Reach busy voters where they spend a lot of their time on the road - with billboards.
Billboards cost a fraction of many online outreach campaigns. They are targeted to issues that matter to the local community and are reach the busy voter who may not spend much time on a computer. Billboards reinforce messages sent through other forms of communication such as canvassing, flyers, digital ads, text messages and emails.
Democratic Messaging Project (DMP) is a grassroots group that is placing billboards in battleground states including Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Their billboards focus on issues including drug prices, gun violence, the freedom to choose when to have a family and the millions of jobs created by the Biden administration. This blog explains their outreach campaign.
Smarter political billboard campaigns
- Focus each billboard on one issue.
- Use a vivid simple image.
- Use bold fonts and colors. Black and yellow are good colors to use.
- Choose billboard locations on roads traveled by your target audience.
- Cluster billboards together to maximize the chances of your message being seen.
- Use digital billboards so you can quickly change your message to respond to new issues.
- Consider mobile billboards on vans which can be driven to where voters are.
DMP messaging plan
- Static billboards with single issue messaging placed on highly traveled highways, thoroughfares and local communities.
- QR Codes about single issues that will be displayed at bus kiosks and/or on posters in specific neighborhoods.
- Radio ads in English and Spanish radio that will address the same issues put on billboards/QR codes in emotionally charged language.
- Digital ads to reinforce the messaging on billboards, radio ads and QR codes targeting people who lean Democrat, infrequently vote, young people, people of color and women.
Focus billboards on accomplishments
- Democrats voted unanimously for the American Rescue Plan while not one Republican voted for it. To date, the ARP has added 5.9 million jobs, and unemployment is currently at 3.9%,the lowest since 1950.
- Biden cut the federal deficit by 50%.
- To date, Biden has appointed 58 Federal judges– more than any President since Reagan–and is on track to appoint 100 more in 2022. These judges will help to decide 99% of all legal challenges as only 1% of cases make their way to the current & extremely conservative Supreme Court.
- Biden’s judges will decide issues of voting rights, gerrymandering, abortion, birth control, health care, benefits for the poor & egregious court decisions from lower courts.
- Democratic controlled states are increasing the ability for their citizens to vote and voting rights legislation passed the House with unanimous Democrat support (not one House Republican voted for it). Senate Republicans have thus far refused to allow debate on this issue much less to pass legislation.
- Democrats have taken the Jan. 6 insurrection seriously creating the Select Committee to investigate and hold insurrectionists on every level accountable. On the Jan. 6 one-year anniversary – only two Republicans showed up on the floor of Congress to pay respect to the brave police officers who protected ALL members of Congress on that day of infamy.
Support Democratic Messaging Project
DMP aims to bypass traditional media and go straight to the people. It has secured billboard space in Arizona and Wisconsin with plans for Michigan and Pennsylvania. They are putting billboards in zip codes of 60% of swing voters in these four states. Each billboard will have a different message. Billboards will go up in August. DMP is using targeted billboards and digital ads with reinforced messages to mobilize voters in all of these districts. They are standing on the side of saving lives from senseless mass shootings, protecting women's freedom to choose when to have children, and making big oil and pharma companies end their cruelty to hard-working families.
TakeAway: Use billboards to reach more voters so they know what's at stake for them and the urgency of voting in the 2022 midterms.
Deepak
DemLabs
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Credit: Video clip adapted from LAMAR Billboard Advertising clip.