How Togetherwith and Zonajobs Shared Politicians’ CVs with Voters Ahead of Argentina’s Elections

“When we choose a candidate for any job, the first thing we do is see their CV. Why don't we do the same with politicians? Why do we only believe their campaign promises?” 

Regardless of which democratic country you live in, when it comes around to elections and deciding where to place your precious vote, you will most likely be informing your dutiful decision using not much more than pie-in-the-sky political promises – claims and slogans provided by the candidates, all of which are yet to be substantiated, guaranteed or fact-checked.

Working with Latin America’s leading job portal, Zona Jobs, Argentine creative agency Togetherwith created a (Bronze PR Lion-winning) campaign that asks the question: if we are appointing someone to arguably “the most important job” in a country, shouldn’t we be able to read the candidates’ CVs? 

Achieving success with the project in the agency’s first year at Cannes, the 'Behind the Most Important Job' campaign took place during the Primary, Open, Simultaneous and Mandatory elections (PASO) in Argentina and provided the voting public with CVs for each of the parties’ candidates. The initiative was designed to raise awareness that these elections decided some of the country’s most important jobs, and to hopefully help voters base their choices on the training and talent of each candidate, and not only on campaign promises.

To discuss how these CVs were created and distributed to Argentine voters, the difficulty with engaging politicians in such a campaign and the results that the project produced, LBB’s Ben Conway caught up with Togetherwith’s CCO and partner, Lulo Calió.

LBB> Where did the idea for this campaign come from and why is this campaign needed in Argentina? What is the political and social context for this campaign?

Lulo> ZonaJobs is the market-leading job portal in LATAM. It’s part of the classified advertising platform Navent (now Jobint), which has been our partner since 2015. The curriculum vitae is the cover letter of every working person looking for a job. However, when voting at election time, citizens do not usually have access to them. Political communication, especially before an election – at least in Argentina – is practically based on promises. Future actions that the candidates say they are going to do but that do not correlate with reality. If when we choose a candidate for any job, the first thing we do is see their CV, why don't we do the same with politicians? Why do we only believe their campaign promises? 

From these questions, the idea of the campaign arose, to base the elections on their training and talent. The goal is that we can all learn more about politicians before voting, raising awareness that we are choosing the most important jobs in the country. 

LBB> How did the idea develop from creating CVs for politicians to posting them as billboards? And how was the process of designing the CVs? Was this a collaborative process with ZonaJobs? 

Lulo> From the beginning, the idea was to democratise the information about the politicians and put it where anyone can access and read their resumes. We asked them for their resumes to be disseminated on the public highway. Likewise, the CVs of the candidates were uploaded on a web page. All of them [the candidates] were reached. We published the information they shared. The billboards were made with their official resumes (they were not made by us).

LBB> What was the public’s response? Was there a large reaction on social media?

Lulo> The campaign had multiple indicators of success, all of them as different as they were complementary.

- The campaign reached more than 8 million digital users (Argentine population: 45 million).
- On YouTube, a VTR of 100% of 56% was achieved.
- The campaign landing page had an average visit time of six minutes!
- Organic coverage was achieved in the 20 main media outlets in Argentina.
- Outside of all campaign metrics, politicians took the CVs of their opponents as digital content for their own campaigns, memes (created by users) ridiculing the different candidates went viral... and those who did not participate in the first stage wanted to do it in the second.
- The most important thing, based on the claim and request of the users, a bill came to the Congress of Argentina for political candidates to make their CVs public in a mandatory manner.

LBB> The case study says politicians quoted the CVs in arguments – could you elaborate on this? Who used them and where? What was your reaction to seeing that? Was it a surprise?

Lulo> The biggest surprise of the case was the debate that started, particularly on Twitter and among marketing influencers who generated content on TikTok and Instagram about the campaign. Most of the politicians shared it on their social networks and new politicians wanted to join. With the guideline in online media, more than 8 million people were reached and one thing to note is that the campaign aroused so much interest that, on average, the people who entered the landing spent six minutes looking at all the CVs.

Behind the satisfaction for the campaign’s repercussions and for the relevance of the information, it was important that who shared it was precisely the leading job portal in the country. However, as citizens, we really believe that it is information that should be public and available to everyone, to be considered when voting.

LBB> How did you collect the data that a vote conversion of 38% was achieved? 

Lulo> ‘Behind The Most Important Job’ is the complete case study of the action that really had an impact on the voting intention of the citizens. According to a brand survey on Twitter, 38% of people surveyed (with a base of 5,000) said they changed their vote after seeing the CVs.

LBB> How would you like this campaign to be expanded and remembered? Would you like candidates’ CVs to be a public thing more widely? How do you expand and encourage similar campaigns?

Lulo> It would be great if this was just the beginning and, facing each election, we demand to know the trajectory of those who run as candidates. Then we can take a step further in the debate and not only choose for what they promise us, but for their skills and preparation for the job - especially since a presidential election is coming up in a little over a year. In a survey carried out at the end of the campaign, it was reflected that 70% of the participants did not know the experience and education of the candidates and 98% would always like to be able to access the CV of the candidates for public office.

LBB> What was the hardest challenge you faced on this campaign, and how did you overcome it?

Lulo> Getting the top candidates on board was a challenge because they were gauging how far it could be a good move or hurt their image. On the other hand, already with the campaign running, to avoid any politician taking advantage of the campaign in his favour or making it look like his own, we were checking social media constantly, communicating, responding, conducting surveys, and adding value to each piece of information we obtained from the audience. A second part of the campaign was to challenge the audience to express their opinion on questions such as: ‘what type of education is most valued by citizens when electing a political candidate?’, ‘what work experience is considered most important?’ and ‘what qualities are essential when voting?’.

The goal is for all of us to get to know politicians better before voting, raising awareness that we are electing the most important jobs in the country.