Campaign to mobilise the youth vote launched

The Comms Lab appealed to agencies, individuals and brand owners to get behind the #ItsOurTime campaign this week to motivate the under-30s to use their vote at UK general election.

The pressure group is trying to harness the creative community’s powers of persuasion to target an estimated 2m 18-30 year olds who “care about climate change but are not registered to vote”. The Comms Lab is a politically neutral initiative dedicated to getting the advertising industry to help tackle the climate crisis.

Ella Saltmarshe, director of #ItsOurTime, said, “This year has seen millions of young people take to the streets to make their voices heard on climate. Now it’s our time to take a stand. The creative industries can make a real difference at this crucial moment.”

This year’s NUS Climate Change Tracker showed that 91% of students are fairly or very concerned about climate change and 80% are willing to vote for a government planning to take action on climate. According to the Comms Lab, there are 14.6m people aged 18–34 in the UK, 4.79m of whom are not registered to vote.

#ItsOurTime invites agencies and creatives to create partnerships with relevant brands or create and share original work. The Comms Lab has assembled a set of guidelines on a bespoke website to support those taking part.

“If young people who care about climate aren’t registered, their voices won’t be heard. Politicians need to know that people are registering to vote because of climate change,” it said.

Saltmarshe added, “We hope that #ItsOurTime will result in an explosion of creativity over the next three weeks driving voter registration by tapping into multiple creative groups and networks, with multiple campaigns and multiple activations.”