In 2018, EccaNova introduced persuasion digital to the Delaware State House and Senate Caucuses.

Prior to 2018, both Delaware state legislative caucuses engaged in “mail only” programs. These programs spent almost their entire paid media budgets on direct mail. Any digital done by Delaware state legislative campaigns was done in-house and, for the most part, included solely posting and boosting content on Facebook.

We introduced and utilized persuasion digital video and display for the challenger State Treasurer candidate, four targeted State Senate races, and five targeted State House races. We also did GOTV digital for the New Castle Democratic Committee and the Delaware Democratic Party.

The coordinated campaign’s goal was to introduce the new candidates to the voters in their districts and build name recognition by creating a separate brand for each of them, uniquely tailored to the demographics and contours of their districts. We also needed to remind voters in the already Dem-held districts why their Representative was the best choice. 

To make this case, we developed several different flights of digital display, video, and social ads for each candidate that focused on their individual profiles and the issues important in each of these diverse districts. We began the program 60-days out from Election Day to maximize impact, and be most efficient with our budget. We surrounded our targeted voters for the final weeks of the campaign rotating creative frequently to keep the message fresh, touch on several key issues, and make sure we built the candidates’ strong brands.

Pre-roll videos are a lot like the previews before a movie. When you go to the theater or put on a DVD at home, you sit through ads for other movies and shows that might interest you. Pre-roll videos work the same way. It consists of a short ad that plays before the video begins. Video pre-rolls allows the candidates to get in front of an already attentive audience. People who view the ad have already decided to watch a video, so this means you already have their attention by default.

For this particular campaign, we layered in non-skippable 15 sec. videos with skippable 30 sec. videos, with each of the videos linking to each candidate’s website. Much like the programmatic display ads, we targeted the pre-roll ads with contextual targeting and geo-location targeting.