Awarded for excellence in creative advertisements, web design, targeting strategy, and email fundraising work for progressive candidates, campaigns, and organizations in 2023.
The right to bodily autonomy is consistently a subject of contention in North Carolina. In the summer of 2023, SB20 was ratified. This bill was one of the most restrictive measures that the state had seen put forth concerning abortion. Elected officials across the state aligned themselves with the extremist ideals outlined in the bill like “no exceptions for fetal anomolies, rape, or incest”. Even provisions to consider the life and health of the mother were limited to the point of being eradicated. Abortion access advocates throughout North Carolina have seen and heard antiquated sentiments from far-right law-makers about abortion, but few as haunting as what we hear from the current Lieutenant Governor, Mark Robinson, in this ad. This video captures his promises to outlaw all abortions, with no considerations for the circumstance. We allowed his own words to fully narrate the ad, as they are all that is needed for viewers to understand the threat of extremism in positions of power.
SBDigital was proud to be part of an exciting joint Earthjustice Action and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania digital campaign focused on the 2023 Pennsylvania Supreme Court race. Our partners at INTRVL joined to measure the efficacy of this campaign from start to finish. We coordinated on budget and targeting to ensure we reached the ideal frequency to demonstrate a measurable impact to our targets. Mid-flight, we received additional funding and made a strategic recommendation to use these additional dollars to segment our audience to focus on a group identified by INTRVL to have the highest likelihood of being mobilized to vote against Carolynn Carluccio(R).
We were ecstatic to see Daniel McCaffery (D) defeat Carolyn Carluccio (R) by 5.6 points. Surveys went out to our targets in the days that followed the election and 3,600 responses were collected, with results indicating a significant measurable impact from our advertising. Respondents in our “mobisuasion” universe needed to both be persuaded and mobilized to become off-year voters in favor of McCaffery. Respondents in this group showed an average lift of 2.3pp which is both significant and extremely encouraging for further targeted communication campaigns of this kind. Our segmented heavy-spend group showed a 20% additional lift in vote propensity. Our findings even went so far as to indicate a measurable persuasion effect (‘very high’) on “somewhat conservative” and “very conservative” targets who were then persuaded to vote for McCaffery (D).
These exciting results highlight the need to expand beyond typical voter file matched targeting and in-platform contextual targeting- offering a new, more sophisticated model that can not only identify quality targets but help mitigate wasted impressions and unfocused ad buys with a measurable impact at the ballot box.
In 2021, Virginia enacted a permanent absentee voter list (PAVL). In a January special election, our client Aaron Rouse lost the in-person election day vote and the early in-person vote, but his sizable mail-in absentee margin won him the race. We ran an aggressive absentee chase program to the growing list of voters who received absentee ballots automatically by being on the PAVL. 96% of the absentee ballots cast were voters who had received their ballots automatically. It revealed that PAVL would be a critical tool for bolstering “permanent” turnout in Virginia elections. We ran a pilot program in a battleground district to target Democratic voters not already on the permanent list with paid digital – video, static, and SMS – directing them to our “Never Miss A Vote” microsite that both explains what the PAVL is, outlines the stakes, and walks them through an all-online signup process.
This spot took a non-partisan, humorous, non political approach to signing up the list — in a fun manner, we conveyed how busy people could sign up on a list that would ensure they’d never miss a crucial election and also give them some of their time back to do the things they love. It also introduced voters to and educated them about the existence of the Permanent Absentee Ballot list, what the application looked like, how easy it was to sign up, and that it is secure. Voters who clicked through the ad were directed to our microsite (also nominated for a Reed!) that populated their form for them and automatically sent it to the proper registrar. This spot led directly to sign ups to the Permanent List and also served as critical educational background for voters who were also receiving simple display ads targeting them to sign up.
In August 2023, we ran a one-month pilot in a battleground district to identify which platforms,
messages, universes, and tactics would most effectively encourage a voter to register for the
Permanent List. our ads drove them to a microsite we created that populated the form for
voters and automatically submitted it to the proper registrar based on their address. Since
Virginia does not have party registration, we had to be creative and careful about targeting so
that we did not drive Republicans to sign up.
In 2023, Shannon Taylor ran for reelection as Henrico County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney against Republican challenger Shannon Dillon. Facing a challenger with the same first name (and no partisan identifiers on the ballot) offered unique opportunities for creative and fun messaging.
This email exemplifies how we used the Shannon dichotomy to our advantage by drawing a distinction between “Shannon” and “MAGA-Shannon” — inviting recipients to choose the “correct” Shannon on election day.
The Republican challenger stood to benefit the most from any confusion that may have been borne of the name commonality. The incumbent expressed that they were worried the two Shannons on the ballot could affect the outcome of the race entirely.
Instead, we used this fact to generate interest in favor of the incumbent.
78% of donations to the “Shannon > MAGA Shannon” email came from first-time donors.
We sent this email on the one year anniversary of the Dobbs decision, just days before the worst abortion ban in North Carolina history was to go into effect.
At one of the most crucial junctures in North Carolina’s history, it was important to remind Senator Chaudhuri’s list of the importance of overturning the Republican supermajority and protecting reproductive rights.
This email had a click rate of 9.13% and raised $1,145 making it one of Senator Chaudhuri’s most successful emails of 2023.
We had a very short timeline to design, develop, and launch a website for a critical special election in Virginia Beach. City Councilman Aaron Rouse would run for the seat vacated by Republican Jen Kiggans who was elected to Congress. The Virginia Senate’s Democratic majority held on by a thread and was the only brick wall to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s attempts to restrict abortion access. Rouse’s site needed to be a hub for special election information and also maximize the campaign’s primary conversion goals – vote-by-mail requests, online contributions, and volunteer sign-ups.
Jirair Ratevosian had spent his career in policy and diplomacy. He began his campaign with an emphasis on centering policy and substance as his path to victory in a crowded campaign. The website followed suit. It was a minimalist design that featured Democratic primary voting information, native forms that utilized NGP’s API (rather than clunky embedded forms), and importantly, an engaging, comprehensive page layout for Jirair to publish his policy plans – like his American Dream plan and his plan for Armenian Americans.
Democrat Shannon Taylor was running for re-election for her fourth term as the Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney in Virginia. Although a popular, relatively well-known incumbent, Shannon Taylor was facing a Republican opponent also named Shannon, whose name appeared above Shannon Taylor’s on the ballot. The opposing Shannon’s tagline was “the Right Shannon.” Additionally, although they are nominated by a party to run, Virginia constitutional office candidates do not have partisan identification next to their names on the General Election ballot. Much of the emphasis on Shannon Taylor’s branding in her campaigns has focused on her first name, so a challenger named ‘Shannon’ certainly posed some worry.
In her digital campaign, we wanted to not only distinguish her from her Republican opponent but to make the “Two Shannons” theme central to the campaign. The GIF had three objectives: Draw attention to the commonality; define incumbent Shannon Taylor and her record of keeping the county safe; and define our opponent as an extreme Trump Republican.
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