case study

Delaware
Democratic
Caucus
Campaign

Securing a supermajority for Democrats in the Delaware State House and increasing the majority in the State Senate with persuasion digital video and display

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.

The recipe for success for Facebook advertising is to reach a highly targeted audience the optimal number of times within a certain time period. EccaNova’s digital advertising team ensured this with advanced, award-winning Facebook advertising technology that goes above and beyond best practices. With Facebook ad campaigns, we can guarantee reach and frequency of ads served to a laser-focused audience.

For each of the targeted districts, we layered image and video ads, rotating the creatives frequently to keep the message fresh, touch on several key issues, and make sure we built the candidates’ strong brands.

Check out just a few of the ads that we created for Facebook:

Facebook Display

Facebook Video

Facebook Display

Facebook Video

Facebook Display

Facebook Video

Facebook Display

Facebook Video

Facebook Display

Facebook Video

The audience that were served the ads were created using geo location and interest targeting, resulting in highly targeted ads being served to voters for maximum impact.

Programmatic bidding ensured that the client’s campaign budget was spent in the most effective way possible. 

For this campaign, we selected two main targeting methods:

  1. Contextual Targeting: Contextual targeting looks at the category and keywords of the pages the potential voter is browsing and serves them highly-relevant ads. By serving the client’s ads to people researching candidates, visiting local/national news websites, showing interest in local elections, the Democratic party, healthcare, climate change, gun violence prevention, etc., the digital advertising team was able to make sure that the ads they served were relevant to the voters, and conversion was more likely.
  1. Geo Targeting: Geo-targeting refers to the practice of delivering different content or advertisements to potential voters based on their geographic locations. For this campaign, we targeted each ad to the zipcodes in the coordinating State House and Senate districts

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.

We won every race we were engaged in but one State House race.

Two other targeted State House races and one other targeted State Senate race chose not to utilize our services. All three lost—the State House races each lost by less than 2%.

In part because of our work, the State Senate increased its majority from 11-10 to 12-9, the State House is now in a supermajority, and Delaware elected a Democratic State Treasurer. We beat the Republican Minority Whip in both state legislative chambers.

 

GLOBAL RECOGNITION

Last May in Athens, Greece, we were honored to receive global recognition and four Polaris Awards for our innovative work on the Delaware races as well as campaigns in California, New Mexico and Ohio.