Avalon Wins Pollie Award!

We are thrilled to announce that Avalon has won a Pollie Award from the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC)! We won the Pollie for our online work with U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in the category: Internet–Campaign Division–Best Use Of Humor: Democrat.

Our campaign – the Mitt Romney Photo Caption Contest –  was designed to be a fun way to take advantage of a hot news item, and use humor to engage and expand the Senator’s constituent and donor email list.

We decided to poke fun at then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney by inviting people to add a caption to the infamous image of Romney and his Bain Capital colleagues with money coming out of their pockets; and ears (literally). From this image, we created a photo caption engagement campaign, crafting the strategy, creative, and implementation. The campaign included:

1. A customized petition landing page, where constituents could caption the image, and then Lautenberg for Senate would share the best captions through social media platforms;
2. Domain name purchase and redirect, using www.mittromneyphoto.com to drive traffic to the petition page, which was built on the client’s Salsa platform;
3. A campaign-specific ActBlue donation page, where signers of the petition were forwarded after completing the petition/caption form;
4. Integrated social media and email-sharing options directly on the petition page, including a customized Tell-A-Friend page.

The caption campaign was a resounding success, garnering Lautenberg for Senate’s strongest email open rate and some of the highest click-through and conversion rates the campaign had ever seen. More than 800 captions were submitted and the campaign generated high rankings on Google search, as well as press coverage.

We exceeded our overall goals for the engagement campaign, converting hundreds of new email subscribers. This photo caption campaign proved that having a timely and relevant message is key to all online programs, and that a strong engagement campaign is an important tool to build momentum for your entire program.