It’s very difficult to know what social media content will do well in advance. You just have to keep going and have no shame. You think that something will be brilliant and then no one watches it, but then the thing you make quite quickly in a minute can end up doing really well.

When you want to engage a large group of people, you want to really dial into the emotion. You want people to resonate with your campaign, connect with it, and understand why it’s an important issue, rather than going into the technical detail to prove the point. 

If you’re a massive nerd or geek in your area like I am, it’s very easy to think that everyone’s like that, but the vast majority of people don’t want to get bogged down in the technicalities.

The content that works really well is getting people to understand the unfairness through a simplified statistic—making a video that focuses on one key element of the issue that clearly shows how unfair it is. 

We worked out that you had to be earning about £65,000 before your student loan repayments outweighed the interest added, and you are actually paying off the capital. The Institute for Fiscal Studies then did some research on that and The Times published articles. That content did really well because it was clear to lots of people that it just wasn’t right.

The sort of content that works really well is reacting to updates from politicians–like talking heads videos. For example, when Rachel Reeves said the student loan system was fair and proportionate, we clipped those interviews with commentary running alongside. It was a really effective way of doing it.

I’ve learned from others the importance of building a dedicated list of people you can rely on to complete actions—whether that’s speaking to their MP or giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee. 

There are going to be some people that engage from arm’s length, and that’s fine and they’re still important, but you also want this really active group. Keep them updated with what you’re doing—email them, if not weekly, a couple of times a month just so they stay involved and they know what’s going on.

There’s the traditional media side of things, which is really important because that’s what politicians are reading. I can’t imagine Lucy Powell is spending a huge amount of time on Instagram watching reels that Rethink Repayment are making, but her policy team will be reading the Financial Times and the Times and the Guardian. Building relationships with journalists is something we’ve really focused on.

Beyond case studies, provide opportunities for stories. Write press releases, do freedom of information requests, do things where you can hand them a story on a plate—particularly at a time when it’s around A-level results day, or a key moment in the student finance yearly life cycle. Giving them a story at that point can be really handy.

One thing we’ve found really useful is to have internal champions within different parties who are able to put the pressure on. My sense is that when you’ve got an Education Secretary who calls interest on student loans egregious, it’s obvious they think the system could be better. 

Having champions in different parties helps keep the pressure on so that they feel compelled to act—and to act in a way that’s not going to be met with accusations of just tinkering around the edges.

There are pros and cons around having a face of the campaign. The pro is that I have a huge sense of ownership over the campaign, and therefore I’m willing to keep working. I don’t know how many hours I’ve put into this—it will be thousands. At the start I funded it myself too and it cost me. So I have a real intrinsic motivation which might otherwise not be there. It’s also helpful having a recognisable face—people know that when they see me talking about student loans, they hopefully have an element of trust.

On the flip side, there are probably lots of people who don’t identify with me. They don't have the same background, or they don’t see themselves represented.

We are, I like to think, quite reasonable. We want to be pragmatic. We haven’t gone in and campaigned for the wiping of the student loan book, which I just thought wasn’t pragmatic despite some people having a justifiable view that that should be the case. 

Wanting to engage on things like the repayment threshold, the interest rate, the repayment rate—the actual policy specifics, the detail—gives us more credibility.

With these kinds of things, you can wait for someone else to do it or you can just do it yourself. I went into it knowing that nothing might happen, but I also, deep down, knew that this was an issue that lots of people did care about. It’s been worth it.

Thank you to the 145 of you who have referred colleagues to this newsletter. The views expressed in Policy Unstuck interviews are those of the interviewee, and do not necessarily represent Cast from Clay’s view. You can read our editorial guidelines for more information on the goals, process, and formatting of this series.