Currently Andy Burnham is quietly putting on one of the smartest communications masterclasses in British politics. Not because he's dominating newspaper front pages, in fact quite the opposite.
He's recognised something that many brands, businesses and politicians are still struggling to come to terms with; if you don't believe traditional media is going to tell your story the way you want it told, stop relying on it.
Build your own channels instead and it's a lesson every communications professional should be paying attention to.
For years, politicians have relied on the same communications playbook. Land a splash in the papers. Get on breakfast TV. Hope your message survives the edit. But that's becoming an increasingly difficult strategy if you feel large parts of the media aren't interested in amplifying your successes, or are more likely to frame your story through conflict than policy.
Whether that's a fair assessment or not isn't really the point. The point is that Burnham appears to have adapted. Instead of spending all his energy trying to win over newspapers that may never fully buy into his message, he's taking it directly to audiences through podcasts, social media and long-form interviews.
His recent appearance on Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast is a brilliant example.
For nearly an hour, we weren't watching a politician trying to survive an interview. We were listening to a person. Someone talking openly about losing leadership contests, self-doubt, family life and what failure had taught him.
No rehearsed attack lines, no interrupting presenter desperate for a viral clip. Just conversation. And as a PR person, I was hooked.
The other thing Burnham seems to understand is that audience behaviour has fundamentally changed. The people he wants to reach aren't necessarily sitting down with a broadsheet over breakfast or waiting for the ten o'clock news. They're listening to podcasts on the school run or watching clips on Instagram or catching interviews on YouTube and yes, sharing moments on TikTok!
Communications isn't just about crafting the right message anymore, it's about meeting your audience where they already are. Brands have been learning this lesson for years and it seems politics is finally catching up.
Consistency over noise
One thing I always tell clients is that the best communications campaigns aren't the ones shouting the loudest. They're the ones saying the same thing over and over again.
Listen to Burnham across different interviews and the messaging barely changes -fairness, hope, opportunity, communities, devolution, economic growth that works for ordinary people.
You don't have to agree with those messages (although I’m not entirely sure there is anything to disagree with) to recognise the discipline behind them. Great brands don't reinvent themselves every week, neither do great communicators.
What fascinates me most, though, is how Burnham appears to be positioning himself. Every successful brand defines itself not only by what it is, but by what it isn't.
While Nigel Farage's political brand is often built around disruption, grievance and identifying problems, Burnham's public messaging feels deliberately different. Rather than leaning into anger, he consistently returns to optimism, fairness and practical solutions.
Whether that positioning ultimately succeeds is for voters to decide but from a communications perspective, it's clever. He's not trying to out-Farage Farage, he's offering an alternative emotional proposition.
The biggest PR lesson
For years we've talked about "earned media" as though securing newspaper coverage is the ultimate prize. I'm not sure that's true anymore.
If the conversation is happening elsewhere and audiences are building relationships with people through alternative channels and trust is being earned through authenticity rather than headlines...then perhaps the smartest communications strategy isn't fighting harder for traditional coverage.
Perhaps it's building a media ecosystem where you don't need permission from the gatekeepers in the first place. That's exactly what the smartest brands are doing. And, whether intentionally or instinctively, Andy Burnham appears to be doing the same.
For anyone working in PR, marketing or reputation management, that's the real story here. The future of communications doesn't belong to whoever shouts the loudest, it belongs to whoever builds trust first.
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