AFSCME IE
Case Study
Re-Electing Raphael Warnock
Filling the Digital gap to help Senator Warnock defeat Herschel Walker
As the November 2022 election loomed and with the Senate majority at stake, Senator Raphael Warnock was in a dead heat against Herschel Walker. The traditional media market was being thoroughly oversaturated by both sides, while the Digital space was suffering from a lack of investment.
Our partnership with AFSCME IE sought to fill that void. AFSCME IE identified a universe of 400,000 predominantly white, Northern Atlanta suburban voters whose votes were strategically imperative to ensure Senator Warnock won the general and the run-off. Our campaign focused on persuading these voters and locking them in for the Democratic candidate in both elections.
US Senator Raphael Warnock
Message Creation
We took a two-pronged approach to persuade these swing voters to pull the lever for Senator Warnock:
- Contrast the character of the two candidates.
- Insulate the Reverend against Republican attacks on economic issues.
We did extensive brainstorming with the AFSCME team to find creative, out-of-the-box concepts that would captivate our Digital audience. Our ads leaned heavily into Herschel Walker’s inherent absurdity, using his own words against him in animated cartoons.
Where We Drove Traffic
Between the two elections, our campaigns generated over 30,000 click throughs from targeted voters. We prepared a more thorough breakdown of the contrast between the two candidates in a mobile-optimized landing page that made the most of the extra eyeball time we had with folks who clicked through.
Watch Our videos
We created several videos in to show the contrast between re-electing Raphael Warnock and electing Herschel Walker for the US Senate.
Rapid Run-off Response
Senator Warnock was able to force a run-off, and, at the request of the Senate Majority PAC, we immediately pivoted our focus to African-American GotV targets in the Atlanta area. With our partners, we identified a 350,000 person audience that fit AFSCME IE’s budget. To turn these folks out, we crafted two distinct messages focused on keeping up the urgency to vote – one aspirational, focusing on the historic importance of Georgia in national politics, and the other lane negative, leaning into Trump’s endorsement of Herschel Walker.
1:1 Targeted CTV had Major Scale
In the General Election, we were able to spend 27% of the total budget on 1:1 targeted CTV on our wealthier Suburban Persuasion targets. In the run-off, when we focused on less economically advantaged, urban Atlanta targets, this jumped to 36%. We were pleasantly surprised to see this much Voter File Targeted CTV inventory available, as our typical campaigns are only able to spend about 10-15% of their budgets on 1:1 targeted CTV. We believe that the increase from the General to the run-off is a result of the economic make-up of the turnout audience. With lower expected incomes, these folks were more likely to tune into the “Content for Ads” streaming services that allow advertisers to target audiences 1:1, such as Philo, Pluto, and Tubi. This is an important quirk in Digital advertising in the political space (the lower the target audience income, the more 1:1 targeted CTV is available) that should be taken into account when media planning for the 2024 cycle.
Spend by Ad Type
General Election
Run-Off Election
Where We Served Ads
The Digital Ad Landscape
