The inauthenticity of Scottish Labour’s graphics – and what they reveal about the campaign behind them.
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign last year was extraordinary. The youngest mayor of New York City in over a century and the first Muslim mayor of a major American city. He capitalised on viral social media content to become arguably the most high-profile leftist election winner in the US since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s successful primary campaign close to a decade ago, even in a time where more mainstream, centrist, “establishment” Democrats are hugely unpopular.
A large part of his success was his instantly recognisable branding and graphics, which helped him stand out from the traditional, somewhat tired red, white, and blue motifs of other Democratic candidates. Forge, the design company who was tasked with making Mamdani’s graphics drew from local icons in their work, with fonts being inspired by bodega storefronts and hot dog carts, while the colours were drawn from the New York MetroCard. From these, an aesthetic was created that was unmistakably NYC.
And design approaches like this have worked in other places around the world too. Also last year, Catherine Connolly ran a successful campaign for the Irish presidency, again as a candidate considerably to the left of mainstream politics. Her campaign was inspired by Mamdani’s (it’s worth noting she paid €30,000 to a PR firm linked with him) but with her own personal touch; instead of bodegas, her typefaces came from traditional shops in the west of Ireland, where Connolly is from, and her colours from the Irish flag.
Now, coming up to the 2026 Holyrood elections, it seems these flash campaigns have found an admirer in Anas Sarwar and Scottish Labour. For a time, especially considering the UK Labour Party’s huge general election victory in 2024, Scottish Labour were confident of being in the Scottish government following these elections too. Nearly two years on from then, however, their prospects have plummeted.
“The working class don’t feel they’re on their side anymore. They’re saying Labour is too aligned to corporate interests.”
Fraser MacDonald, account manager at Linco Connect, an Edinburgh-based public affairs and communications consultancy, and former head of communications and research for the SNP, has seen this in his own work: “18 months ago we were trying to engage quite confidently with Labour, trying to find out who the ministers would be, what makes them tick. Clients now are just not interested”.
Former Scottish Labour spin doctor Simon Pia thinks this is a direct consequence of the actions of the Labour government in Westminster: “Scottish Labour are still seen as the branch office of the UK party and that holds them back. You look at Starmer’s government and the first thing they do after getting in is the winter fuel payments. Stiffing pensioners is a bad idea.”
“But then you contrast that with the SNP who’ve done remarkably well, especially with the two massive scandals they’ve had with Sturgeon and Salmond. That’s not really affected them in polling and that’s really surprising for a party that’s been in power for so long. And John Swinney is not a charismatic leader, he’s boring, he’s bland, but people think he’s decent, that he believes in something.”
Scottish Labour’s social media ads and graphics feature many of the same elements as Mamdani’s and Connolly’s, with those bold colours, eye-catching fonts, and coloured drop-shadows a key point of comparison. Indeed, per Politico in March, Morris Katz, a key aide to the Mamdani campaign, has been to Downing Street to speak to senior Labour Party figures about their communications strategy. Yet something feels wrong about the Sarwar campaign. Mamdani’s graphics were drawn from things which were quintessentially New York, Connolly’s from things which were quintessentially Irish. They were local. They were authentic. And by just copying them, Sarwar’s campaign, almost by definition, is inauthentic.
That word ‘authenticity’ is a concept which seems increasingly important in the digital age. The campaigns find themselves on social media platforms where everything is an ad. Brands simply want the public’s attention to monetise it and sell it are willing to pay influencers to do the job for them. Even when you search “Gen Z authenticity” on Google, most of the results are from PR firms talking about how brands can use authenticity as a tool to sell products to Gen Z. It has come to resemble the post-structuralist concept of hyperreality, where fact and fiction, serious issues and entertainment, are blended together such that there is no longer any clear distinction between the two, leading to a state of confusion and inertia within a population.
Pia thinks that Labour has lost their roots, the guiding principle that dictates their policy. “The relationship with the unions is a lot worse than it used to be. The working class don’t feel they’re on their side anymore. They’re saying Labour is too aligned to corporate interests”.
MacDonald agrees that that sense of authenticity is important. “People are scunnered with politics at the minute. Good comms strategy has to be rooted in principle and belief, and everything will flow out from that because people understand who you are and what you stand for.”
“On a policy platform there’s a lot of stuff Labour are saying that people agree with, but I just don’t think it comes from any point of principle. I think it comes from narrow political opportunism.”
Young people today can tell when they are simply being used as a consumer or as a voter. As just another cell on an ever-expanding Excel sheet. They want to feel like they are part of something, that politicians are listening as well as speaking to them, that they aren’t just being used for someone else’s gain.
In 1964 the Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase ‘the medium is the message’, positing that the package which content is delivered in – including, in this context, things like design – is just as important as the content itself. So, what message does the design of Sarwar’s campaign give? What message does it give that they’re copying Mamdani? That they have no original ideas? That they’re just trying to game the system?
Whether Labour’s strategy has worked will be seen after the election, though it seems clear that they won’t perform as well as they were hoping to. What is apparent, however, is their need for a campaign guided by a sense of identity and direction. And that must come from the top.
