In partnership with Conservation Voters of PA Victory Fund and Earthjustice Action, we set out to mobilize environmental voters in the 2023 general election in Pennsylvania; to persuade voters in a key PA Supreme Court race to vote for the pro-environmental candidate and to educate voters on the critical connection between the environment and our federal courts.
In 2022, Pennsylvania tragically lost Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Max Baer, a lifelong public servant who issued rulings that included protecting voting rights and combating partisan gerrymandering. To defend his legacy from a conservative taking his seat, Democrat Daniel McCaffery, Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, declared his run in the 2023 election against Republican Carolyn Carluccio – a far right-wing activist judge. While a Republican win would not shift the majority of the court, it would endanger the majority in future elections. With reliable polling for this race almost nonexistent, Democrats and progressive allies had to ensure McCafferyy had the support of a coalition of voters.
Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania and Earthjustice Action saw an opportunity to team up to help McCaffery defeat Carluccio, who was quickly gaining support from corporate polluters. They wanted to find the strongest messaging to turn out pro-environmental voters, so they built a team that included Grow Progress and INTRVL for data and research, as well as SBDigital to create the ads, build the program, and run the campaign.
Initially, we produced and tested three video creatives in partnership with Grow Progress, narrowing our messaging to two. Our findings showed that the ads directly attacking conservative judges, “Republican Judges – Climate” and “Billionaires and Corporations,” had the greatest impact on our intended targets.
Before the campaign, our messaging and creatives were panel tested to our established treatment groups. After the initial phase of testing, through interactive display advertising, we targeted voters in both our control and treatment group, to establish effectiveness of the ads among the respondents. When more funds became available, we expanded our universe to include more targets scored by INTRVL to be the most persuadable. Using this data, we were able to establish our most effective creatives, and the audiences most receptive to those creatives. Voter file target audiences were created from research & strategic guidance to deploy our program. Media mix was set and optimized to maximize reach and frequency, spending on Connected TV, Meta (Instagram & Facebook), and Programmatic.
On average, the audience saw ads over 70 times during the campaign. Facebook users saw an ad over 20 times during the campaign, while Instagram users saw an ad over 12 times
The campaign drove 24k to click with especially high click rates on Meta of 1.26% (compared to benchmarks of 0.60% to 1.00%)
With a view-through-rate of 80%, exceeding mobile benchmarks of 50-70%
This campaign is a stunning example of the power of a hyper-targeted campaign with salient creatives, thoughtfully identified and informed by data driven models and robust testing.
Post-campaign polling by INTRVL with our target audience and a control audience showed that our ads were able to achieve:
In our unprecedented, polarized political landscape, our approach to digital advertising has the power to move voters and win. Our focus in this campaign was turning out voters who cared deeply about environmental issues and climate change in a year when almost all judicial debate was around abortion, voting rights, and protecting democracy. Digital advertising, unlike any other medium, has the ability to hyper-target groups of voters, analyze performance, and find the strongest combination of messaging and strategy to persuade, educate, and mobilize the voters you need to turn out.
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