Creator Marketing: The New Force in GOTV

By Ryan Davis, Co-Founder of People First 

Five years ago, when People First launched, Getting Out The Vote was the only tactic accepted by Democratic campaigns and political advocacy organizations when partnering with creators. Now, we are continually expanding to deploy creators earlier in the process, covering live events and driving voter registration, persuasion, education, and even generating fundraising.

At People First, we have collaborated with vastly more creators of all sizes than any other organization in politics.

Here are 5 lessons we’ve learned on running effective campaigns:

• Get Local – Creators with under 20,000 followers are vastly more likely to have local followers. Congressional, city, and state campaigns should embrace smaller creators for their organic reach and for content that speaks to these local, targeted audiences.

• Amplify Content – Creator content can be repurposed as part of a campaign’s organic and paid digital strategy. We’ve seen creator content be effective on organic channels, from a campaign’s social media to door hangers. Imagine having community leaders reminding you to get out and vote appearing in your mailbox a few days before Election Day. On the paid side, we’ve used creator content in paid media like CTV, streaming, and even podcast audio. Utilizing creator GOTV content in as many places as possible maximized performance of campaign content.

• Speak To Key Demographics – One of the great things about creator marketing is that you can focus on precise demographics, affinities, life experiences and more. Want someone to talk about your candidate’s education policies? Recruit teachers. Want to highlight their tough-on-crime credentials? Recruit veterans and law enforcement.

The most strategic campaigns will recruit creators that speak to their target GOTV demographics. Show Gen Z creators to Gen Z voters, suburban women to suburban women. Creators can personalize your message for their audiences, making it more effective than dull brand messaging.

• Tell Issue-Based Stories – It can be tempting to force creators to make awkward, scripted content overtly endorsing a candidate that comes across as an ad. The best campaigns won’t pay this “Creativity Suppression Cost” and will give creators the freedom to talk about why they are voting for your candidate—the issues that matter to them and why those issues matter. Remember, you’re working with a creator because they know how to speak to their audience. Give them the freedom to do so.

• Diversify Content Format – Campaigns should combine in-feed posts with story posts on platforms where this is available. This can provide benefits like using a story post to drive to a pledge-to-vote page, while the in-feed post will still generate more impressions and important shares than the story post.

Another mistake campaigns make is only focusing on video. Video is great for speaking to younger audiences, but still photos are massively popular across social media platforms, and all evidence indicates that users read captions! Considering that most users scroll past a video, still images can be just as likely to capture a user’s attention and register the creator’s support for your candidate or issue. Keeping content diverse is the best strategy to reach users with different online behaviors.

With 90 days until Election Day, there is still time to engage creators to drive voter participation around your candidate or issue. Email me to set up a chat! GOTV packages are available for campaigns of all sizes.

Ryan Davis, the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of People First, is a twenty-year veteran in digital politics, having consulted or contributed to over 100 campaigns worldwide. Beginning with Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, Ryan has been a firsthand participant in the evolution of digital politics. From his pioneering role as the first Social Media Director at Blue State to his current position at the forefront of creator marketing innovation, Ryan has consistently been on the forefront. 

*Don’t miss Ryan’s interview on Marketing, Mindfulness and Martinis on how we can all use our social influence to elect Democrats in November.*