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AUCKLAND: “Kia pray, everyone. I am standing against a blank wall in my house, because it is the only sight in my house that is not cluttered. “
So begins a 2020 campaign message posted by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
He speaks directly on his phone at the end of the day, in a comfy sweatshirt and tousled hair, inviting Instagram viewers to his home as he presents plans for the next week.
Voters and fans view his message from their own phones and smart devices – just over 22 percent of his 1.4 million Instagram followers watched the two-minute video.
She is sincere, approachable, tired, and fun.
Faced with a resurgence of COVID-19 a few days later, the tone changes to one of concern. But the focus is the same on a 13-minute Facebook livestream, during which 34 percent of its 1.3 million followers tune in.
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In the run-up to the Oct. 17 election, Ardern’s Facebook following is only four times that of the other seven top party leaders combined. Political or not, this makes her a huge influencer by anyone’s metrics.
A NATURAL COMMUNICATOR
While the opposition leader’s husband has recently been feeling the pressure for his anti-Ardern Facebook posts, Ardern’s own activity is almost relentlessly positive.
It has been that way since he began to appear regularly on Facebook feeds after dinner, shortly after becoming a Labor leader seven weeks before the 2017 election.
New Zealand has the virus under control, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern warned of looming pain, with unemployment rising and the economy shrinking. (Photo: AFP / Mark Mitchell)
Its organic appeal and clear comfort with the format helped her own the space. When she was in office, she spoke to Kiwis like an old friend, using the one-way relationship with her audience to seemingly off the cuff about the day’s events and what she’s thinking.
Apparently she has no filters: tired, often laughing, but mostly in command and with creative control over what she posts, shares and displays. This alone helps increase the perception of its authenticity and expertise.
Ardern joins a continuum of media-age communicators who came to define their political brands through their preferred platforms.
The President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, used his radio “fireside talks” in the 1930s and 1940s to explain politics to Americans.
By the 1960s, John F Kennedy had become the original television president after the first televised debate (with Richard Nixon). In New Zealand, Robert Muldoon was the first politician to master the art of political television.
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THE FIRESIDE DIGITAL CHAT
Now, in the digital age, the pace of communication and the reach of social media platforms have created the first president of Twitter: Donald Trump’s tweets are considered official statements, with more than 11,000 published since his inauguration in 2017 until the end of 2019.
In 2020, social media are not simply useful political channels (more than 600,000 New Zealanders follow a party’s account), they are a major electoral battleground.
Ardern knows it. She is a prolific hobbyist, with quick, informal videos (typically one to five minutes in length) accounting for 81 percent of her 20 unique posts in a single week in August.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks during the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York City, New York, U.S., on September 25, 2019 (Photo: REUTERS / Shannon Stapleton)
Facebook is at the center of your reach and your messages. Voters, citizens, foreign observers and fans mingle in the comment section, with an overall positive and supportive tone for his leadership.
COMMITMENT IS EVERYTHING
The key metric is engagement, the world’s influential currency on social media. Engagement is calculated by dividing the total number of interactions (likes, shares, and comments) a post receives by the total number of followers.
Good rates for mega influencers (those with more than a million followers) on Facebook typically range from 0.01% to 0.42%. Rates on Instagram can go as high as 12% for some celebrity names in New Zealand.
Analysis of a seven-day period in August, which spanned the launch of the Labor Party campaign, the rise of parliament, the resurgence of COVID-19 and the subsequent new blockades, shows the scope and depth of the influence strategy. Ardern policy.
Their Facebook livestream videos, streamed live but available to view and comment on later, had an average engagement rate of 1.83% on campaign and policy topics and 3.5% on COVID topics.
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Ardern is engaging, comfortable, and relatable – all of the key traits our research suggests increases the perception of authenticity and experience. His engagement puts him on par or ahead of other prolific celebrities like Rachel Hunter (who also earns a 1.8 percent engagement for his average of 15 posts a week).
IN MESSAGE
A five-minute live feed on Facebook, posted just before dinner on the Saturday of the Labor Party’s campaign launch, gives an insight:
“Hello everyone, I’m sneaking out for a moment while listening to Neve distracted in the sandbox,” Ardern begins (referring to her two-year-old daughter). As he describes the policy, viewers post heart and thumbs-up emojis, ask questions, and talk to each other. The publication has a participation rate of 2.3%.
He may be a far cry from Trump’s sharp and angry use of Twitter, but he’s just as mindful of the brand and the message.
President Donald Trump using his smartphone. (Photo: Reuters)
The New Zealand Prime Minister is rare in that she is a highly visible celebrity on social media, as well as a political leader. But at 40 she’s not getting any younger, either.
If Donald J. Trump is the first president of Twitter and Jacinda Ardern the first prime minister of Facebook, it’s probably time to ask who will be the first politician of TikTok.
Sommer Kapitan is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Auckland University of Technology. This comment first appeared on The Conversation.
