In the UK, a crucial Mayoral election was due to take place on May 2nd.?

The problem was, since Brexit, turnout to the elections have been falling - and one generation was ‘refusing’ to turn up to the polling stations.

In England, young people are the least likely to vote in the elections and 30% of 18-34y.o. are not Registered to Vote (compared with only 3% of over 65y.o.).

As a not-for-profit organisation who is dedicated to getting young people to the ballot box, charity My Life My Say had to do something about it.

Our challenge was to tackle youth political disinterest and encourage young Brits to get into the electoral roll.

The brief from My Life My Say asked for a non-partisan creative campaign to get 18-34y.o. in England Registered to Vote by the registration deadline on the 16th of April.

We used a behavioural science model (COM-B) that looks at Capability, Motivation and Opportunity to identify the barriers and opportunities to change young Brits behaviours to voting.

First, we recognised that the underlying problem of youth ‘turnout to the polling stations’ is the problem of Voter Registration. For young people to capable of voting, we had to get them into the electoral roll.

Trust in politics is in an all-time low.

There is a growing disillusionment towards politics amongst young generations, a sense of frustration and powerlessness that leads to apathy to voting.

But while 18-34y.o. are the least likely group to vote, they are the most likely to be negatively affected by government decision-making. Their lack of participation in elections produces a bias in public policy making, where policies on everything from renting to TfL charges are skewed in favour of an older generation of ‘active voters’.

We had to motivate young people to step in and start making decisions for themselves.

This generation ‘don’t like’ to vote in the elections. But the reality is…they love to vote. Young people across the country get very passionate about a cultural phenomenon where voting is a crucial part of the process - and where they see in real time the impact their votes have.

Reality TV. 930,000 people voted to decide the champions of Britain’s Got Talent.

800,000 people voted for their favourite couple to win the Love Island final.

Young people are 68% more likely to vote in reality TV shows than in elections.

Our strategic insight was that if they can vote to change the lives of strangers on TV, they could care to vote to make a difference to their own lives.

By highlighting young people already vote on a daily basis, we had an opportunity to extend this behaviour to the political sphere.

Creative Approach: Our solution was to convince young people that they are, in fact, already expert voters. And that their vote can now change their own lives.

We started by developing a simple and powerful call-to-action: ‘You already vote, so vote’.

This powerful message uses identity priming, a commitment technique from Behavioural Science to remind young people that they already participate in voting—for their favourite reality TV stars—nudging them to apply this behaviour to voting in elections.

But young people are hesitant to be ‘told of’ about ‘politics’ and more likely to be influenced by people they trust. So, we needed to get young people’s circle of trust to motivate their electoral participation.

We had to use the right messengers.

Who better to encourage young people to vote than the people they’ve already voted for?

We’ve recruited some of reality TV's biggest stars who had already won the hearts and votes of young Brits in their favourite shows, from the likes of Sharon Gaffka and Molly Marsh from Love Island and Will Best from Big Brother.

Across their social channels, celebrities thanked their fans for ‘voting for them’ on the Reality TV shows and then encouraged their army of followers to ‘vote again’, now ‘for themselves’, by sharing the Voter Registration link.

Different studies also indicates that young people are the group most likely to procrastinate. We knew our audience was going to leave registering to vote to the very last minute.

We had to choose the right moment and galvanise a sense of ‘urgency’.

We’ve decided to encourage young people to register in the moment they would feel most compelled to act: the last two days before registration closed.

To create a sense of urgency, celebrities reminded people about the deadline day and asked their followers to register ‘on the spot’.

We had to meet them ‘where they are’.

Celebrities shared their messages across all their social channels, such as Instagram and X.

Striking scannable OOH that evoked to memorable moments from reality TV shows linked to important issues for young people hit the streets of the country.

Our campaign film, narrated by the iconic voice of Big Brother Marcus Bentley, hit cinemas across the capital.

And we took our talent to live TV shows and news desks.

‘You Already Vote, So Vote’ not only created a national debate about youth voting in Britain, but it has awakened young generations to stand on their own two feet and start voting for themselves.

The campaign was picked up by national press delivering a combined earned reach of 1.7billion.

113,044 people aged 18-34 registered to vote in just 24 hours of our campaign going live. A 350% surge compared to the day before and a 90% surge compared to 2021 Mayoral elections.