Can Brand Burnham think like a consumer brand?

There’s plenty of speculation about our new PM, Andy Burnham,  ranging from outright haters pelting him with digital rotten tomatoes, to giddy supporters so high on vibes they don’t need to hear any actual policy. And then, there is the wobbly middle, the folks who are simply too exhausted to know what to believe, or who prefer sitting on the fence because you get the best view. 

Amid the chatter, much has been made of his communication style, ‘the vibes’,  with some going as far as to call it a social-first approach. So can this work for Burnham in the way it’s done for so many consumer brands?

As we’re talking politics, I’m going to delay answering the question directly and instead raise a different point, which is to challenge not only whether the PM’s approach is really social-first but also whether it’s generally true for many consumer brands too. 

Take Yorkshire Tea, for instance, a brand I launched on social nearly two decades ago and helped lead to become Britain’s favourite brew. The truth is, while Yorkshire Tea’s social presence was very distinctive and certainly helped, the substance of its success came from more conventional sources - namely mainstream TV advertising.

This is important because I’d argue that for big brand success, there aren’t many examples where it was truly only social media that won the day. Success at scale tends to require the big guns. Not that these things are exclusive to each other. Wise are those who opt for bothism here.

And perhaps that’s what’s really going on with Burnham. Is his social game better than Starmer’s? Undoubtedly, based on what I’ve seen, and that includes a highly representative analysis of: 1) listening to what my Gen Z kids say they’ve seen on TikTok (broadly positive, compared to Starmer being effectively just an absence to them) and 2) noticing how much of what is reported in the traditional media is influenced by the latest social chatter, (a long under-appreciated feature of social media success).

But does that make it social-first, or just that this is a properly modern comms approach that includes all the channels it should? And that so far, in my view, his team is doing a very good job in areas where previous PMs faltered or didn’t think to go.

Of course, the real answer to the opening question should simply be an emphatic ‘no, for so many reasons. Chief of which would simply be the stakes. As much as I cared about that beautiful brand, reminding people that your tea exists in an amusing but authentic way is not as riddled with risk as running a country.

And this is the heart of it. The challenges are already coming at Burnham thick and fast, and this will only intensify. Explaining the causes of rising government debt and the decisions that forces will be hard to do through the medium of rating pub snacks.

There will soon come a time where the vibes alone aren’t enough, and where substance - policy, difficult choices, and dealing with our increasingly volatile world will be the true test of our new PM.

But there is definitely something refreshingly confident and supple about Burnham’s current social media behaviour. What will be interesting will be whether he can bring that on a Sunday morning with Laura Kuensberg, or to PMQs and press conferences, especially as the challenges mount. As with brands, the art is tailoring your message and your attitude to the different contexts, without changing the core of who you are.

The top job in politics has always been exceptionally tough but where we once saw deference give way to rigorous (but mostly respectful) scrutiny, the default mode now appears to be relentless antagonism, which is sadly something that social media excels at.

And perhaps that’s the most significant change. For brands like Yorkshire Tea, those early years of social media were a kind of wild west, but a relatively gentle one - unexpected things could trip you up but you could easily get back on your feet, and the rewards well outweighed the risks. Nowadays, it is brutal, with epic, endless trolling everywhere you look, and it is untrustworthy, with bad faith actors, fake accounts and slop making it almost impossible to know what to take seriously and what to ignore.

You could argue that being on there is more trouble than it’s worth and perhaps that’s how Starmer viewed it. However, not being on there doesn’t stop the conversation about you carrying on regardless. And maybe a strategy that tries to avoid all risk is actually the riskiest strategy of all…