How will you impact a child’s world?
In January of 2020, the Nampa School District approached Peppershock Media with a challenging task. The Nampa School District had received a “no” vote on the 2019 levy, by a margin of 10 votes. The school district felt that not enough people in the community were aware of the impact the levy would have on the entire community, or perhaps that they didn’t even know what they were voting about. The levy was slated to appear on the March 2020 ballot for reconsideration, and Peppershock was tasked with creating more community awareness around the levy and to encourage people to get out and vote.
Our Approach
Initially the plan was to present materials to the public focused on compelling data—an overwhelming amount of facts and figures showcasing all the levy would be able to accomplish if it were to pass.
While numbers and data can be compelling, our target audience, women 55+, were not going to be convinced by numbers alone. Peppershock encouraged the district to not only share the numbers, but put a focus on the positive emotional and community impact that would be felt if the levy passed. The district agreed.
Peppershock sought to create awareness utilizing both traditional and digital media. Understanding to reach this target market more traditional methods of advertising would be smart tools to use. Our primary target demographic is still picking up the printed newspaper. We ran newspaper ads in the Idaho Press Tribune and used other media such as billboards, posters and direct mail postcards.
We also made use of our buying power with digital media and ran digital campaigns and promoted social media ads on Facebook and Instagram, as well as sharing animated videos.
The Results
With a healthy mix of different marketing mediums and an extremely expedited campaign, Peppershock was able to reach and convince more Nampa residents to go to the polls and vote. Overall voter turnout was around a 40% increase from what it was in November 2019, 7,478 vs.12,342 in March. The levy passed with 56% vote, yes.
