Blogpost 2 by Iris Weerdenburg

 A screenshot of the campaign video by the Dutch Socialist Party (SP): ‘A message from Hans Brusselmans’

How to lose your electorate in 3, 2, 1…

By Iris Weerdenburg

Wednesday, September 25, 2019 

Last May, residents of all Member States of the European Union were asked to go to the ballot box to directly choose their representation in the European Parliament. Logically, European parties took the campaign period of these elections as the perfect opportunity to express their position towards (the power of) the EU. And by doing that, one Dutch party completely missed the mark.

Hans Brusselmans

The Socialist Party (SP) in the Netherlands makes no bones about being against EU membership. So, how did they try to convince the public of this point of view? Under the guise of ‘Together we stop the European elite!’, the party published a campaign video in which they put Frans Timmermans, the Dutch Vice-President of the European Commission, in the pillory. In this video, the party personified this prominent EU politician as ‘Hans Brusselmans’, and tried to portray him as an elitist and uncivilized figure. We see that ‘Hans’ lives in a huge mansion, walks around in his underwear, throws the results of a referendum in the fireplace, plays with toy tanks and distastefully gobbles up a cake (which symbolically represents the Netherlands). You can see it for yourself in the video below. The voice-over is only in Dutch, but the visuals speak for themselves…

The campaign video of the Dutch Socialist Party: A message from Hans Brusselmans

Just some commotion or an actual crisis?

After the release of the video, many politicians, journalists and social media users expressed their critique on the party. The video was often labelled as ‘populistic’, ‘unprofessional’ and as ‘a big blunder’. Many people derided the SP, for example, the party Volt that made a persiflage of the video. And even worse, there were multiple reactions of people stopped their membership at the party immediately after seeing the video.   

“I am deeply ashamed by this tasteless video and directly cancelled my membership”,

is posted by a Dutch Twitter user. 

We don’t know (yet) how this video exactly affected the number of members of the party. However, what we do know is that the SP lost both of its seats in the European Parliament after the elections. (Oh, and guess who got the most seats? Yes, indeed, Hans Brusselmans Frans Timmermans and his Labour Party.) 

So, can we call this situation a crisis? According to one of the oldest and most prominent theories in crisis communication strategies by William Benoit, a ‘crisis’ can be defined as a situation in which an organization is held responsible for a situation that is perceived as negative or wrong. Looking at this definition, I think we can all agree that the SP was facing a crisis and that the party was in need of some serious reputation management. 

SP’s ‘strategy’

SP’s frontman Meyer responding to all 

the critique at talk show Pauw

Because of all the commotion, SP’s frontman Ron Meyer was invited to a Dutch talk show to respond to the critique. What he said there, was the exact opposite of what he could have done to restore the parties’ reputation. First, Meyer denied that there was something wrong with the video and stated that he had zero regrets of making it. Moreover, he claimed that the video was a big success since he finally got the attention he aimed for. Last, he attacked the criticizers of not having any sense of humour.

Going back to one of the first theories on crisis management by Timothy Coombs, these were the worst strategies he could have chosen in this scenario. Applying the strategies ‘denial’ and ‘attacking the accuser’ can only be a good idea in a crisis in which your organization is the victim of the situation, which in this crisis, is clearly not the case.

What the SP could have done

Before giving suggestions on how the SP should have handled this crisis situation, it must be clear that the SP should have never published the video in the first place. Recent academic research has shown out that restoring your reputation afterwards seems hardly possible, so it’s better to prevent a situation like this. Since the goal of this video was to provoke, the party could have known that it would lead to some serious damage.

However, to still give some advice to the SP on how they could have reduced the damage from a PR perspective, again we refer to the theory by Timothy Coombs. Since the party knowingly took inappropriate actions and the crisis could have been prevented, the only strategy that fitted its action would have been to simply apologize. The SP should have taken full responsibility for the situation and ask stakeholders for forgiveness. Only in this way, the party could have overcome this crisis and rebuild its reputation.

It might be a little harsh, but we would highly recommend the party to take a course in how to handle a crisis situation. The fact that the video is still on SP’s YouTube page today, means that the party still haven’t learned from its mistakes…

One of the reactions on Meyer and his video at the talk show Pauw

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About the author: Iris Weerdenburg fulfilled her bachelor’s in political science at the University of Amsterdam. During this period, her interest in the field of communications grew because of her work experiences at a PR-office and a communications department. Therefore, she decided to do her master’s in political communication, also at the University of Amsterdam.