Jeremy  talks with well-known grime artist JME about the importance of young people voting in the general election.

Why was this successful?

Let’s dissect this piece of content to see why it is so effective. In addition to ticking the 3 points mentioned above this piece of content is effective because;

✅ It’s interesting. It brings two completely opposite worlds together that are rarely seen interacting (grime artists and politics).

✅ It’s not a massive sales pitch. The message that JME is supporting Jeremey Corbyn is very subtle and is left to the end of the video.

✅ It’s a square video. Square videos take up a large section of your screen when scrolling through your news feed. Making you more likely to stop and watch.

✅ The video uses Facebook Captions to grab the attention of the 85% of Facebook users who watch Facebook videos with the sound off.

Lowkey (2.8 million views)

In this interview style video, famous rapper Lowkey lays down some well-structured arguments pointing out why we should all vote Labour in the general election.

Why was this successful?

This video works because;

✅ Lowkey uses storytelling to explain the history of politics in a simple, easy to understand way.

✅ An ‘unorthodox’ perspective of politics is shared in the video. Psychologically, people will want to share this video as it makes them look like they are ‘in the know’ too and are ‘enlightening’ their Facebook friends.

✅ Again, the video uses Facebook Captions to grab the attention of the 85% of Facebook users who watch Facebook videos with the sound off.

Influencer Endorsements in big publications

Chicken Connoisseur | Huffington Post  |  The Mirror  | Evening Standard

With almost 1 million subscribers, likes and follows across social media, you can’t deny that 23 year old Elijah Quashie has an influence over millennials.

Quashie’s chicken shop review videos went viral earlier this year and he’s taking full advantage of the viral fame, releasing an App and signing a book deal amongst other things.

In an interview with Fadar, Quashie said that he’s backing Jeremy Corbyn. This was then picked up by The Huffington Post, Mirror and Evening Standard.

Why was this successful?

Let’s look at why this Influencer Marketing strategy worked;

✅ The Chicken Connoisseur has only just popped in the social media space. He’s very current which means he’s top of mind with millennials.

✅ He’s a millennial himself, making his influence over other millennials even greater.

✅ Similar to the Facebook videos, this story was interesting as it brought two opposing worlds together. Because of this, the story was picked up by a number of well known publications.

Stormzy | The Guardian

Well known grime artist Stormzy backed Jezza last year in a lengthy interview with The Guardian.

Why was this successful?

This interview was successful because;

✅ Authenticity. Within the write up, direct quotes from Stormzy show that he’s saying exactly what he’s thinking. This authentic approach has a much greater impact than fabricated Influencer Marketing campaigns.

“My man, Jeremy! Young Jeremy, my guy. I dig what he says. I saw some sick picture of him from back in the day when he was campaigning about anti-apartheid and I thought: yeah, I like your energy. Have you seen that footage of House of Commons? They’re all neeky dons! The way they all laugh and cheer. Is this f*cking Game Of Thrones?”

✅ Effective storytelling. The article takes you on a journey of Stormzy’s career before getting into the interview. It warms you up before hearing the Call To Action (CTA) to vote for Corbyn.

✅ Stormzy is also very current and top of millennial’s minds, making the impact of this article significant.

Influencer endorsements via Tweets

A number of influential musicians have taken to Twitter to share their support for Jeremy Corbyn.

Rag’n’Bone Man

Akala

Novelist

Ellie Rowsell

Why was this successful?

These Tweets may not have been a direct part of Jeremy Corbyn’s marketing activities, however, they still happened, and the reason they did is explained below.

Influencers influence other influencers. Slight tongue twister but true. In this case, Jeremy’s proactive Influencer Marketing strategies (like the Facebook videos) have prompted other reactive pieces of positive content from other Influencers in the same industry.

This emphasises ‘the snowball effect’. If you invest resources in doing things right on a small scale (like the Facebook videos), that effort can organically grow into a huge success (influencer endorsements in publications & via Tweets).

Conclusion

We can all learn something from Jeremy Corbyn’s use of Influencer Marketing to prompt millennials to take action.

Think about how you can apply what you have learnt here to your own business. Who has a significant influence over your target market currently? What’s the first step you need to take to start building a relationship with them?

Have you got any good examples of Influencer Marketing done well? Let me know in the comments below and I may feature you in a future post.