The Tinder Pollie

In the 2017 Queensland state election, Poli PR Founder, Saraya Beric, ran as an independent candidate, against a sitting MP in a safe Liberal National seat on the Gold Coast. With no party machine, minimal budget and no established public profile, the challenge was getting noticed at all, especially by voters who had switched off from politics, and media who usually don't bother covering a seat that has no chance of changing hands. This campaign was designed to show what can be achieved when you think outside the box and use unconventional marketing methods. It worked!

Poli PR took the campaign to where those voters already were: dating app Tinder. The candidate's profile made it clear they were looking for votes and not dates, with the sitting member cast as the match you swipe past and our candidate as the perfect match. The idea was simple, funny and made to be shared.

We built the campaign around it: the Tinder profile and creative, a website, targeted Facebook and Twitter advertising, brochures, how-to-vote cards and t-shirts for pre-poll and polling day. Then we pitched the story.

The media picked it up fast. The campaign ran on the Today Show, The Project, Sky News and national midday news, on Seven and Nine Gold Coast news, on 2GB with Ben Fordham and across Sea FM, Gold 92.5 and Hot Tomato. The Gold Coast Bulletin ran it on the front page.

On Facebook alone the campaign reached 26,900 people with 79,100 impressions. It became the most widely covered independent campaign of the 2017 Queensland election, and the candidate took around 5% of the vote, well above the 1 to 2% an unknown independent can usually expect.