The last offline leaders: why politicians now need to be mini-influencers

Ben Guerin, whose firm Topham Guerin has helped conservative political campaigns including Scott Morrison’s 2019 election win, said audiences increasingly rewarded politicians who appeared authentic rather than overly produced.

“Wilson’s a great example of this ... she posts as a person who happens to be a politician,” Guerin said.

He said beleaguered British Prime Minister Keir Starmer would be among the last generation of “offline leaders”, as politics increasingly shifts to a generation of digital natives.

Guerin said politicians could no longer afford to dismiss social media as frivolous or beneath them.

“If you want to represent the people, you’ve got to use the tools that the people use to get their content,” he said.

Guerin said many politicians were still fighting the last social media war by relying on parliamentary clips, staged photos and formal pieces to camera. While he said that content retained some traction on Facebook and X, reaching new audiences required more personality-driven content.

Guerin pointed to 2022 as a tipping point, driven by TikTok, Instagram Reels and dramatic changes to how platforms distributed content. “The age of social media was coming to an end, and it was all about vertical videos.

“The political environment is shaped by algorithmic media more than social media,” Guerin said, arguing politicians were no longer competing only with rivals but with “Mr Beast, weird AI meme content, cat videos and everything else” for attention.

He likened modern algorithms to Greek amphitheatres.

“In Ancient Greece, politicians would stand up in front of a crowd and the bits people responded to, they would say more,” he said. “The social media algorithm works in exactly the same way.”

But Guerin also said metrics such as followers and likes mattered less than many politicians assumed, particularly after platforms shifted towards algorithmic discovery. The real contest, he said, increasingly happened in private.

“When it comes to an election, the content that’s going to change your mind or my mind is probably going to be the infographic a family member sends, or a video that a close friend sends us,” he said.