Auckland Council encourages Aucklanders to get out and vote with a new website via Goodfolk

Getting Aucklanders involved in the local body elections has always been a challenge, with an average voter turnout of around 35% in previous years. So when Auckland Council briefed its digital agency, Goodfolk, on the design and production of a website to help change this, everyone knew it would be a challenging but highly rewarding project.

The objective was simple; encourage Aucklanders to vote in the upcoming elections while making it easy for people to understand the voting process and how Auckland Council is structured. The website needed to capture the attention of Aucklanders who currently don’t vote, in particular youth and ethnic communities.

Goodfolk has worked closely with Auckland Council to determine what factors were dissuading Aucklanders from voting, and how these could be addressed in a concise digital space. They then took the ‘Show Your Love’ creative concept developed by DDB and expanded it into a full digital design and user-centric navigation to show Aucklanders why to vote, and how to vote. Goodfolk then worked with digital solution specialists Phosphor Essence to create showyourlove.co.nz.

The site incorporates a large amount of information into an easy to follow structure, turning something that was traditionally difficult to understand into a format that is both interesting and easy to digest.

According to Goodfolk’s design director, Scott Crickett, the whole team was aware of the importance of this piece of work and passionately got behind it, with the objectives consistently front of mind.

Says Crickett: “It was a real communication challenge, ensuring the site gave people all the tools and information to make important voting decisions, as well as remaining simple and easy to use.”

Not only is the site a vital tool to help Aucklanders with voting decisions, but it is also a platform for candidates to have their say about different issues. Each candidate can personally input their own information, and people visiting the site can aggregate the content depending on what matters to them.

Alastair Haydock from Auckland Council, who lead the project, says making it simple to pinpoint information that is relevant and important to you is what makes this website stand out, and hopefully, help improve voting numbers.

Says Haydock: “Aucklanders can input their physical address to learn about who is standing in their electorate, and also navigate through the candidates based on the topics that are important to them.”

Since the beginning of August, the site has acted as a platform for all content relating to the local body elections, including social media tags such as #loveAKL, and will be available up until the end of the campaign this week.

Digital Agency: Goodfolk

Director: Cath Sample

Elections Associate Project Manager Democracy Services: Robert Dinte