Kiwis Sean Topham and Ben Guerin have emerged as two of the heroes of Boris Johnson’s victory. They came up with the social media campaign that included the infamous Boris Johnson ‘Love actually’ parody. They have been dubbed the ’24 hour meme machines’ and have been described as young Millenials skilled in the dark arts of social media. If they worked their same magic here in New Zealand I am sure that the NZ Media would describe what they do as Dirty Politics.
These clever New Zealanders are now sitting on top of the world after a stunning victory in the UK off the back of their clever campaign, but this is not the only campaign they have worked on.
The Antipodean social media experts were hired to drive the Tories’ online election campaign amid fears that dire winter weather could scupper traditional methods of targeting voters.
Kiwis Topham, 28, and Guerin, 24, were brought in by director of politics and campaigning Isaac Levido to toughen up the Conservatives’ social media efforts after a dire performance in 2017.
The twenty-something pair, who run agency TG in London, formerly worked for the Tories’ Australian counterpart the Liberal Party, whose leader Scott Morrison surprisingly won an election earlier this year.
While there they were known for making ‘boomer memes’ – content deliberately crafted to look simplistic and basic. They targeted groups like older people online.
They also used content from popular television programmes like Game of Thrones to grab attention.
The intentionally clunky design of the memes meant they were shared widely on Facebook, which because of the way the platform works helped their harder political messages reach bigger audiences.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7790007/The-24-hour-meme-machines-classic-Dom-Cummings-backroom-team-Boriss-win.
In fact, these guys are so smart that they, along with Crosby Textor, fired National as clients and then spread the message quietly around the traps that the leadership team are basically tits at their job and no amount of genius can help them win.
Of course now after their win in the UK their fees for performing miracles will be massive, but I am sure that price will be no object to political parties wanting to win. These guys get results but clearly they have a no dickheads rule. They also follow one of Cameron Slater’s rules of politics which is to never hug a corpse.
