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In France, 47-year-old Bruno Le Maire is a rising star of the political center-right. I served as a key adviser to Le Maire’s recent primary campaign, which made social media outreach a staple of the effort. From Twitter to Facebook Live to instagram, Snapchat, Periscope, YouTube, and even LinkedIn, Le Maire had a strategy for each network.
For Le Maire, a social media strategy was key to emerging in the political debate. Running in a field that included two former prime ministers, Alain Juppé and François Fillon, as well as former President Nicolas Sarkozy, Le Maire had to stand out and take full advantage of every tool at his disposal.
So transparency and authenticity became the strategy, and social media was key to communicating that. A social media centric strategy was even more important for Le Maire given the media’s focus on Juppé and Sarkozy. The press had all but decided that the race was between the two of them, meaning Le Maire had to do more to break through. He had to be different.
In the end, it was François Fillon and Juppé who ended up in a runoff in the presidential primary: Fillon, who was backed by Sarkozy after the first round of voting, defeated Juppé easily (70 percent to 30 percent). Fillon emerged thanks in large part to solid performances in the three public tv debates.
But given an innovative social media strategy, Le Maire won a new notoriety in the country and earned points for addressing national issues. His campaign is notable in Europe because it offered a new way to organize townhalls and rallies, and demonstrated an innovative use of social media that other campaigns can learn from.
Here’s how the campaign utilized two key channels:
1,144 posts in one year (3 to 4 per day) // Subscribers: 8,047
With 8,047 subscribers, Bruno Le Maire didn’t come close to Nicolas Sarkozy, who had 72,700 Instagram subscribers, and he was even behind Alain Juppé (15,000 subscribers), but he did beat Francois Fillon on the subsriber count (6,272 subscribers).
Le Maire’s Instagram account was centralized, controlled by the candidate's national communication team. The campaign focused on posting photos from the campaign trail, mainly images taken by campaign photographer Eddy Duluc, who followed the candidate everywhere. The photos were also available on Le Maire’s Flickr, which counts 6,111 photographs.
One key to the success of the campaign’s Instagram was the quality of the photos: Duluc had a style that stood out, and it helped Le Maire attract more attention on the platform than his opponents. The campaign also posted behind the scenes videos, some from radio and TV interviews with the candidate, and others from meetings around the country.
Snapchat
On several occasions, the Le Maire campaign was quoted in the press for its use of Snapchat. In France, it’s a fairly recent but not entirely innovative practice—the Élysée (the Senate) have their accounts, as well.
The campaign saw Snapchat as a way to reach out to voters under 25-years-old. Although present on all social networks, Snapchat has emerged as their dedicated medium in France, and the time Le Maire spent on the platform was well worth it.
The true strength of Le Maire's Snapchat is that it is partially decentralized. The ability to post on behalf of the campaign was not only given to those responsible for communication, but it was also extended to a handful of young people in the campaign, not necessarily Parisian.
The decentralization of the account allowed for far less formal posts, and it allowed the campaign to display snapshots from all across the country. Snapchat was almost exclusively dedicated to showing backstage moments, campaign atmosphere from different regions of the country, and exchanges with young people.
So which platform better helped us achieve our goal of authenticity and sincerity? Both contributed. The key was that the two networks were utilized in distinct ways and this distinction helped the campaign succeed on social media.
Instagram, which is closer in feel to the more traditional networks, more often worked in tandem with Facebook and Twitter, featuring photographs from the campaign trail and the candidate’s everyday travels. The tone was fairly official, with a professional cameraman and photographer, and more formal descriptions on the posts.
Snapchat, which was a great success for Le Maire, was not connected to any other tool. It was used by young staffers within the campaign with the goal of engaging younger voters and relaying behind-the-scenes action. The campaign used humor on Snapchat, and the medium allowed for a more natural, and casual, approach.
Tailoring a strategy specifically to the medium is key. The campaign was able to engage effectively on Snapchat, because it didn’t view it as a space to park the same sort of social content it was employing elsewhere.
Olivier Ubéda is a political and public strategy consultant at Ubedapartners.eu, and he served as an adviser to the Le Maire campaign.