About
The North Dakota Secretary of State (NDSOS) was seeking a marketing partner to help design and deliver a campaign, creating outreach opportunities with local businesses and organizations to spread the voting and election administration messages for the 2020 general election.
Odney was expected to generate significant in-kind outreach and earned media coverage. Outreach efforts included coordination of activities at community events (as appropriate in the midst of the pandemic).
- Contract Dates: September – December 2020
- Contract Budget: $750,000
The Task / Challenge
During the 2020 primary election all voting was moved to mail in / absentee ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was decided that for the general election in November, in person voting would be allowed, creating a slew of different challenges for the NDSOS office, county auditors and North Dakota voters.
- Challenge #1: How to provide a safe and sanitary area for voters to vote in person.
- Challenge #2: Most of the election workers are 55+ and are the most vulnerable to contracting the COVID -19 virus. NDSOS needed to help county auditors recruit election workers.
- Challenge #3: How do we reach all voters and let them know that there are three ways to vote during this general election.
- In person
- Early voting
- Mail in / absentee
We were tasked with creating an all-in-one campaign that targeted adults 18+ within the state of North Dakota to plan ahead and execute their election voting plan.
The Solution
Odney developed an all-encompassing campaign titled, “It Takes all Kinds.” to promote the three ways to vote (in person, early, absentee) and asked people to make a voting plan. All our paid and earned media efforts were geared toward educating the voting population and sending them to the www.vote.nd.gov website to learn more about voting opportunities in their county, city and precinct.
We developed a multi-channel marketing campaign including state-wide broadcast and cable television, radio, newspaper, billboards, direct mail, social media (Facebook and Instagram), programmatic digital (display and mobile, streaming audio, video, email) and earned media.
Our campaign kicked off with Governor Burgum signing a proclamation, declaring the week of September 21st as Voter Appreciation week in North Dakota.
Print Ad
Direct Mail
Social
Digital
Television
The Results
Our results speak for themselves! During the 2020 general election we had a record turnout, with 354,097 ballots cast, 62.6%, the highest in state history.
Paid campaign run dates: September 14 – November 2, 2020
Social Media Performance:
- Reached 220,927 unique individuals
- Delivered 1.1 million impressions
- Provided 15,443 visits to https://vote.nd.gov
- Campaign click thru rate was 45% higher than the national average @ 1.31.%
- Over 167K engagements
- 87,146 total views on YouTube at a cost of $.08 per view
Digital Media Performance:
- Reached 462,916 unique individuals
- Delivered 23.3 million impressions of native, online and mobile display, streaming audio and online and CTV video content
- Provided 17,833 visits to https://vote.nd.gov
- 4.8 million streaming audio and video completions
- Video and Streaming Audio completion rates as high as 96% (65% national average)