What do you call a candidate with limited resources, time, and finances? You might call them dead-on-arrival, but at OakRidge we call it an opportunity.
When we took on a candidate for magisterial district judge, we were met with well-funded opponents with high name recognition, coupled with our client who has a family with young children, and a full work schedule. How does someone like this get a competitive edge? Data. Data is the swiss army knife of the political landscape. It tells us, who is likely to vote and who for, it tells us who is likely to donate, and it tells us how voters feel about dinner table issues.
After OakRidge does a custom data analysis of the target audience we hit the ground running, knowing who to talk to is half the battle, so we allow that analysis to inform every dollar that is spent. This is important because why would we spend money on a social media ad for an 80-year-old woman who never uses social media? We are able to cut through the noise of a political cycle by targeting the right people across unique mediums.
For this candidate, we knew texting would be an incredibly effective and lost-cost way to get his message to these likely voters. The candidate then was able to communicate directly with those recipients via OakRidge’s built-in peer-to-peer texting technology. For someone as busy as this gentleman was, he was able to communicate with voters directly from his computer, this proved to be invaluable.
Like I said before, knowing who to talk to is half the battle, but the other half is knowing how. After a series of text messages and targeted social media ads, we knew a handwritten postcard was going to really drive the candidate’s message home with this impressionable audience. At OakRidge we pride ourselves on partnering with some of the most cutting-edge vendors that occupy the communication space. When crunch time comes and handwritten postcards can be time-consuming we are able to send these postcards to one of our trusted vendors who uses robotic technology to “hand” write out these postcards for a turnaround time that will give you carpal tunnel just thinking about it. From there we use targeted lists to get the mail out the door.
Despite being outspent by over $50,000 our client was able to beat his opponent in this judicial primary and make the ballot for the general election. This tells us all we need to know about the efficacy of our data. We were able to craft the right message to the right people at a fraction of the cost relative to all his opponents.
This model is replicable, it’s transferable, and it’s what we do best.
Corey Barsky is the Business Development Director at OakRidge Consulting. Barsky has functioned as senior data strategist and grassroots coordinator working with clients to optimize their brand reinforcement, and penetration of their name ID. Coming from his hometown of Philadelphia, Barsky plans on remaining in Pittsburgh where he currently resides, since obtaining a degree in Neuroscience.
