Branded Blog

It’s Saturday 25^th June 2016, a post-Brexit world, and it’s all pretty scary.

But what infuriates me most is that this:

“…obviously the facts are coming in now…” – An Exit voter saying she would change her mind the morning after the vote.

And this:

And this:

And most of all this:

All these tell us that what we have here is a massive failure to communicate on the part of the “Remain” campaign.

Before the vote the “Exit” campaign was saying “Vote Exit – Give us our country back”. And though it is obvious scaremongering and represents all that is wrong with politics and humanity right now, it was also very, very smart. They were being clear, concise, and simple – giving voters – all voters – something to vote for, however misguided it may be.

The “Remain” campaign, on the other hand, had David Cameron saying exiting the EU would “put a bomb under the economy”.  And when that didn’t work, they said this:

Did you get that? No? Neither did the majority of Brits, evidently. Because all the good points are lost in big words, fancy accents, and big “important” titles. It’s lost in lots of talking heads telling them things that they don’t understand or care about. The Remain campaign had no idea who it was needing to talk to; no strong central idea to communicate; and no sense of urgency or education for the population at large – beyond London – on this most important of votes.

Even this would have been a better message to put out there before the vote…

It is an unmitigated communication failure, and it has cost the world much more than we can even see right now – it has set us back as humans, and we will all pay for this failure to communicate for a long, long time.

And all this while the global communications industry celebrates our creativity and ability to convey messages in Cannes. I’m so with JK Rowling today….