Why aren’t young people ****ing?

The snap Canadian Federal Election in 2021 meant little time for our partners at the Canadian Labour Congress to mobilize voters from coast to coast. But a creative solution to ****ing resulted in a campaign that engaged hundreds of thousands of young people in a fresh way.

The Challenge

Despite the narrow defeat of the Conservative Party in 2019, the incumbent federal government was facing growing scandals, and progressive voices across Canada worried that a new Conservative government under Erin O’Toole might be elected by slim margins in just a handful of battleground seats.
Federal election spending rules significantly limit what third-party organizations can spend on election advertising – with a special exception made for voter turnout advertising that neither supports nor opposes a specific political party.

Academic and partisan research has conclusively demonstrated the impact of the right turnout messaging, but with little lead time, the Canadian Labour Congress (who represent more than 3 million union members across Canada) needed an innovative and attention-grabbing approach to turn out voters – and quickly.

The challenges of this project were compounded by the fact that all three major political parties were spending heavily in the same battlegrounds across the country, driving up the cost (and limiting the available inventory) of available ad space.

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Our Solution

An effective voter turnout campaign needed three key pieces to be successful:

1. It needed to stand apart from the high-frequency political ads running all across the country
2. It needed to reach groups of voters who would benefit from a turnout message, and use the best-tested messaging from previous elections
3. And unlike Election Canada’s ads, it needed memorable and catchy creative that grabbed voters’ attention

First, our team reviewed the best research on voter turnout messaging and developed creative that stood grabbed attention – using f[bleep]cks (among other things) to cut through the noise.
Second, we decided to target the voters who needed the biggest turnout boost – millennials and younger GenX’ers who still lag boomers and seniors in turnout rates.

Finally, we chose an underused ad channel in elections – making use of targetable podcast ad space (alongside traditional social and programmatic advertising) to reach those voters.

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The Results

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Following the election, our collaboration with the CLC was recognized with a pair of Reed Awards for Best Overall Podcast Ad (worldwide) and Best Youth Voter Turnout Campaign.