We Gave an X
A round-up of I Give an X, our anti-apathy campaign for the UK General Election which reached 480,000 people.
In the run up to the 2015 UK General Election, much was written about the disengagement between voters and politicians. This led to a widespread prediction of voter apathy that was fuelled by vocal non-voters like Russell Brand.
To tackle this disengagement, Naresh Ramchandani and Marina Willer launched I Give an X, a campaign that encouraged people to take pride in their vote. Living online, it consisted of a website with 93 downloadable Xs, a powerful video manifesto encouraging people to vote, and a link to the voter registration form.
The ask was simple: visit the I Give An X website, pick an X to download and use it as your profile picture on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram with #igiveanx. The goal was to appeal to young people, who traditionally make up a majority of non-voters. The aim was that by creating a virtual badge of pride for users, the campaign would influence people in their social circles as well.
Our #igiveanx hashtag reached 480,000 people and a third of visitors to our website downloaded an X to use. The campaign ran for a month and to keep our content exciting we enlisted the help of talented creatives to create their own Xs to be featured. They included Paula Scher, Harry Pearce, Kate Moross, Spin Studio, Sara Fanelli, Tiernan Douieb and Lewis Parker.
Our Xs were downloaded by prominent figures including Armando Iannucci (the creator of The Thick of It and Veep) and Rick Edwards (TV presenter and author of None of the Above). The campaign was covered by The Guardian, Quartz, Mashable, It’s Nice That, Design Week, The Drum and Branding Magazine.
In a final push, we tweeted 99 reasons to vote across the 15 hours the polls were open on election day as a constant reminder of the importance of taking part. As the results came in it was announced that voter turnout was its highest since Tony Blair’s landslide victory in 1997. Although we cannot claim the credit, we are very proud to have been part of an election where democratic pride prevailed.
