The main objective of this project is to exchange knowledge and experience of liberal parties in building a permanent engagement with citizens and a successful permanent campaign based on storytelling and emotions. More precisely, a well-established political party – which has proven to be successful in advocating liberal solutions nonstop – will be matched with a rather new start-up party. Hence, both will be in the position to learn from each other, in terms of developing strategies to effectively engage with citizens and keep on doing so throughout election cycles.
The project started with a dinner on Thursday evening.On Friday morning Milosz Hodun, board member of the European Liberal Forum, welcomed participants, introduced the programme, the “Tell Me Your Story” series and the ELF itself. Michal Simecka, Vice President of Progressive Slovakia and lead candidate of the PS-Spolu coalition list to the European Parliament, welcomed participants and explained briefly the story behind his movement, created only one year ago.
Ruben, advisor to Dutch minister of migration, run an interactive workshop about how to interact with the voters. Participants worked in pairs to present a process of communicating a problem that is important for them for personal reasons, using their own emotions. At the end of the sessions every participant made a presentation and everyone else in the group gave a feedback. The session stressed how important emotions are in building a successful campaign story. Ruben showed also best examples of how VVD uses emotions in campaigning and how it collects data necessary to run a winning campaign. The project continued with a session on manifesto writing. Participants reflected on what the most effective way of creating a party platform is: what are the interactive tools, what data and research could be used for the purpose.
In the second block of the day Dalibor Jakus, Vice President of the Zagreb branch of HNS (Croatia) presented his organization and they way it campaigns. Croatian participant was presented for the first time at “Tell Me Your Story”. The last presentation was done by Lubomir Ondrejkovic, campaign manager of Progressive Slovakia. He explained what the campaign strategy behind 2018 municipal election was when Matus Vallo supported by Progressive Slovakia became a mayor of Bratislava. Later he presented details of current presidential campaign of Zuzana Caputova. Her campaign and especially a story of a hero, story of a fearless fighter for human rights, the campaign says, elevated her to second position in polls. Eventually Lubmir Ondrejkvic explained how he designed a data driven campaign for the EP elections and the story the party will be telling to the public for next 3 months.
