knockthe.vote - Strategy and Production
Dear Young People
This country belongs to whoever shows up. And do you know who shows up for every election? Old people.
Our Strategy
We reviewed the category landscape, and were guided by two insights:
One, Most voting campaigns try to inspire, remind or shame you into voting. But trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to do triggers their defenses.
Two, voting is a binary behavior; you either vote or you don’t. And while there are many barriers on the path to voting, there are few on the path to not-voting.
Only 46% of people aged 18-34 voted in 2016. And instead of trying to find a better, cooler, scarier, or funnier way of telling these people to vote, we leaned into a familiar truth: sometimes telling a young person not to do something is the best way to get them to do it.
U.S. Results
2018 Mid-terms had the highest voter turnout for millennials. While we can’t take all the credit, we definitely did get people talking. From celebrity re-tweets to ample press coverage, our campaign sparked dialogue and action.
Video Results
21 Million Trackable Views
Shares/retreats: 500,000+
Likes/Reactions: 425,000+
Comments: 23,000+
Earned media value over 1,000,000 views – with $0 media spend (not a typo).
Unplanned Global Impact
Not every idea works across cultures. This one happened to. Organizations in India, Scotland, the Netherlands, Japan, Taiwan took note, and with our permission did versions of this for their own elections.