‘No’ campaign’s non-traditional strategy for Voice referendum

The No campaign for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum has junked plans to create expensive TV ads and will instead ­devote its energy on a less obvious communication strategy. READ THEIR PLAN

The No campaign for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum has junked plans to create expensive TV ads and will instead ­devote its energy to pumping news stories into people’s ­social media feeds.

Research for the No campaign has revealed its best chance of killing the Yes vote is to saturate the social media feeds of undecided and “soft” Yes voters with real news stories from real media outlets rather than overt advertising.

The strategy is based on the belief that the more undecided and soft Yes voters know about the Voice, the less they like it.

Advance, the conservative activist group running the No case, has in recent months begun heavily promoting a Facebook page called Referendum News, which simply promotes mainstream media stories and targets them at ­undecided voters in battleground states.

Although the page is clearly authorised by the No case, it would not be immediately ­obvious to the people seeing the posts.

The No campaign is putting its efforts into amplifying new coverage of individuals such as former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe who are speaking out against the Voice. Picture: NCA NewsWire

“What we realised really early was that the lack of awareness and engagement on this issue made a traditional advertising campaign far less likely to succeed,” a source in the No campaign said.

“Our strategy was a communications strategy not an advertising strategy because the more people learn about the Voice, the less likely they are to vote for it. We just need to get the right content to the right voters and engage with them on their terms.”

The referendum will be held on Voice to Parliament later in 2023.

The No case has also created a Facebook page targeting the so-called “progressive No” vote in the inner cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

The page called Not Enough boasts material quoting former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe and other radical left-wing and Indigenous activists who have a problem with the Voice and have ­decided to oppose it.

Unless these social media users look closely at the authorisation on the page they might not realise it is being paid for by Advance The No campaign.

“As stroppy as they might get, every single piece of communications we do is appropriately authorised,” the source said.

The two Facebook pages have been seen by more than three million voters.

Referendum News has reached 1,291,200 people, delivering 2,745,531 impressions of content, while Not Enough has reached 1,840,613 voters delivering 5,119,105 impressions of content.

Referendum News is almost exclusively targeted at WA, SA, Tasmania and Queensland, reflecting the view of the No case that this is where the battle is going to be won or lost.