Dr Jenny Lloyd
Associate Professor in Marketing at Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick. An award-winning educator, she has published extensively in the field of voter engagement and political branding and has presented widely at conferences nationally and internationally.
Email: Jenny.Lloyd@wbs.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 4: Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
One of the most interesting aspects of the 2024 UK General Election was the use (or lack of use) of personal branding by UK political parties. Political branding has long been recognised as useful heuristic device employed by voters to distinguish between political parties and facilitate decision-making. Branding at the level of the individual, known as personal branding, can be particularly powerful in elections as it not only generates attention but has the potential to convey values and attributes that not only reflect those of the individual politician but those of the wider political party.
The most obvious example of personal brand building was undertaken by Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrat Party. Over the course of the election campaign, he engaged in a series of ‘stunts’ which included falling off a paddle board, sliding down a water slide and bungee-jumping; all to raise awareness and draw attention to Liberal Democrat policies. Although slapstick, this approach generated significant success. According to YouGov, Davey’s personal approval ratings doubled from 15% to 30% over the course of the election campaign and the party was seen to be fighting a positive campaign.
The Reform Party also pivoted toward a stronger personal branding strategy midway through the election campaign when party leader Richard Tice struggled to gain recognition amongst the voting public. Two weeks into the six week campaign, a favourability poll undertaken by YouGov indicated that Tice was unknown by 66% of the electorate and seen unfavourably by only 24%. He was replaced by prominent political campaigner Nigel Farage, someone who had long cultivated a strong personal brand, and who was listed by the New Statesman as being one of the most influential people on the right wing of British politics.
This change in leadership effectively reversed the Reform Party’s lack of leader recognition and, with it, generated a surge in popularity. On 13th June it was reported in The Times newspaper that, for the first time, the Reform Party had overtaken the Conservative Party in the polls and a poll by YouGov indicated that Nigel Farage was known by 92% of the electorate.
Of the remaining parties, neither the Labour, Conservative nor the Green Party pursued strong personal branding strategies in support of their leaders. This is somewhat surprising in the case of the Conservative Party, given how effective Boris Johnson’s strong personal brand had been in engaging voters in 2019. However, a series of ‘gaffs’ and apparent examples of poor judgement by Sunak left him open to ridicule and cast doubt over the judgement of his management team. It is probable that, in avoiding the adoption of a personal brand development strategy, Conservative campaign managers were seeking to minimise risk.
Minimisation of risk also appears to have been at the root of the limited attempts at personal brand building around Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer. However, given how toxic ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s personal brand had proved for the party in recent years, party management were naturally guarded. Adopting what was often referred to in the media as a ‘Ming Vase Strategy’, the relatively limited focus on Starmer’s personal brand was part of a more cautious approach to campaigning with the aim of maintaining their lead in the polls.
In the case of both Conservative and Labour leadership, the result of their low-risk strategy was that approval ratings remained little changed by the end of the campaign. Whilst this was positive for the Labour Party who were enjoying a strong lead in the polls, it did little to boost the ailing fortunes of the Conservative Party.
For the Green Party, their two-leader strategy was problematic for personal brand building as media focus was necessarily divided between leaders over the course of the campaign. As a result, co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay both suffered from very low levels of personal brand awareness with polls just before the election suggesting that they were still unknown to three quarters of the UK electorate.
When reflecting upon the value of building the personal brands of political leaders, it is clear political leaders in possession of strong personal brands can command a disproportionate amount of media attention. As such, it can be a useful tool for smaller political parties who might otherwise struggle to gain media attention. However, political leaders’ personal brands are not without their jeopardy. In an election campaign, every action is held up for scrutiny and personal errors of judgement not only reflect badly on the individual leader but more widely upon the image of the political party they lead.
