Last Thursday marked the biggest ever day for democracy in Scotland.
But big things have small beginnings, and this is the story of our small role in a campaign that would draw the world’s attention and threaten to tear apart the country that we, as British people from all parts of the UK, love dearly.
Two years ago, we took a call from the Better Together campaign for a “No” vote for the referendum on Scottish independence, asking if we could help set up the digital infrastructure for a cross-party campaign still in its earliest stages.
We didn’t hesitate. Since then, we have worked with Better Together to grow a grassroots campaign and integrate the organisation’s online and offline efforts.
When building a digital campaign, organisations tend to choose one path or another: either use these tools and channels to just make noise, or use them to really organise. Too often—especially in the fog of a political campaign—they choose poorly.
But Better Together got straight to it: developing robust tools to build supporter relationships at scale, an action-focused website, and events platform that encourages volunteering and fundraising, an email programme that engages and empowers throughout, and get-out-the-vote tools that can work flat out right up until the polls close.
The result overnight—Better Together earning a resounding victory over the “Yes” campaign—is their just reward for that focus. The staff and volunteers deserve huge credit for their work, particularly considering that they have been part of one of the longest campaigns in British history.
Over a two year period, Better Together worked tirelessly to organise thousands of local grassroots events, send over a thousand targeted emails in service of the neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood organising effort and make tens of thousands of calls in the final week of the campaign through volunteers using Better Together’s online phone bank.
It’s worth noting that this list doesn’t include a follower count or any reference to the number of “likes” a piece of content received, despite the Scottish campaign being so recognised for the massive social media activity of supporters on both sides.
That’s because an election strategy—as with any strategy—must go beyond mere outreach to actual mobilisation.
The blur of activity on social around a moment as significant as an election can produce a distorted picture of the truth. For campaigns to succeed, they need to be able to cut through the noise and focus on the things that matter: getting their message out, mobilising support, and raising money.
Direct, personal relationships built through email and volunteer programmes remain the best way to do this. The hard value (volunteering, money raised) potential of social is growing, but it only has that impact when an organisation is focused on integration with all its other efforts.
Social has changed the toolkit at the individual level—for the journalist, the activist, people with a passion for politics—but for a campaign organisation the digital fundamentals still must ring true. Without a firm focus on the connection of social or any other digital effort to the grassroots ethos and efforts on the ground, organisations will find themselves coming up short.
This focus continues in our work for Labour (which you can read about in Matthew McGregor’s blog post from earlier this year) through until the General Election next year.
But for now, a round of applause for Blair McDougall and the team at Better Together, for the campaign that kept the UK intact.