Research showed us that the motivation to vote for local elections has been declining for years. Although voting is obliged in Belgium, more than 1 out of 5 people with a right to vote did not vote at the last elections. Belief in local governance was at an all-time low, while at the same time more than half of the population would like to have more say in local issues.

For the local elections of 2018, our client De Morgen - a leading Flemish newspaper - wanted its readers to feel part of the political process and help them have their say. Furthermore, they wanted to show their readers how their team of journalists live their ethos of not only answering the questions, but also questioning the answers.

Thus they asked us to create an engagement campaign that got people actively involved with the process leading up to the elections.

We gave readers the power to directly ask questions to their politicians, thus finding out what the local elections were really about. Instead of an uninterested “f#ck the elections” we gave readers the power to “FAQ the elections” (meaning frequently asked questions) By FAQ'ing politicians and issues we put the power back where it belongs, in the hands of the readers.

We decided to focused our campaign on the two main battleground cities of Gent and Antwerpen. Both cities were politically the most important, in the light of the Belgian federal elections of 2019, and had enough relevance for our readers.

Therefore, we prompted readers in the first phase of the campaign with example FAQs that were really local and important to most people. Everything from drug trafficking to traffic jams, to air quality and safety became fodder to FAQing the politicians.

Via a simple Whatsapp number, readers in the battleground cities of Antwerp and Gent could send in their Frequently Asked Questions about the things that really matter in their communities. And surprisingly, or not, that wasn’t the stuff that was in the party programs.

We received hundreds of questions, and forced the politicians to answer.

Now it was time for our team of journalists to question these answers, and check if everything was feasible.

Every day, we held a politician accountable during a live streamed Q&A with our readers in our election caravan.

And this all led up to 2 big debates we hosted and that were broadcasted live.

• We received over 300 high quality questions that were posed to the politicians. These really tested them as they were beyond what was written in the party manifestos. The questions related to the things that really mattered to the electorate.

• We hosted 2 live streamed political debates, that both sold out in just one week and generated over 81k online views.

• Our campaign also generated a never-ending stream of content, with over 430k views for our social videos.

• About 2.5k people signed in on the new DM WhatsApp channel

In the end, we gave back the elections to whom they belong to. The voters.