They did not disappoint. Johnson's parody of the famous scene, where Andrew Lincoln's character silently professes his love to the wife of his best friend through a series of cue cards, was picked up by worldwide news outlets, including in Australia – earning the Conservatives hours of valuable publicity in the final days of the campaign. In their first interview since Johnson's landslide win, Topham and Guerin told the Herald and The Age of the planning that went into the film, and how the project was almost derailed. "Isaac gave the team a blank canvas," Topham said. "He was determined for us to be creative whilst sticking to the message, his view was that just because this was the Conservative Party, we didn’t have to communicate conservatively." It was late November when the TG team suggested the PM should adapt his "Get Brexit Done" message to the scene from the Christmas favourite Love Actually, in a nod to the December 12 election's proximity to the holiday season.

After a test-shoot filmed on November 21 using TG staff, everyone, from the PM down was on board. But the next day the Labour candidate for Tooting, Rosena Allin-Khan posted her own low-quality rip-off of the same scene, causing the Tories to shelve theirs. But less than a fortnight out from polling day, Levido - on the hunt for a big-impact piece of digital content in the final week of the campaign - told TG he wanted the parody. But they had little time left: just 24 hours to hire actors and get it produced, shot and edited in time for the final pre-election broadcast advertising slots. The PM's only available time to shoot the film was on the night of Wednesday, December 4, eight days from polling day. Johnson had just finished hosting a NATO summit in Watford where he had been avoiding appearances with Donald Trump due to the US President's unpopularity in Britain. He had also crammed in three hours of preparation for the upcoming debate with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

TG worked to recreate the look of the original scene in as much detail as possible - ensuring that even the glass of beer on the coffee table was filled to the same level as in the film. They replaced the photoboard behind the newlyweds' couch in the opening scene with photos of Johnson campaigning. "As difficult as it was to pull off in 24-hours, we made sure we did a good job of it," Topham said. "What we did with Love Actually shows that the most compelling content is creative, if you get the idea right you don't need data, you don't need targeting. A good idea will sell itself," Guerin added. Johnson's critics couldn't stop publicising the clip. Allin-Khan repeatedly drew attention to it by claiming Johnson had copied her idea.

By coincidence, Love Actually actor Hugh Grant was booked on morning media the following day to advocate for the Liberal Democrats and Labour. And while Grant grudgingly praised the clip as "well done" with "very high production values" he said it was clear evidence "the Conservative party have an awful lot of money". In truth, the scene was shot in four hours and on a single camera. Johnson nailed his performance on the second take. Three-pronged video strategy

It was the type of result Levido was banking on from TG following the Conservatives' non-existent digital strategy in 2017, where under Theresa May's leadership the party failed to secure an outright majority. TG co-founder Ben Guerin, 24, Conservative campaign director Isaac Levido, 35, and TG co-founder Sean Topham, 28, celebrate at Boris Johnson's victory rally. Topham and Guerin said they carefully created a digital broadcast strategy centred around three key digital moments. The first was Johnson's Vogue-style video where he is asked a series of serious and lighthearted questions in a single unbroken shot as he prepares himself a cup of tea. The video was shot in Conservative Campaign Headquarters and deliberately moved between signs emblazoned with the "Get Brexit Done" slogan. It prompted a heated discussion over why Johnson had put milk in his cup of tea before removing the teabag.

"That told us just how big the video moments were proving to be and how much attention there was on the tiny details," Topham said. The second big video was a slick political advertisement with actors arguing over Brexit. The Conservatives bought prominent advertising space on YouTube and the video attracted 3.7 million views on that platform alone. The final video was the Love Actually parody. The final two videos were held back until the final week of the campaign. Avoiding the temptation to spend up big on online ads in the early weeks of the campaign was deliberate. "We held our nerve," Topham said.

In the early weeks, it appeared as if TG were running a quiet online campaign as Labour outspent them on targeted Facebook ads. The Tories were saving their pennies for a final mass onslaught. They purchased the YouTube banner advertising space twice in the final week, bought homepage takeovers on The Daily Mail, The Sun and Daily Express newspaper websites on the day of the election. Post-election analysis conducted by the BBC showed it was in fact anti-Conservative videos which were the most viewed, suggesting the number of views is not as important in shifting votes as who is watching them. All fair in love and elections? In Britain, TG replicated their use of tacky "Boomer Memes" - deliberately ugly and mistake-ridden, but eye-catching enough to be posted online to boost the reach of a post.

While their appearance was at times comical, even childish, the message was relentlessly repeated - "Get Brexit Done". "Labour won the social media campaign in 2017 so we knew we had to do something different," Guerin said. But TG's attention-seeking tactics were not without controversy. When the Conservatives changed the name of their press account on Twitter to "Fact Check UK" on the night of the first head-to-head leaders' debate between Johnson and Corbyn, it became headline news, with political journalists outraged by what they reported was deliberate deception in an era of Fake News. But TG dismissed the furore and said it underlined how separate the political reporting in Britain had become from the issues that voters were raising on doorsteps.