When You Have an Idea to Communicate to Voters Who Do You Call? Google, of Course

No on 3 Massachusetts
2010

Just weeks prior to Election Day 2010, down 15 points in the polls, we were called in to run the campaign to defeat Question 3. The measure would have reduced the state sales tax rate from 6.25 to 3 percent. While it would be easy to assume that the liberal bastion of Massachusetts would never approve such a measure, it was clearly not immune to the national mood of fiscal restraint facing the nation during the recession: just months earlier, Bay State voters had elected Senator Scott Brown to the Liberal Lion’s, Senator Ted Kennedy, seat.

This was a very unique campaign to manage, and finding the right messaging was key. We had to inform voters about what the sales tax cut would mean to their community and them personally. We had the data based off of the economic models we ran. We understood that a cut in the sales tax would either have to increase property taxes or make cuts to education, roads, and bridges.

What we set out to do was figure out a way to communicate to voters in their specific town what lowering the sales tax looked like for their specific community. A buckshot approach with television and radio ads wasn’t going to do the job alone. We could use direct mail, but individualizing the message to each municipality quickly became too expensive. That’s when we decided to call Google.

We told Google what we were trying to accomplish: deliver specific data about a voter’s hometown to him or her. Our goal was to personalize the campaign. What did Google say, “Cool. We’ve never done it, but we can.” Google even created a case study regarding the work done in concert with the campaign’s hired digital firm, Alipes. (Hat tip to Alipes)

This is what voters learned would happen to their hometown when they clicked on the ads:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These hard numbers in concert with our emotional television ads, developed by The New Media Firm (Hat tip to The New Media Firm), told the entire story of what was at stake. In seven weeks, we went from 15 point underdogs to 14 point victors, proving that granular, data-driven, individual digital messaging can be as, if not more, effective than traditional media. To be quite frank we’re on the cusp of TV, cable, and radio advertising being less effective than digital. (We are probably already there but conventional wisdom still prevails.)