Game Over Christy

Summary

Game Over Christy was, quite literally, a game-changer. Working with BCFED, we managed to help rally progressive voters across BC and unseat Christy Clark at a time where another Liberal victory looked inevitable. In addition to changing the course of a provincial election, Game Over Christy was a major milestone for Point Blank: against international competition, it was named Best TV Ad at the 2018 Reed Awards. It also won Best Canadian Digital Ad.

Portfolio View

Background

With half a million members and counting, the BC Federation of Labour represents workers from affiliated unions across British Columbia. BCFED has labour roots over a century old, and is a proud member of the Canadian Labour Congress. 

Despite waning faith in incumbent Premier Christy Clark, British Columbians were poised to re-elect her Liberal party for another term in 2017. In January, BCFED engaged Point Blank to develop a social media campaign to rally the left and mobilize voters ahead of the May election.

The Challenge

From opinion research, we learned that British Columbians already had a smattering of fairly negative views about Christy Clark and were pessimistic about her leadership. However, these views had not yet cemented into a compelling, unified narrative. There was also a deep cynicism among the electorate about the likelihood that the NDP could beat her and form government.

Strategic Solution

Through analysis and research, we gained four insights that informed our campaign:

• Co-opt Premier Christy Clark’s relentless photo ops – a cornerstone of her past successful campaigns – by reframing them as hypocritical pandering. 
• Strengthen the connection between Christy Clark’s choices that have benefited her powerful friends and our audience’s everyday working class frustrations and struggles. 
• Avoid unsubstantiated or “mean” personal attacks in favour of justifiable criticisms to focus on real issues and avoid people’s negative views flipping to sympathy for the premier.
• Use a fun, irreverent tone to cut through the political cynicism and increase organic shareability.

Our three Game Over Christy spots seamlessly integrated these insights with award-winning animation to create a juggernaut social campaign. With razor-sharp satire, Game Over Christy cut through the cynicism. Animation allowed us to push our critique further than we could have with a traditional attack ad. We ensured our caricatures were based on real photos and that all criticisms were substantiated by factual information to bolster against what could have otherwise been perceived as an unfair personal attack on Clark.

Impact

Game Over Christy contributed to Christy Clark’s narrow defeat in the 2017 BC Election. The spots helped the NDP rally supporters and reach new audiences at a time when another Christy Clark victory was looking inevitable. The NDP ultimately defeated the BC Liberals and formed government. 

The campaign reached well beyond BCFED’s membership to non-union voters across the province, and young people in particular. The campaign provided a negative framing of Christy Clark as a “photo op” premier that stuck throughout the campaign.