Justin Trudeau’s hair and Thomas Mulcair’s beard are now starring as emojis as part of Hill+Knowlton Strategies’ coverage of the federal election.
The emojis are by far the most popular aspect of H+K’s election content, says Austina Tarvydas, corporate development manager at Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Toronto.
Aside from Trudeau’s hair and Mulcair’s beard, people can also download emojis for Stephen Harper’s hair. Also available are emojis for everything from robocalls and a broken down campaign bus to boxing gloves, a Conservative Party polo shirt and the viral YouTube campaign ad by independent candidate Wyatt Scott.
Tarvydas says the emojis “have generated tremendous engagement” on Twitter, driving 53% of H+K’s overall engagements and 30% of its total impressions in the last 30 days from only four tweets. “We’ve seen lots of conversation on Twitter, retweeting, responding and sharing either the legend of emojis or singling out the standout favourite hair emojis. Everyone loves the hair.”
The emojis had been downloaded 51,513 times as of Sept. 22, she says.
H+K has also launched the latest version of its Election Quarterback interactive predictor tool. It was last used by the firm for the Alberta election in May and in the 2014 Ontario election under the name Election Predictor. Election Quarterback allows participants to predict and share voting outcomes across the country and to see how potential changes in popular support can translate into wins and losses on election night.
The tool is now available in both English and French and its math has been refined to make it more accurate, says Corey Hogan, director of engagement strategies at H+K in Calgary. Once the list of candidates is finalized, friends will also be able to create leagues “to see who is right ultimately,” he adds.
Hogan says Election Quarterback grows in popularity the closer it gets to election date. “We expect thousands of people will take the opportunity to run through it.”
The tools serves as a simplified version of what the firm does in its election analysis for clients. “Elections are a great opportunity for Hill+Knowlton to showcase the wide breadth of expertise and different talents and things people didn’t necessarily know we had,” Hogan says, “like the ability to create the technical tools that run detailed election analysis or our creative department which is relatively new.”
H+K is also keeping track of polls, party promises and policies on its Road to #Elxn42 hub.
