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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

In 2019, Scott Morrison managed to narrowly win a third term, despite polls placing the Coalition behind Labor for almost three years.

At the heart of the victory was a change in the way they campaigned, bringing in a pair of young strategists armed with a new weapon: low-quality memes.

The duo, called Topham Guerin, have become a go-to agency for conservative parties and have been hired by Peter Dutton ahead of the next federal election.

But their more controversial methods, including deepfakes and disinformation, are raising questions about the ethics of political campaigning in the digital age.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis, on the rise of Topham Guerin and the political power of bad memes.

It’s Tuesday, December 10.

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DANIEL:

So you've been looking into this digital creative agency, Topham Guerin. Who are they?

JASON:

Well, Topham Guerin, or TG as they sometimes refer to themselves, is an advertising company. You might call it a boutique marketing agency. It was formed in New Zealand in 2016 by two young whizz kids, Sean Topham and Ben Guerin. And they've grown pretty quickly since then. They've now got offices in London and Sydney as well as their headquarters in Auckland. And they've really, in that short amount of time, established themselves as a very disruptive force in the world of political communications. They're pretty astute at pumping out a lot of content very quickly that's very emotionally charged.

DANIEL:

Okay, so it was formed by these two young fellows in New Zealand. Tell me about some of the campaigns they’ve worked on.

JASON:

Well, their kind of breakthrough moment was actually in 2017, the New Zealand general election. They ran the digital comms for that campaign and the New Zealand Nationals won the most seats, but they weren't able to form a government. So it wasn't a huge victory, but they still did pretty well, well enough so that the Liberal Party here in Australia hired them to run the advertising for Scott Morrison's re-election campaign in 2019. And when Morrison won so unexpectedly, even he described it as a miracle. And not long after that win, Ben Guerin spoke at a right wing conference called the Friedman Conference to discuss PR strategy.

Audio Excerpt - Ben Guerin:

“You've got to surprise people. You've got to shock people. You've got to unlock an arousal emotion in people, right?”

JASON:

And this is really one of the first times where we saw Ben Guerin talking about where they really found success. And the key to it was using social media to engage older Australians with these kind of purposefully low quality memes. Ben Guerin described this as the the boomer memes strategy.

Audio Excerpt - Ben Guerin:

“In the peak point during the campaign, we were posting 30 posts a day and more than 250 a week. That means you have to generate and publish a new piece of content every 20 minutes. That's how you get what we call the boomer memes because you had to crank stuff out quickly. You couldn't spend too long doing a perfectly created, like artisanallu perfect graphic. You're going to slap some Calibri font on a shitty, you know, reused meme and you're going to publish it and then you get onto the next one. And you know what? That content is going to do better than the thing that your poor graphic designer spent a week on.”

JASON:

In the same presentation, Ben Guerin also referred to a Bill Shorten Game of Thrones meme which labelled Bill Shorten “the tax king”.

Audio Excerpt - Ben Guerin:

“We're taking it for granted that everyone knows that Bill is all about tax. We're moving one step on from that. What happens when you know that everything's about tax with Bill? Well, you know, you've got the bad joke meme, you've got the fact that he's been compared to Daenerys Targaryen. I think that's a compliment, actually. I think she's achieved wonders in the Game of Thrones world.”

JASON:

He admits it's not a particularly sophisticated or even well made meme.

Audio Excerpt - Ben Guerin:

“But the point is here that we're sort of unlocking different ways of talking about the issue, but every single thing that we're doing is relevant to the key message.”

JASON:

He also spoke about how they would whack short messages about tax next to pictures of cute dogs. And they really figured out how to weaponise these boomer memes and it was very effective.

DANIEL:

Really targeting the grandparents with that one Jase.

JASON:

Absolutely. And I guess achieving mastery on Facebook was really core to their strategy. They also worked on the 2019 general election campaign in the UK, which catapulted them onto the global stage. Topham created an advertisement for the Conservative Party, which featured Boris Johnson doing a parody of of that famous scene from the film Love Actually, where Keira Knightley's secret admirer turns up on the doorstep of her house and holds up a series of cards that declare his love for her.

Audio Excerpt - Juliet by Keira Knightley:

“It's carol singers.”

Audio Excerpt - Peter by Chiwetel Ejiofor:

“Give 'em a quid and tell them to bugger off.”

JASON:

And in the Conservative Party video entitled Brexit, Actually, it's Boris Johnson with the cards. And instead of declaring his love for the woman standing in the door, he's encouraging her to vote conservative. And the key message in that ad was let the Tory government finally get Brexit done.

Audio Excerpt - Boris Johnson:

“Enough. Enough. Let's get this done.”

JASON:

They were also widely condemned because during one of the leaders debates, which was Boris Johnson versus Jeremy Corbyn, Topham Guerin changed the name of the Conservative Party's Twitter account to Fact Check UK.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“You’d be forgiven for thinking that this was an independent fact checking site but the indication they are saying it's from CCHQ. And that’s what has people talking.”

JASON:

People believed it was misleading and they were accused of eroding public trust in digital platforms and, you know, blurring those lines between genuine fact checking and partisan propaganda.

DANIEL:

So, they've kind of pushed some ethical boundaries there in relation to digital campaigning. But is it against the law? Is it against the rules or anything like that?

JASON:

No, it's not against the rules or any regulation. And Sean Topham himself has defended it in an interview with The Spectator earlier this year.

Audio Excerpt - Sean Topham:

“Look, we were there to be playful and create some noise to get attention and eyeballs on the Conservative Party.

Audio Excerpt - Host:

“ Is a little bit of controversy sometimes a good thing on social media?”

Audio Excerpt - Sean Topham:

“A little bit of controversy can be a good thing on social media. And it's about making sure that that controversy relates back to an important message.”

JASON:

But it's also far from the only controversial thing that Tophan Guerin has done. They were hired to do the advertising for the Queensland Liberal National Party in the state election there in October and they created 465 custom video ads during the campaign. And TG also revealed that using artificial intelligence had been a really important part of of helping them turn these videos around very quickly.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“It looks like a video of the Premier, but it's not. This clip, posted on the Liberal National Party's TikTok account, has been created using artificial intelligence.”

JASON:

You know, one of the videos that created a bit of a controversy during that Queensland election was that deepfake video of then Queensland Premier Steven Miles dancing. And I think by itself it was pretty harmless, but it did raise some eyebrows about, you know, is this the beginning of deepfakes being a standard, go-to thing during election campaigns? And, you know, Steven Miles himself said it represented a pretty dangerous turning point. And so experts that I spoke to pose the question that, is this really the sort of thing that's in line with the ethical norms of being a professional communicator? And so while these guys have emerged as a go-to agency for conservative parties seeking to leverage digital media, I think there are really genuine concerns about disinformation and deepfakes that are used so often by this agency, particularly as we approach the next federal election.

DANIEL:

After the break - rebranding Peter Dutton.

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DANIEL:

So Jason, the consultancy group Topham Guerin have been engaged by the Liberal Party to work on the next federal election campaign. Do you have any sense about what that campaign is going to look like? More boomer memes for one?

JASON:

Well, a senior Liberal Party source did confirm to me that, yes, TG has been hired to work with the Federal Coalition and, of course, Peter Dutton as he heads into the campaign. And as for what that campaign might look like, I guess we could treat the recent Queensland campaign as a bit of a dress rehearsal. So I think we'll see some aggressive use of AI and deepfakes. But what other thing that the agency has done that's been effective has been using video platforms like TikTok to humanise politicians. We saw this in the New Zealand election last year, where they got the New Zealand Nationals leader Chris Luxon, who looks a little bit like Peter Dutton, tall, bald, known for being pretty no nonsense, and a lot of people might look at Chris Luxon and think that he’s probably never going to work on social media. But according to Sean Topham, they were able to work at revealing Chris Luxon’s sense of humour.

Audio Excerpt - Chris Luxon:

“A lot of you have said to me, look, Chris, you're good looking bald man. How do you keep your skin in such good condition? Well, it was two tricks in my skincare regime. I have a daily moisturiser Cerave, Cerave. Not sure how to say it, but it seems to work really well. You only need a little bit of this great daily moisturiser to go a long way. Unlike this government, we don't waste anything, not even the moisturiser.”

JASON:

And I think we could sort of see that as perhaps a bit of a signal as to how the agency is going to try and humanise Peter Dutton.

DANIEL:

Yeah, and I understand that Peter Dutton now has a TikTok account.

JASON:

Not only does he have a TikTok account, but he's using it. I think he's posted around 8 videos. He's doing exactly what Chris Luxon did.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“I know my first TikTok is supposed to be something fun, and I probably should say something that is or isn't demure.”

JASON:

He's got a video there about the family dog. The video I think that's got the most views is a proposal to ban foreigners and temporary residents from buying existing homes.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“You stay in while everyone's going out so that you can save a bit more. And you finally have enough to buy your first home. You put in a good offer only to be outbid by someone who doesn't even live in this country.”

JASON:

According to Guerin, he was on a podcast earlier this year explaining that the key test is whether or not the content is entertaining, so it's going to be interesting to see how they try to take that further. And of course the other goal is to try and create content that will ultimately get shared.

DANIEL:

So after 2019, losing the unloseable election, Labor must have realised they were outmanoeuvred by the Liberals online. Are they gearing up to have their own 24 hour meme factory?

JASON:

Well, they certainly learned the lessons of the defeat in 2019 and after that, they got together and created a new digital unit, which they deployed in the '22 election, and they ran that as a kind of rapid response newsroom so that they were able to push out content quickly. But as you know Daniel, this space, the online space, really has tended to be dominated by right wing groups, you know, in the last few years and we saw that especially during the Voice referendum campaign, where the Yes23 campaign was completely outmanoeuvred by groups like Advance, especially when it came to sharable content on platforms like TikTok, where the Yes23 campaign didn't even have a presence. One person I spoke to is Ariadne Frohman. She's a professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She's also a political sociologist. And she said, you know, in her view, there's a growing network of people who work exclusively for conservative parties and that they are very much in the ascendancy. The Voice campaign showed a serious risk for Labor to cede TikTok and, you know, other platforms to Peter Dutton. We all know that Anthony Albanese has yet to set up a TikTok account and Anthony Albanese will absolutely have to compete with him in that space.

DANIEL:

And finally, Jason, when you look at how agencies like Topham Guerin and, say, Advance in the Voice referendum, have maybe pushed some ethical boundaries around disinformation and political campaigns. Deepfakes and falsehoods are legal in political advertising in this country. Is there any consensus to change that?

JASON:

Well, first point I should make here is that both the major parties are using deepfakes and AI to create new political ads. The Labor Party has got a deepfake video out there of Peter Dutton also dancing. I mean, it's so obviously a deepfake, I don't get the sense that they're trying to trick me. I don't have too much of a problem with political parties using AI in the way that the rest of society is going to be using AI. You know, political campaigning does evolve with each election. And you can't stop change, can you? So we're going to have to be all quite vigilant in making sure that we are policing any attempt to genuinely fool voters into believing this is a real video of Anthony Albanese doing X, Y or Z. You know, then we've got to be vigilant about taking that sort of content down.

There's not really a consensus around, you know, what the rules are or what they should be. And I think this is going to be one of those things where we, you know, I guess, regulations and laws will evolve as the as the technology becomes more sophisticated.

DANIEL:

Jason, thank you so much for your time.

JASON:

Daniel, great to chat to you as always.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced an AFP Special operation taskforce to combat antisemitism.

It comes after the attack against the Adass Israel synagogue on Friday was declared a ‘likely’ terrorism incident by Victoria Police.

The designation means the attack will be investigated by a joint counter-terrorism team combining Victoria Police, the AFP and ASIO.

And,

The political fallout from the synagogue attack has continued, with Opposition leader Peter Dutton launching an extraordinary attack on Jewish Labor MP Josh Burns, whose electorate is home to the synagogue.

Dutton blamed Burns for ‘losing his voice’ and not speaking up against Palestinians fleeing Gaza being brought to Australia.

Burns, whose office has been the subject of anti-semitic attacks, said he works for his community every day and that ‘it does not serve the Jewish community to be arguing against ourselves’ he said.

I'm Daniel James. 7am will be back tomorrow.

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