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There is little doubt Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver’s recent election victory was thorough, decisive, and a scathing rebuke of the previous administration’s approach to municipal governance. The aim here is not to underscore what pundits and political experts have concluded at length: that ABC Vancouver won big. All of ABC’s 18 candidates for council, park board, school board, and mayor won by margins of at least 19,000 votes.
Someday, somewhere there will be a chapter in a political science textbook chronicling how Kareem Allam and Mike Witherly, the architects of the campaign, pulled off this impressive feat. It even registered for watchers in the US: After the election, a political science professor in California reached out asking to connect with campaign staff who could provide a presentation to students. Journalists on election night described the party as the “ABC juggernaut.”
My interest instead is to explore one of the more important facets to any political or social campaign: the communications theories at play and the strategies informed by them. The importance of communications has been best summed up in this article by award-winning former journalist and crisis communications expert Renu Bakshi.
“Journalists on election night described the party as the ABC juggernaut.”
As the campaign entered into full swing, I saw a unique opportunity in that I was concurrently preparing for my APR accreditation and a 3.5-hour final exam I was to write in November. The year-long program focused on how communication theory should underpin all strategies, and our final exam even included a question on the communications approach one ought to take in relation to the Downtown Eastside, where homelessness and addiction had become a flashpoint and an area of public relations vulnerability for the incumbent mayor. While cramming in late-night study sessions over the span of several months, I recognized immediately the theories I was reading about in textbooks playing out in real life with shocking efficacy. Watching the campaign unfold and communications strategies deploy was like the lab learning of a university course, blending textbook theory with real-world application.
Across the city, it is clear that Ken Sim was favoured among the vast majority of voters. His support was both broad and deep. Notably, he won big shares of votes in Yaletown (see Roundhouse Community Centre on map) and the Westend (see Westend Community Centre on map), home to Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ community. Residents in both areas had ardently raised concerns around public safety stemming from property crime and a string of random stranger attacks reported in the media. Public safety became the focal point and key issue where many of the communications theories and strategies they informed took root and found fuel.
Agenda building and agenda setting theory
Agenda building is the process by which organizations focused on a cause can catch the attention of the media and public officials—through activism and advocacy—to put their cause on the reporting agenda and thereby drive change. Agenda setting refers to how the media can make an issue top-of-mind for the public by deciding it is worthy of coverage and reporting on it. This theory emphasizes the power of the media in setting the public and policy agendas, whereas “agenda building theory posits a reciprocity between the media and other sources or society.”
Both theories clearly informed strategy leading up to the October 15 election. Police would hold regular press briefings and share frequent updates on violent offenders and random stranger attacks, which the media would then report on. It was a consistent drumbeat highlighting the issue of public safety that proved extremely effective. Critics would call this approach unethical in that it trained attention on what they would regard as a relatively minor issue—likening it even to propaganda. But ask the victims of the attacks, the small businesses struggling with near-weekly break-ins, and the seniors who were being assaulted in Chinatown, and the view would be quite different. Public safety was a major concern for many living downtown, and the media responded to those concerns.
“Public safety became the focal point and key issue where many of the communications theories and strategies they informed took root and found fuel.”
As a former journalist, I can confirm that most stories involving this degree of conflict and shocking violence would be newsworthy. But the issue of public safety in this context also touches on many other news determinants journalists use to decide on coverage, including currency, proximity, and timeliness.
Also responding to these concerns, Ken Sim and ABC Vancouver made public safety one of the key areas of their campaign through their “100 police officers and 100 mental health nurses” election promise. Media widely and consistently reported on this—thanks in part to the protest it generated—and thereby firmly tethered a concrete, easily understandable, solutions-oriented action to ABC Vancouver in the public mind. It seems to have persuaded many voters. ABC Vancouver earned a commanding majority of all votes across council, mayor, park board, and school board. In council, the party earned nearly triple the votes of their nearest competitor, Forward Together, which failed to get a single councillor elected.
“All of ABC’s 18 candidates for council, park board, school board, and mayor won by margins of at least 19,000 votes.”
Another major media event was the party’s unprecedented endorsement from the Vancouver Police Union, with some Downtown Eastside activists suggesting this would backfire and mobilize support against the party. But the election outcome suggests otherwise. All seven ABC council candidates—including a former police officer—were elected by comfortable margins and the party now enjoys a “super majority” in the halls of power.
This suggests that the union’s endorsement had a positive effect and that the public is firmly supportive of public safety measures. Though critics rightly point to upstream interventions like poverty reduction and social services as more durable ways to address public safety concerns, these can take years to implement. Those same critics failed to articulate their own vision for near-term public safety as ABC Vancouver was able to do. This was a key oversight as the public was yearning for feasible solutions and it is generally not effective complaining about an issue for which you present no practical alternative.
Framing theory
According to framing theory, journalists make critical decisions about a story—the people to interview, narrative to advance, and order in which to relay information—based on how a story is initially presented. This can be done through discourse on social media or in news story meetings that occur at the beginning of the day in most newsrooms. How something is presented (called “the frame”) influences the choices people make about how to process that information.
Throughout the campaign, public safety advocates and police characterized the violence as “random stranger attacks.” This framing was key. It was a simple, tidy, emotion-inducing phrase that set the tone and influenced how media stories took shape, namely, the people journalists chose to interview, the line of questioning they adopted, and the information they chose to articulate in their stories. It also influenced how the audience received those stories and formed opinions based on them.
Hierarchy of needs theory
“In a 1943 paper titled A Theory of Human Motivation, American psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that human decision-making is undergirded by a hierarchy of psychological needs.”[1] In a communications context, people pay attention to messages based on these needs, which below have been arranged in order from the most basic physiological needs for survival to the most complex ones dealing with self-fulfillment:
Appealing to more foundational needs (the orange and red) will be more effective than needs such as esteem and self-actualization, which are higher up Maslow’s hierarchy. People are often less concerned about these until their more basic needs are met. Therefore, narratives and communications around public safety—connected to the “safety” need—are inherently more resonant and persuasive for most audiences, and this was the type of messaging supporters of ABC Vancouver were communicating with a consistent and vigorous cadence.
Cultivation theory
Cultivation theory states that mass media, especially television/video, persuade people to believe things through consistent exposure. They “cultivate” belief. In the relatively compressed timeframe of a municipal election, it was television broadcast news that played this role by reporting on (and showing) downtown violence and disorder as a function of journalism (i.e., bearing witness). This helped persuade more people to care, and care more fervently, about the issue by bringing it to them through the powerful medium of video.
People-centered storytelling
In my view, one of the most effective communications theories demonstrated in this and many other successful campaigns was that of people-centered narrative building—finding a central character who typifies the spirit of one’s campaign and using their story to articulate key messages and justify claims. In this case, it was the story of Harold Johnson, a lovable, unassuming Chinatown security guard who was viciously attacked while on patrol.
The Chinatown community and public rallied to his side and expressed outrage. Many saw their own father, uncle, or friend in Harold, who candidly shared his story with television cameras. And therein lies the power of people-centered storytelling: It is relatable and tied to emotion, which helps make messaging more resonant and memorable for the receiver. People-centered storytelling is the foundation upon which journalism is built. It is also the oldest form of information transmission, adopted by ancient societies and cultures throughout history. The Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita are all seminal religious texts that wrap their teachings and tenets around stories (of people) and narrative.
Intuitively we know this is effective, but it has also borne out in research that reveals connecting messaging to emotion and narrative encodes that information in your brain much better than direct exposure to facts. One of the first pieces of advice I give when consulted on communications campaigns is: find your character. Find your “Harold.” Don’t obsess over backgrounders, studies, reports, and executive summaries. These mean very little to a lay audience. Unless you have your “character,” your messaging will disappear into the online din, especially in the current climate where shortened attention spans are often adrift in a crowded ecosystem of content.
Comparing the top two mayoral candidates’ responses to the Harold Johnson assault, it is easy to recognize why ABC Vancouver received the majority of votes across all city divisions. They earned more than double their nearest competitor, OneCity, which garnered only 12.6% of the total vote. Incumbent mayor Kennedy Stewart refused an invitation by Johnson’s wife to tour Chinatown and witness the state of disorder in the area. That made him appear disinterested and apathetic; it was a huge misstep. Conversely, Ken Sim held a high-profile press event thanking Johnson for his service while walking the neighbourhood with him and greeting residents. The two responses could not have been more different and solidified for many the critiques that Kennedy Stewart was uninterested in addressing public safety issues while Ken Sim was truly committed. It was a brilliant move to seize on this opportunity.
A people-centered storytelling approach has been used extremely effectively in other contexts. In San Franscico, the tragic death of Hanako Abe brought the issue of lenient sentencing into sharper relief and fueled the successful recall of former district attorney Chesa Boudin. Stories like the one below are effective tools to propel a powerful narrative and inspire change. Tears from a grieving mother override any talking point or well-reasoned argument the opposing side can muster. In short, OneCity, Forward Together, and Vision were utterly defenseless against the Harold Johnson story.
In Vancouver, the park board and school board were similarly dominated by ABC candidates. Interestingly, Christopher Richardson, a candidate who was dropped by ABC Vancouver, was still elected. On voting day, the ABC affiliation was still attached to his name on the ballot, suggesting that voters were voting for the entire party rather than individual candidates. This further underscores the strength of their brand and how effectively they were able to communicate their ideas and relate to voters.
Recommendations
Despite the near-perfect crafting and execution of campaign communications, in my view, the main reason ABC was so successful was its ground game. It was aggressive and unrelenting, with candidates attending events and canvassing neighborhoods winning votes one person at a time. Their base of support was multi-racial (with strong support from Asian, Jewish, and Punjabi communities) and included small business owners, families, young professionals, and members of Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ community (ABC Vancouver has the most LGBTQ+ candidates). This type of broad-base support is cultivated on the streets in real life, not from behind a computer screen. As one of their campaign staff rightly noted: “There are no undecided voters on Twitter.”
“In short, OneCity, Forward Together, and Vision were utterly defenseless against the Harold Johnson story.”
Real change happens in the real world, not the echo chambers of social media where your audience already supports you. OneCity, ABC Vancouver’s main rival, tried to capitalize on the enthusiasm of their younger online audience by releasing a catchy music video (see below).
But as evidenced by the outcome, the enthusiasm failed to follow to the voting booths. The music video did little to invigorate and galvanize younger voters, and by any reasonable measure, it was a bit painful to sit through.
There are, however, key communications lessons one can take from this election outcome:
- Public safety matters; and people care about it. It connects to fundamental human needs, and policy solutions need to speak clearly and simply to those needs rather than being abstractions outside the realm of possibility. If your solutions cannot be articulated on a cue card or during an elevator ride to the 12th floor, they are too long, complicated and will not resonate. “100 more police officers and mental health nurses” is immediately understood.
- Twitter is not real life. Social media tends to attract the most polarized communities who use it as an outlet for their anger. While this can be a useful way to know and understand some of the issues, it is important to remember these communities by their very nature (on the extreme left and right) are not representative of the mainstream. And often, the loudest and most strident voices are the least representative. Decisions should never be made solely on what is trending on Twitter.
- Don’t poke the bear. As David Shor, Barack Obama’s former campaign data scientists, said: “Not mobilizing your enemies is just as important as mobilizing your base.” In this election, it was clear that the Vancouver Police Union’s endorsement of ABC Vancouver was a key turning point that solidified ABC’s win. One must ask what factors or events inspired them to involve themselves in such an unprecedented way. Isolate those events and factors, and avoid them. Why create enemies—especially powerful ones—and make your climb that much steeper?
- Find your “Harold.” Key messages articulated and justified by people-centered stories will always find firmer footing in the minds of your audience.
- Make and rely on friends in high places. Wealthy, well-connected supporters can give campaigns a huge competitive advantage. One structural weakness of many grassroots communities is that they, by virtue of the social circles they keep, lack the contacts, friends, and allies with the financial resources and technical expertise to craft and sustain effective campaigns. They also often eschew building connections with such valuable communities as it runs afoul of their preferred worldview. Additionally, grassroots, activist communities tend to surround themselves with like-minded peers who are therefore unable to recognize and diagnose weaknesses in approach or execution because everyone thinks the same and cannot see blind spots obvious to others. Having well-resourced allies and well-connected networks allows campaigns to attract the best talent, consultants, and fund leading edge technology and data gathering methods that can chart a clear path to victory. Often, these resources are found in people with connections to the private sector as that is where the top talent typically migrate.
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