A Voice for the Silent Majority

In 2014, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) sued the City of Merced for a violation of the California Voter Rights Act. Over half of Merced’s population and a third of its voters are Latino, but there hadn't been a Latino representative on City Council in nearly a decade.

As a result of the lawsuit, 2016 was the first year the citizens of Merced would have voting districts. This fundamental shift in the local electorate provided the perfect opportunity to test if we could engage a constituency that had been historically marginalized and underrepresented by activating them with the perfect content on their phones and at their doorsteps?

In 2016, MARCOM Strategies ran a City Council campaign for our CEO, Daniel Sabzehzar, that saw viral reach and attracted attention for its tech enabled, data-driven, mobile-first strategy. A similar strategy deployed in the same election cycle that Donald Trump won using Facebook.

The depth of voter data and cost per engagement possible with modern technology is orders of magnitude cheaper and more effective than traditional campaigning and public engagement practices.

The Challenge

Run a successful City Council Campaign on a shoestring budget that engages historically underrepresented communities in spite of the overwhelming learned helplessness and in-opportunity that discourages civic engagement.

The Method

Rather than relying on the traditional mail-based practice (which cost around $1 per household) to reach the 13000 residents in District 5, we turned to Facebook and Snapchat. By producing regular content ranging from high-performing video ads to Facebook live Q&As, combined with traditional door knocking, event planning and community organizing, the campaign gained a notable foothold in the minds of District 5 residents .

This video was our first effort to share Daniel's platform online. With a text-first format that Facebook users have come to expect, we encouraged viewers to share our message. Through location-based micro-targeting and the help of our most passionate advocates who shared the video over 1200 times, the video was viewed in one week by more people than there are in the entire city of Merced.

The Final Sprint

Toward the end of the campaign, the nation was being inundated with get out the vote messages from every political organization in the US. Our campaign had been well-received up to this point, gaining the attention of the local and national press but we needed to continue to push hard in the final hours leading up to voting day. It wasn't enough to simply energize voters. We now had to mobilize them. On November 4th, 2017 —four days before election— we deployed a video with a contrary headline that would cut through the noise.

By a margin of only 400 votes, we lost the campaign to an honorable opponent, Deputy District Attorney Matt Serratto. We played to win, and while we didn’t get the outcome we wanted, we’re proud of the support it brought the community.