Content strategy for statewide campaigns
Content strategy for statewide campaigns
Gov. Phil Murphy’s former Digital Director shares lessons learned in 2021
Campaigning in the 2021 “off-year” was defined by marquee statewide races in Virginia and New Jersey. In the Garden State, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy won an unexpectedly tight re-election race in the face of a tough national environment. For this week’s Campaigner, FWIW’s Kyle Tharp spoke with his former Digital Director, Kait Demchuk, about what it’s like to lead a content-first digital operation on a statewide race, and what lessons can be applied to other campaigns.
Q&A with Kait Demchuk on content strategy for statewide campaigns
Campaigner: People approach this work from a whole bunch of different experiences. How’d you get your start in politics?
Kait Demchuk:
So… the cliche answer is that I loved the West Wing. (laughs)
Campaigner: Believe it or not, we haven't heard that one yet.
Kait Demchuk: I watched the show in high school and really wanted to be part of everything that was going on there. I loved the idea of solving real problems for real people. I majored in astrophysics, which always throws people for a loop and they often don't understand how I ended up where I am. (But, I’m pretty sure its the only reason Mark Kelly ever wanted to hire me to begin with). To me it makes total sense - I always liked math and science, and I like the idea of using equations to solve real-world problems. When I was thinking about what to do after school, I knew that I didn't want to work in a lab or do research the rest of my life, and I always liked politics…
So I looked at going the “policy” route and it seemed like the perfect marriage between data and math with econ and stats and also qualitative policy analysis. So I ended up getting my master’s degree in public policy at Georgetown. I did a bunch of internships in DC: think tanks, private consulting firms, nonprofits, and the one thing I was kind of missing on my resume was campaigns. I’m from Pennsylvania, and I finished graduate school in June 2016, and obviously, a lot was going on in Pennsylvania. So I came home, tried my luck at getting on the US Senate race, and ended up starting out as a finance intern, because I knew how to write memos. I just really made myself invaluable to every single team. I did so much - I was pulling clips, I first learned HTML by building emails, I wrote social copy, and I ended up getting hired on the political team because that's just where they needed extra capacity. That’s essentially how I jumped into campaigns and have basically been there ever since.
Campaigner: That's awesome. Last cycle, you led the digital team on New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s re-election campaign, which must have been a unique experience - it was an off year election, unexpectedly close race, tough national environment - can you talk a little bit about what that was like? What was your proudest moment and what were the ways you used the internet to lift up the candidate?
Kait Demchuk: Definitely. I think we had an interesting setup. We were really a content-first digital team. [Readers may not be aware that] our campaign opted into public financing, which I think is revolutionary for statewide campaigns, but also meant that we could only raise a certain amount of money, and by the time I joined the campaign, we had already hit that amount - so there was no fundraising left to be done in the primary. New Jersey was in many ways very different from the Virginia statewide elections - those campaigns were constantly raising all the money and the state has basically no election rules when it came to digital fundraising limitations.
Campaigner: Not having to spend as much time fundraising was probably a relief for you.
Kait Demchuk: Yeah, it kind of was - we still ran an email and SMS fundraising program for the state party, but it's very different when you're trying to get people to give to a state party versus a campaign or a candidate. And so that presented a challenge. But that also meant with the investment that I was getting and the buy-in from the campaign manager, I could really focus on building a content-first digital team. I brought in a deputy on my team for all things written content and then brought in a multimedia producer who handled all the visual content. They were partners in crafting our entire organic strategy, along with the help of a Multimedia Associate and Bilingual Digital Content Manager.
We obviously had challenges with polls coming out saying we were 10 or 15 points ahead. The lack of enthusiasm was clearly there, especially in an off-cycle year and in the midst of a pandemic. However, I think we capitalized on our position in a lot of ways. We had a non-competitive primary, and so I saw that as a way to test new content-building capacity. That's where I did most of my hiring and tested our GOTV efforts, knowing that the primary election was our time to work out the kinks of our operation before we got to when it really mattered in the fall. I think it turned out to be a great strategy – our team knew exactly what to expect when we got to October.
One of the moments that I'm most proud of was the Governor’s first televised debate. We ] intentionally used every tool in our arsenal online. We were handling the Governor's campaign social accounts, the First Lady’s channels, Lt. Governor’s channels, and we ran the Coordinated Campaign’s social as well. So we were working hard prepping all of the content to go out from those channels during the debate, promoting it beforehand, and cutting highlight reels and writing Medium recaps afterwards. We did a full suite of content in English and Spanish — everything from retweetable graphics and text-only values statements to resharing issue-specific direct-to-camera videos and Medium articles authored by New Jerseyans — but we also really tapped into our allies and partners to amplify our messaging. We worked to give New Jersey elected officials tweet copy for their specific issues that they could tweet during the debate, and put together things like an ally memo that went to our partner organizations and had everything from graphics and bingo cards to social media copy and links to our best videos that we wanted them to share. We put together this whole supporter toolkit online where people could change their cover photos or their phone backgrounds. We really tried to think through every single piece of where we could make an impact and then get that out there during the debate.
I think our first debate was the same night as the second or third Virginia Gubernatorial debate, but we somehow got the #NJGovDebate trending nationally at number three. That's one of the moments I'm most proud of because it shows it wasn't just our own accounts tuning in, but we got lots of other people engaged online.
Campaigner: I’m interested in this focus on content - what were some of your most valuable social platforms or channels to reach voters? Was it all Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? Or were you invested elsewhere in building and spreading content?
Kait Demchuk: All of the above. I really love Instagram as a platform – I think I'm an anomaly in a lot of ways. But we focused on taking our content and our messaging and repackaging it in all the ways that were platform-specific. One of the ways we did that was by cutting things like video content vertically. It just makes such a huge difference when you're on mobile, especially with all the changes Instagram's going through, where they're prioritizing video over photo-based content. Reels and Stories are basically where the majority of engagement happens. We were really thinking through, okay, we have this scheduled video time with the Governor. We have a one-minute video for Facebook and Twitter, but what can we do with that to get it on Instagram in a different way? Is it cutting it to :30 seconds as a teaser? Is it sharing it to stories vertically?
On our Instagram, we went through and built out all of our Story Highlights icons, and made them issue-specific. Any time we had, say, an event with a climate change organization, or received an endorsement from a gun safety group, for example, we would continue to add to these Story Highlights so that if people were interested in that issue, they could go to that highlight and learn everything they could about Governor Murphy’s record. We used the issue-specific direct-to-cameras that we cut for Facebook and Twitter and recut them vertically to add them to Highlights, and we reformatted values statement graphics vertically as well. We repackaged and reused content wherever we could.
We also translated that type of content into Spanish, which was really important because New Jersey is one of the most diverse states in the country, and Spanish speakers were obviously a big audience that we were trying to reach. Making content accessible to them was important from day one – that’s why I prioritized hiring a Bilingual Digital Content Manager for our team early on.
Campaigner: While you ran a well-resourced, large campaign, a lot of our readers are interested in running for local office and maybe have one or two staffers. What would be your advice for folks that want to run a content-first campaign: Is it worth it to invest in high production value? Is it more important to create authentic short videos? What are platforms that smaller campaigns should prioritize in their work?
Kait Demchuk: I think a lot of it comes down to making sure the audience that you wanna reach is on the platform that you're using. For instance, if the demographic of your district tends to be older they might spend more time on Facebook, but if you're trying to reach younger audiences, or maybe there's more women, maybe Instagram's the one to prioritize. Really try to think through where they are and where they spend their time. I would also say campaigns should not focus so much on having that one viral moment. I think that smaller campaigns sometimes try to bank on getting the one video that's gonna go viral, and that's where they plan to raise all their money and get all their followers. That would obviously be great, but you can't always bank on that. So I think the most important thing is just consistent messaging and really figuring out what your authentic voice is.
I say that because I do think there is a tendency among candidates to lean into a certain type of voice or craft things a certain way. But what really sticks out is when it's authentic and you can almost feel close to that person/candidate. Figuring out what the (candidate’s) voice is and figuring out a consistent message that you can put out there in a bunch of different ways, whether it's throwing it on a graphic or doing a text-only post of the same thing, or even engaging with the news of the day on a topic the candidate cares about. Hone in on who you are, and make sure it’s consistent.
In my career, there have been so many times that we've put a ton of effort into a very produced video, and it's not gone nearly as far as a text-only post. That can derail you a little bit and makes you feel like you wasted all that time, but it reaches entirely different people than the text-only post, especially on platforms like Facebook, which you have to keep in mind. So that's why I say above all, you need a cohesive, consistent message that you can repackage in a bunch of different ways to reach your target audience.
Campaigner: What’s something in campaign world that you think folks don’t talk about enough?
Kait Demchuk: I’ve thought about this one a lot - I think something that people don’t talk about enough in campaigns in general is mental health. I've been on two campaigns during COVID now, and, oh my gosh, I’ve realized how important mental health is to functioning professionally every single day.
In 2020, I moved to Arizona two weeks before we were in telework and didn't know anybody, and I was very isolated. That campaign, with the exception of some events in October, we were totally working from home. I ended up coming back home because I was so by myself in Arizona, once we realized we weren’t going back to the office like we thought and I ended up working from the East coast on Arizona hours for four months, just so I could have a familiar support system with me.
I was really lucky on the (Mark Kelly for US Senate) campaign that Justin Jenkins, one of the best managers I've ever had, took time to prioritize mental health with us. Our team had this “sustainability tracker,” which was basically a spreadsheet where we decided our own metrics for things that make us normal humans, like drinking X number of water bottles a day, or taking a walk outside or whatever it is. It was such a good way to check in with each other and hold each other accountable to realizing that this work is not your whole life.
I’ve taken the sustainability tracker to every job in which I’ve managed people since, and I've had good feedback from my employees where I've done that - taking time to check in and make sure that everybody's taking care of themselves, especially in the crazy world of campaigns. It's also a good way for me as a manager to see who on my team isn’t taking care of their personal selves this week and may have too much on their plate, allowing me to reassign tasks and responsibilities as needed.
Working on a campaign where it was really isolated and entirely remote, and then going to Murphy’s campaign where we ended up being seven days a week in the office at the end, and then having the goal post moved where we thought the race was going to be called on Election Night, and then having to cure ballots and wait two weeks until we felt like we won - that really messed with my mental health, and it really hurt my team’s morale in ways I didn’t anticipate.
I’ve always tried to be flexible with my team. If we worked really late for an event and were up until one in the morning, like on debate night, I would say, don't come in until noon. Take whatever time you need. Make sure you're taking care of yourself. I put “therapy” on my own sustainability tracker to clearly communicate to my team that I was making it a priority for myself, and they should do whatever they needed, too. I think mental health is something we don't talk about enough in campaign culture, but also as Democrats in general. We need to recognize that these two years have taken a lot out of many of us in ways that may not be as obvious, and we should talk about it more.
Campaigner: Is there anything else you want to add?
Kait Demchuk: I think one of the things that I really learned this cycle was that it’s one thing for leadership to say that they're bought into digital and it's another thing to actually show it.
It's not necessarily a campaign leadership's bad intentions to not be bought into digital, but I do think that digital teams have to show the way a lot of times as to what that actually means. I often would have to make the case to be in a certain meeting because I need X, Y, and Z deliverables from the meeting to execute my top-tier content plan or rollout, or alternatively, someone has to take time to give me that information afterwards. If I were in the meeting, I could just get everything that I needed right there and save everyone some valuable time. My campaign manager on Murphy was really great at making sure I was in all these meetings and calls when I made that case early on, and she would ask my opinion on persuasion, budgets, and all these things critical to the digital program’s success, which was really great. But it's still sometimes an uphill battle to make your case to other players in the field.
The one case study that I always point to about digital’s value is our viral cursing video, which Rachel Maddow called her favorite ad of the cycle! This was entirely scripted and directed by me, my Multimedia Producer Stephen Bolea, and my Deputy Mary Akemon. (I’d also be remiss if I didn’t credit the research team for going through city council records from the 90s to find the specific vote that tried to ban cursing in this Jersey town.) We really had to stick to our guns about our vision for this, which was modeled off of Jimmy Kimmel’s videos on Hollywood Blvd interviewing people walking by. There was some pressure from stakeholders to put graphics and/or text on screen or make it more produced, like an ad, or get rid of the signature easel entirely, but we knew our target audience and knew what would work on organic social media. (And these New Jerseyans really didn’t know who Jack Ciattarelli was, in case you were wondering.) That’s a perfect example of giving digital strategists the information they need but then trusting them to determine the best way to communicate that message to an audience online.
The thing that I saw is if digital had just been included in more conversations earlier, we would've had more opportunities. I still think we did a great job for everything that we did, and I’m so proud of the content program that we put together. But for digital and campaigns in general, working in concert with other teams provides more opportunities to capitalize on in order to push a cohesive message to voters, tapping into all the possible avenues to reach them.
Arena Toolbox and Training Highlight:
Kait talks about how important mental health is on a campaign. Check out this tool that will help you manage a team with your values front and center>>
If you’re ready to be the kind of manager that values mental health, apply for Arena Academy 201 Online. We’ll equip you with the skills to support your team’s wellbeing. Apply by March 7>>
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