Forget the conference podium. Politics is now a performance.

This is what it felt like attending Labour and Conservative conferences this year.  

In an age of political parties on the left and right disrupting Westminster with glitzy stunts and edgy videos, the two main parties reverted to the same old communication tactics to save their poll ratings.  

In the world of PR and marketing, brands are celebrated for bold, attention grabbing campaigns.  

Whether it’s a guerrilla activation, a viral video, or a cheeky billboard, we applaud the creativity and courage it takes to cut through the noise in crowded markets.  

But when politicians do the same? Cue the eye-rolls and headlines about desperation. 

Political parties should instead be applauded for making an effort to engage with voters. If you want someone’s attention, then you’ve got to earn it.   

This double standard is worth unpacking. Because in today’s crowded political marketplace, where five or six parties jostle for airtime and voter attention, stunts aren’t just gimmicks. They’re strategy. 

Take this week in Manchester. Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party spent days unveiling serious policy proposals, including a multi-billion pound tax cut. Each time, announced through a press release and speech.  

The outcome, a politician known by only one in eight voters, announcing policies that will make newspaper headlines today and be gone tomorrow.  

Compare that to Robert Jenrick’s viral video on fare dodging, Nigel Farage’s immigration message delivered in front of a departure board, or Ed Davey’s now-infamous wetsuit moment to highlight sewage pollution.  

These weren’t just stunt, they were storytelling. They took complex issues and made them tangible, memorable, and shareable. And most importantly of all, they cut-through and lasted in the news cycle for months.  

Within ten seconds, a politician can grab your attention and tell you what they care about.   

So why do politicians ignore the lessons from PR and marketing, and stick to out-dated forms of communications that gain no meaningful attention?  

Having personally spent years in Westminster desperately trying to convince political editors to cover policy announcements, I’ve seen firsthand the difference a small risk takes.  

Some corporate brands understand this instinctively. They know that in a saturated market, boldness wins. They’re rewarded for risk-taking and creativity. Politicians, on the other hand, often get sneered at for the same behaviour. But if we want politics to be more engaging, more accessible, and more relevant, we need to rethink that. 

Political stunts aren’t a distraction from policy. They are a delivery mechanism. They’re how ideas get noticed, how values get communicated, and how parties differentiate themselves. And as this conference season has shown, the parties that embrace this reality are the ones most likely to be remembered. 

So maybe it is time to drop the sneering at stunts and get politicians stepping in front of the podium more. Until then, don’t expect party conferences to get much cut through with the public.