Does going viral actually help a political campaign?
Posts that feel like a real person wrote them get more engagement than polished ones, but going viral only matters if it moves your campaign forward. That was the point Ben Guerin, co-founder of Topham Guerin, made to the BBC, in a piece on how politicians from Andy Burnham to Kemi Badenoch now use social media.
- Publication
- BBC News
- By
- Matt Chorley
- Published
- 20 August 2026
- Type
- Press coverage
- Topics
-
- political social media
- digital campaigning
- UK politics
- authenticity
What we did
- Politicians of every party are posting more than ever, and the BBC asks how much is too much
- Ben’s view: people engage more with posts that feel like a person wrote them than with ones that look designed by committee
- But weird and wacky content goes viral easily, and that doesn’t always help the campaign
- Andy Burnham’s posts bear it out: a plain video of what he did in his first week as prime minister got five million views, a pub-snack ranking got one million
Read the full article at BBC NewsPoliticians have always looked abroad for policy and campaigning ideas, and social media is no different.
Some have even imported social media experts from overseas. In 2019 Boris Johnson hired New Zealand duo Ben Guerin and Sean Topham to run the digital campaign for the general election. They imported into UK politics the concept of "shitposting", releasing deliberately bad images in order to generate a reaction. This included posting a tweet featuring the slogan "Get Brexit Done" in Comic Sans, a font loathed by graphic designers.
This seems to be borne out by some recent hits. Burnham's TikTok post rating pub snacks attracted a million views. Yet a less gimmicky video, straightforwardly listing the five things he said he had done in his first week as PM, got five million.
“People are more likely to engage with something if they feel like it's been written by a human, not by a committee of design experts”
Ben Guerin
“It's pretty easy to go viral for doing something weird and wacky, but that doesn't always advance the objectives of your campaign.”
Ben Guerin
Questions & answers
Does going viral help a political campaign?
Not always. Ben Guerin told the BBC that it’s easy to go viral by doing something weird and wacky, but that doesn’t always move the campaign forward. The BBC points to Andy Burnham: a plain video of his first week as prime minister got five times the views of a pub-snack ranking.
Why do rough-looking political posts work?
People engage more with something that feels like a person wrote it, not a committee of designers. It’s the thinking behind the deliberately rough posts Ben Guerin and Sean Topham made for Boris Johnson’s 2019 campaign, like “Get Brexit Done” in Comic Sans.