On the launch of the "Tory Momentum"

It’s fun to watch the Tories try to launch their own Momentum. “Activate”.

From the point of view of professional social media, it's a hack job. Amateurish. Almost absurdly so. By way of example let’s have a look at their first attempt at a meme - a stock photo of Jeremy (I'm assuming they paid the stock image rights rather than just copying it off the web), followed for some reason by Admiral Akbar’s catchphrase “it’s a trap”.

First, let’s remember that Twitter is mostly read on mobile devices. Recent estimates put mobile use of Twitter at 85% of traffic. So you’d think the Tory attempt to copy Momentum - a grass-roots campaign typified by its deep understanding of social media - would at least check how their first meme looked on mobile

On mobile, you can see the top half of the meme - Jeremy, two thumbs up, and the Labour slogan “for the many not the few”. You can’t see the alleged punchline though, unless you click through, because it’s lost below the fold. See my photo, above.

On mobile, and therefore for 85% of visitors to this new Tory movement, their first meme is just a (weirdly blue) advertisement for the Labour party, complete with a reiteration of Labour's campaign slogan "for the many, not the few". If you’re going to make memes for Twitter, it’s best to get someone who knows how Twitter works and knows what "mobile first" means to help with the design. (Protip - make your Twitter memes the right size for Twitter. Canva offers a number of free templates which will do it for you.)

In other entertainments from this Tory masterclass in how not to do design and social media UXUI, the logo doesn’t make any sense. Quite apart from being basically the Activision logo, as a number of people pointed out on Twitter yesterday, it also appears to read “Acti the square root of ate”.

There’s also already two mildly amusing (if profane, possibly NSFW) parody accounts, which will presumably get taken down once the real version sends off a cease and desist for either copyright infringement of their logo or passing off (either would do). If you want to while away five minutes with a slightly amusing parlour game, see how long it takes people to tell for sure whether this one, this one or this one is a parody or the real thing. 

So, on day one, let's just say - good try. Thanks for the ad. Shame only 1500 followers saw it, but if you want to spend your time putting an ad for the Labour leader in front of 1500 Tories it can't do any harm.