Cherry Creek
School District
Case Study

2020 General Election

2016: +.9%
Mill and bond barely pass

2020: +13.3%
Ballot issues pass by historic margins

After Cherry Creek narrowly passed their 2016 mill and bond ballot measures by less than 1 percent, COMPETE was brought on to be part of the new team to ensure the 2020 campaign margin was much more comfortable. Through innovative Digital strategies and collaboration with the school district and the full consulting team, COMPETE’s efforts helped pass the 2020 mill and bond by double-digit margins, blowing their previous result out of the water.

Interactive Map

In late 2019, we began laying the foundations for the 2020 vote with the development of the Cherry Creek “Map to the Future”, an interactive map that let voters and parents see the effects of the 2016 ballot measure on their schools and community: CherryCreekSchoolDistrict.Info

Through coordination with the school district, we began promoting the map to build a sense of community with voters. This served as the catalyst for the voter contact strategy of focusing on unique messaging to each “Feeder District”. COMPETE won a Pollie Award for the interactive map, and the school district continues to feature the map on its main website to this day. We also re-designed the mill and bond measure website in the summer of 2020 to prepare for the voter contact phase of the election.

ADS SERVED

0 million

KEY VOTERS REACHED

60000

Message Creation

After reviewing polling and collaborating with the full Cherry Creek team, we created unique ads for each school district feeder area. These ads featured stakeholders from the individual communities and addressed specific concerns voters in those feeder districts had with their schools. Check out some of our sample work from the campaign.

Where We Served Ads

We focused the Digital ad budget on persuading the 210,000 Cherry Creek school district residents that were most likely to vote in the 2020 election. Over a 2 month period, we served over 7.7 million Digital ads to these target voters, reaching them across almost the entire Digital ad landscape. On just Facebook and Instagram alone, we reached over 65,000 members of the likely voter audience over 50 times each. No matter where these folks spent their time online, we made sure they received our positive mill and bond message. We also ran a text messaging campaign featuring local hero Peyton Manning as an advocate to further ensure we reached all voters.

The Digital Ad Landscape

"COMPETE was a great partner for our district’s mill and bond campaign from start to finish. Their Digital strategy and execution were a huge contributor to our record breaking victory. Highly recommend."

Cherry Creek School District Case Study