Describe the creative idea

Australia has had six prime ministers in 10 years and our media landscape is fuelled by sensationalist headlines and a “new, now” mentality. This combination of political instability and inherently biased media means that the national conversation is crippled by short-termism and our loudest voices (media and government) aren't talking about the long-term issues Australians really care about. So in the lead up to the Federal Election, we created someone who was. The Perfect Candidate is Australia’s first virtual politician driven by data, not bias. Powered by insights from over 125,000 Australians, The Perfect Candidate is an intelligent, conversational interface that uses this data to compare the top concerns of each electorate, with those of the political parties that represent them. By sharing the data they’ve gathered, The Perfect Candidate creates a transparency that empowers Australians to change the conversation and hold their leaders accountable.

Describe the execution

The Perfect Candidate is a gender-neutral, dynamic design created from the real Australian public – not professional, paid talent. They’re aged 18-80 and from a diverse cultural mix including: Indigenous Australian, Middle Eastern, European, Latin American, African, Asian and Anglo Saxon. We chose teal as a key colour as it’s not used by any Australian political party – reiterating the zero-bias policy of The Perfect Candidate. In addition to a visual identity, we developed a comprehensive tone of voice guide that translated the values of AFP into key personality traits of The Perfect Candidate. This allowed The Perfect Candidate to contextualise complex data into simple, clear and empathetic stories that could be understood by any Australian, regardless of age, culture or socio-economic background. We also allowed people to explore the data in different ways: they could chat to The Perfect Candidate or interact with simple, visual charts that broke down the data by different metrics. We gathered data from Roy Morgan that, for the last two years, has expanded its Single Source Survey to include a question regarding the top concerns for Australians. Ranging from topics such as: taxes, cost of living, managing a growing population, illegal immigrants, the economy, climate change and crime. When viewing an electorate, a custom algorithm compared top concerns from several open source datasets (such as parliament voting behaviour) with the true concerns of the people identified in Roy Morgan’s data. This gave an MP an alignment score ranging from ‘not aligned’ to ‘perfectly aligned’. Surprising trends were uncovered, for example the Liberal Party and their representative Tony Abbott are ‘barely aligned’ to the people of Warringah, despite holding the seat for 25 years. The balance of big data and storytelling made The Perfect Candidate a valuable tool for media, politicians and the general public.