Operation Black Vote exists to ensure racial justice and equality throughout the UK. They seek to inspire minority communities to engage with the government in order to address the persistent race inequalities in areas such as: education, health and employment.

In October 2019, Operation Black Vote wished to create a campaign that would fundamentally change the outcome of a UK autumn 2019 general election in favour of Britain’s youth.

Who did they want to target?

Young people. Every British citizen over 18 is entitled to vote. But to do so they need to register and voter registration and likelihood to vote is much low amongst young people, of all ethnicities. Though they have enormous power should they chose to use it.

What did we want them to do?

We wanted them to register to vote.

The creative solution backing the campaign was “when you don’t vote, other people will speak for you”. There is no lack of opinions among young Brits but as long as you don’t register to vote, you’re allowing someone else to speak for you. More specifically, elected officials to speak for you.

And with choice quotes such as “I would go further and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes” (Boris Johnson, Prime Minister) and “A good wife doesn’t disagree with her master in public” (Dominic Rabb, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs), we had plenty of ammunition to get our audience angry about.

The 2019 general election in the UK was acritical. Held in the eve of Brexit its outcome could thwart the plan that many young people were opposed to or accelerate it.

Our problem is a sense amongst the young and marginalised that voting is pointless, that your views are ignored anyway.

This is understandable, given the structural racism of British politics and the emphasis on the view of older voters. But when people don’t vote politicians will still claim to speak for you. And those politicians may hold views that are diametrically opposed to views that you find offensive and disgusting.

Our approach was to draw the attention of young and BAME voters that are eligible but unregistered, to this issue and their responsibility for the voices that attack and undermine them.

Given voter registration is so easy using a mobile phone, the emphasis was on reaching our audiences predominantly through their social platforms.

This online film placed the shocking and divisive opinions of current serving UK politicians from all the main parties, into the mouths of prominent and popular influences amongst for our audience. Specifically, opinions that the audience know those influencers couldn’t possibly hold themselves to maximise the impact of the work and the incredulity of the audience. Those opinions covered race, religion, women, sexuality and climate change all issues of importance to our young audiences.

To voice what we called ‘fake views’ we used the talents and following of a number of significant influencers and celebrities including Nathalie Emmanuel, Nadia Rose, Ash Sarkar, Jermain Jackman and Will Poulter.

The film concludes by showing the faces of the politicians that were quoted and the line “These are real quotes from UK politicians. When you don’t vote, other people speak for you.” And resolves with a call to action to register.

Since the launch of the campaign, OBV and it’s message received huge attention. It received a 5 minute expose on the organisation the day it launched on Channel 4 news, with a particular focus on why young people don’t register or vote.

The campaign was viewed more than 1 million times online.

It received press in both industry and non-industry publications.

More importantly however, the campaign had a pivotal role in adopting OBV’s Race Equality Manifesto into Labour’s own Race & Faith manifesto.

“Equally important was the fact that I was able to use the publicity and our data to persuade the Labour- the biggest beneficiary of the 'Black vote' to adopted almost every single Race Equality Manifesto pledge, unprecedented in British politics.” Founder and Director of OBV.

Oh and an extra 50k young people registering to vote in one day, which was the point.