Viral campaigners Led By Donkeys are setting up an initiative to counter the Conservatives’ planned onslaught of Facebook advertising during the last 10 days of the election.
After the Tories unleashed more than 2,600 adverts onto Facebook in just 24 hours earlier this week, the guerrilla campaigners want to counter the splurge.
While it is not known how much the Conservatives has spent on Facebook advertising, the party has dipped into its war chest of millions to far outspend Labour and the Lib Dems by far on social media.
MORE: One third of Boris Johnson’s Twitter followers are fake or ‘bots’Now in a David-and-Goliath fight, Led By Donkeys are crowdfunding a much more modest amount to get the public talking with their own array of adverts.
“We’ve spent the last few weeks creating the kind of content that persuades people to change their minds,” they said on their crowdfunding page. “We’ve been testing it to find out what works and what doesn’t. Now we’re ready to roll it out with serious money on Facebook and Instagram.
“We’ve worked out how to reach undecided voters in areas where the election result will be decided.”
The group has become infamous for its creative campaigns, ranging from politicians’ inconvenient quotes arrayed on public billboards, to stunts such as projecting party lies onto the side of the Houses of Parliament.
They argue that their goal of £100,000 can have an effect in the face of the Tories’ millions because of their viral success, which sees new stunts and videos shared on social media to thousands of people instantly.
MORE: Heavy Facebook users have more extreme political views, suggests new researchMeanwhile, the Conservatives have come under heavy criticism for the misuse of social media, and were branded “misleading” by Twitter when they party’s communications office briefly attempted to rebrand as an independent fact-check service.
“One advantage we have over the Conservatives is that people love to share our films,” they wrote. “That means once a handful of people are shown them they spread virally to other voters.”
They added: “We might not have the millions Johnson has raised from his billionaire backers, but we do have you – thousands of people up and down the country who don’t want Boris Johnson to cheat his way to an election win and ram through his disastrous Brexit plans.”
Within one hour of launch, the Led By Donkeys crowdfunder had already reached half of its goal.
The crowdfunder can be viewed here.
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