Elections – a seven-point comms checklist to guide your approach

I’ve covered a few elections in my time, council, generals, Europeans and the PCC (Police and Crime Commissioners). The one that sticks in my mind is when the MP in my council patch, Theresa May, called a general election. I remember April 2017 clearly – I had just returned from leave and had a long list of work to deliver, which suddenly got scrapped when the enormity of the prime minister’s election count dawned on me.

We already had a great team who had worked on delivering elections. We were used to Theresa May and her team, as she had been home secretary previously, but we knew that this election would be on a different level.

So, if you have a high profile MP– and frankly, this time there are probably going to be a range of seats that will be ‘ones to watch’ – then hopefully these tips may help…

1. Forward plan

Speak to your local media contacts and get them on the accreditation list early on. When I was in Maidenhead, I also met with the pooled media team and the broadcast media within the first three weeks to make sure we understood each other's requirements on election night. I spoke to the comms manager at West Oxfordshire (David Cameron was the PM the last time a general election had taken place). We worked at neighbouring authorities a few years previously, and she shared some good points, including her accreditation form that I used.

2. Branding

I think most of us have this sorted as I am an absolute geek for looking at election branding at count venues. I think my chief executive at the time thought I was mad when I printed our logo on repeat on a massive banner but every time they showed a shot from that count, my council logo was in the background. A nice picture of your place looks lovely but think about how that will work on a tight camera angle when the returning officer declares the result.

3. Project team

 Make sure comms is on the project team for the elections. You want to hear about what will be happening on the night and ensure that the returning officer is aware of the media attendance. We had to change the normal layout of the count venue because of the number of media who wanted to attend. I wasn’t particularly popular when I first shared that I needed the count venue re-arranged but we made it work. 

4. Your team

Most comms people love elections, well I do. We were a small comms team in Windsor & Maidenhead and we had two rooms to manage. I had three of the comms team working with me on the night. We talked about what we wanted to achieve in the weeks before but on the night, due to the speed of events, we didn't manage to do it all. I had two comms officers in the Windsor count, which was in a different hall, and who did a sterling job in tweeting and adding the results to the website. In the Maidenhead room, it was slightly different. There was a media stage with a huge amount of them asking a variety of questions, we didn't get time to tweet the first ballot box arriving but we did make sure the media were happy.

5. Be flexible

We had 135 people carrying out a variety of different jobs from dozens of media outlets attending this count where normally it was maximum of 10! The forward planning helped but you need everyone to be flexible. We had changed the layout of the count venue to accommodate as many media as we could and I had to make changes during the day for those who were attending the count to make sure they were on the list to get in. You may find that you were a relatively quiet election count from the media’s perspective in previous years but now the focus is firmly on you for a variety of reasons. Being flexible will help both you and the media.

6. Work with the pooled media

The BBC were filming the events for the broadcast channels and after the local media they were my next priority. We tested the walk into the Magnet leisure centre in Maidenhead for them, we put their camera in the best position for the declaration and we tried to get the results to them before it was announced. That didn’t work but I did have the results written down for them so they had the accurate numbers – the room was so busy and really noisy that night.

7. Day of the count 

If you do have a high-profile count, get some rest if you can. Remember to eat and drink. I failed on most of those. I was working from 9am on the day of the count, I remember sitting on some stairs drinking yet another coffee and eating a sandwich at about 4am on the Friday morning. 

Do remember to chat to the media at the count too, I made sure I met (almost) every one of the media that attended the count. I wanted them to know we would help with their questions and we would try to let them know when we were ready to declare.

That election night was a bit of whirlwind and it feels like years ago. It was high pressure in terms of communication but the basics don’t change. I shared my insight with the team at Hillingdon for the December 2019 election (Boris Johnson was PM then) and I have already chatted to one council this month about the importance of being flexible. 

Louisa Dean is head of communications and marketing at Reading Borough Council. This post was first published on comms2point0, the website owned by Creative Communicators founder Darren Caveney. Read the original post.