A young campaign team helped to propel the Progressive Labour Party to a landslide General Election victory last week with the simple philosophy that communication is a two-way street.

From using social media to interact with voters instead of merely pushing out a political message, launching its platform at a social club rather than its headquarters, the PLP’s youthful operation set out from the beginning to establish a party of the people.

Alexa Lightbourne, Liana Hall and Taj Donville-Outerbridge — all aged between 17 and 32 — are reflecting on a job well done after their party won 24 seats to the One Bermuda Alliance’s 12.

Ms Lightbourne, the campaign manager, pointed to the unveiling of the PLP platform at Young Men’s Social Club, use of motorcades and hosting of small, community-based events as attempts to create and maintain momentum, which culminated in the buzzing rallies that closed out the party’s campaign.

She said such tactics were “not the norm” but were designed to make the PLP “a little more in touch with the people” and show that “we are the party with the people and we can represent them”.

Young people, and voters in general, she said, wanted to get a taste before committing to a party.

“I think that having these open and wide-net events in different locations allowed for people to come in, have a few, and then say yeah, they’re saying something that I can identify with — they’re saying something that I feel like I can stand behind and support.”

Ms Hall, the public relations officer, said: “The strategy involved reaching out to the people.”

The task, the 32-year-old said, involved support from large numbers of volunteers.

From a communications standpoint, social media was critical.

“When you do social media pushes, you can choose your age range — we didn’t limit that really,” Ms Hall said.

“We pushed it out to everyone we could. We also had a lot of viral, natural spread and sharing, which was great too. Paid advertisement only gets you so far.”

The party also prioritised social media as a way to communicate with voters, not just “push out our message”, she said.

“We tried to be as responsive as possible on our own Facebook page to questions,” Ms Hall said.

“I think a lot of it was about being the accessible party — the party open to dialogue, the party that was going to listen because we’re giving you opportunities to be heard.”

Ms Lightbourne, of St George’s, is still in her mid-twenties, but has already provided political consulting work in islands including Antigua, St Kitts and Trinidad. She also contributed to the PLP’s campaign in 2012.

Explaining her involvement in the campaign, she said: “My country was at stake and I really wanted to be involved in the process, and also be associated with the change.

“I didn’t feel motivated by the things I saw.”

Ms Lightbourne, who asked that her age not appear in this article, said the PLP’s win was the product of a collaborative campaign effort, aided by the flexibility of its members.

“The young team was just ready to execute whatever vision I had come to the table with,” she said.

“We crunched the logistics, we looked at things that could and couldn’t work, and then we just made it happen.”

Party leader, and now Premier, David Burt, allowed a lot of latitude.

“He trusted me to be able to execute as a young person and trusted my expertise,” she said.

Mr Donville-Outerbridge, 17, said of the youth of the campaign team: “I definitely think it made the party as a whole seem more accessible and relatable.”

“I’m sure it also inspired many young people to vote,” he said.

He is a dual-enrolment student at the Berkeley Institute and Bermuda College and became involved with the campaign after being approached by party organiser Owen Darrell following a PLP meeting in Constituency 4 last month.

The Hamilton Parish resident has been a member of the Bermuda Youth Parliament since 2012, most recently as Youth Speaker of the House.

“I had to encourage a lot of my friends to vote, because they weren’t interested in voting at first,” he said.

“But once I showed them my interest, they became interested.”

Ms Hall said the biggest challenge for the party going forward would be keeping the momentum generated during the campaign.

“To make sure we do justice to those promises, and we maintain the people’s faith in us,” she said.

She said she hoped the success of the campaign team would show that political roles were not reserved for older people.

“If they can do it, we can do it too,” she said.