A Better Maine, Democratic Governors Association

Persuasion
Targeting
Creative

Re-Electing Governor Janet Mills

THE STORY

Paul LePage was one of the most notorious governors in America during his tenure as Maine's governor from 2011 to 2019. He called himself "Trump before Trump was Trump", has extreme views on abortion, and is on the opposite side of many issues Mainers care about.

In 2022, he ran again against incumbent Democrat Gov. Janet Mills.

Several weeks out from Election Day, polling data presented a tough challenge: there was incredibly high name ID for both candidates. The downside? No matter what was asked in the poll, the race remained static. The upside? Gov. Mills was leading.

OUR OBJECTIVE

We spent time with the pollster talking about what the campaign needed to do in general. And creative tests clearly showed that LePage was the Democrats’ best messenger — his words turned voters off.

From there, we broke down specifically what digital could do, developing two separate tracks:

  • Focus on what LePage had done in his two terms by reminding swing voters that Paul LePage had hurt Mainers.

  • Increase turnout in what we called a “Young, for Maine” audience — independents and Democrats under 50, focusing on LePage’s own rhetoric about abortion.

Visual Direction

Our objective was to create a look that grabbed the viewer’s attention and did not feel like a traditional ad. There was a glitch in Maine’s system and we aimed to highlight that in bold, unexpected visuals.

Targeting Swing Voters

In his two terms, LePage created a state of perpetual crisis in Maine. His erratic behavior caused him to be a topic of late night talk shows. His Administration made severe cuts to programs popular with Mainers. In short: LePage’s cuts and chaos were bad for Mainers, and we wanted to remind them of that.

Cuts and Chaos

We targeted swing voters with our “Cuts and Chaos” video, social and display advertising, news promotion, and partnerships with local media outlets. Our objective? Hit voters on the fence with neutral messaging as often as possible… and everywhere we could. Frequency, frequency, frequency.

Maine’s Choice

Our next video in the series illustrated with compelling animated visuals and a cutting script that there is a glitch in the system when it comes to Paul LePage. The creative makes it clear that when it comes to the issues that matter, there really is only one choice.

Young, for Maine.

With the race static and just 9 weeks to go, we needed to find a way to break through, especially with younger voters who were likely to support Gov. Mills but may not turnout to vote. Our initial instinct was to focus on abortion rights, specifically LePage saying “We should not have abortions.”

We deployed a creative test with two pieces of creative to test our assumptions — a standard, positive pro-abortion message with pro-choice marchers and rally signs against a stark image of LePage next to his own, unpopular words. And we quickly learned that LePage’s words wer our best resource.

Using LePage’s Words Against Him

Though our creative test reaffirmed our assumptions, it also showed that using LePage’s quote was good for turnout, but had a backlash on persuasion.

We stayed tight with our targeting, and expanded to additional advertising vendors with strong contextual abortion audiences. Due to YouTube’s lack of targeting, we lowered the audience to 18-35 so that we wouldn’t incur said backlash.

The Results

Though the race remained unchanged for month, three weeks out from the election, things began to shake up. Younger voters were moving. And moving towards Governor Mills. We had broken through. 

With just days left in the election, we kept our foot on the gas: 

  • Continuing to hit swing voters with a high frequency and volume of reminders about LePage’s cuts and chaos.

  • Tightly targeting our “Young for Maine” Audience utilizing LePage’s own words against him, while avoiding backlash voters.

We’re proud to have supported Democratic Governors Association and A Better Maine re-elect Gov. Janet Mills… and send LePage packing once and for all.

Award winner:

  • 2023 AAPC Pollie Award winner for Best Digital Creative Full Set