Citywealth Brand & Marketing Awards: Is social media better at influence than face-to-face meetings?

Date: 26 Jun 2024

Karen Jones

In honour of this year’s Citywealth Brand & Marketing Awards, Editor and CEO Karen Jones does a deep dive into a controversial question. When presented at the Awards, the majority of the room recoiled at the thought. But could there be some substance to the claim?

Each year at the brand awards we review campaigns from the industry and discuss the pro’s and cons. We also see a trend in the industry to have less face-to-face meetings. So, with the election upon us in the UK I thought I would do a bit of my own finger-in-the-wind research to see which is best. Using our British politicians as samples.

Social media was first: I aggregated Facebook; Instagram; X; LinkedIn and Tik Tok followers and had a look on the latest YouGov poll to compare Rishi Sunak; Nigel Farage and Kier Starmer. I wondered if a tweet could sway the election or a door knock?

We have 66 million people in the UK and across all the socials I found (approx.):

• Sunak has 8.2 million followers.
• Farage has 4 million
• Kier has 2.1 million

I also found on YouGov that:

• Sunak is 55% disliked.
• Farage, 42%
• Kier, 38%

However, numbers aside, Sunak is by far the biggest Instagram star with 3.5 million followers. Farage is by far the biggest LinkedIn ‘loser’ with 1,300 followers. Starmer is woefully behind with only 2 million followers in total.

So, if Sunak sends out a broadcast he might get 4.4 million hate messages, but it is more than Starmer’s entire following.

But what it said to me also was with c66 million people in the UK:

• Sunak will not reach 58 million via social media
• Farage won’t reach 62 million
• Starmer will not reach 64 million

It also tells us that a prime minister with more followers, even if he receives more trolling or hate messages, can reach far more people and repeat messages like ‘Labour will tax you £2000 more’ at a click of a button. So social media does have its power to persuade..

It also gives you a real sense of how many people they aren’t reaching and how much door knocking all of them will have to do and how many places they will have to visit before election day. So door knocking is starting to inch ahead as the ideal strategy.

It is said to be the reason that Sunak called a snap election – to stop the Labour party getting out and door knocking. Which, if the metrics are right, backs this up.

So, as to whether social media is better than face to face, I think the above tells us two messages: your competition may have stronger social media numbers and can reach a segment, but good old-fashioned handshaking face to face is still the way to win the large majority of hearts and minds.