This case study reviews the Obama Youth campaign for 2012. What began as a simple digital execution I came up with in the middle of the night ended up motivating over a 1,000,000 more youth voters than in 2008.
The TV spot, shot by David Gordon Green, built on the homemade feel of the entire campaign. I had come up with the idea of writing on your hand in marker and we wanted something that looked user-generated by expert users. I wrote most of the lines on-set and we ended up with a political ad that looks outstanding, especially when you look at the category.
I photographed the whole print/digital campaign on my iPhone. That way the celebs and the average user would be indistinguishable. This was a risky creative decision, but it gave the campaign real authenticity.
It also meant i was allowed to hold Scarlett Johannson's hand for a little bit.
Below, you can see some examples of the posters.
When the Obama campaign shared this on their Facebook page it broke all their records, with 20% of their audience re-posting.
The outcry from the right was massive.
From the Fox News roundtables, to the parodies by conservative luminaries like Governor Rick Perry, this simple idea let everyone express themselves.
We hoped for this type of reaction, and we got it.
Here are some examples of favorite user-generated posts. Yo ucan see they took the basic idea and ran with it, making it one of the most successful Instagram campaigns ever.
