Social & Traditional Media in a Small Town Election

Wicked Local Photo by Laura SinclairCohasset Massachusetts is not only the place that I call home, it is also where the world headquarters of Eymer Design had been located for the past seven years.The charming, seaside, New England town is located approximately 20 miles south of Boston (see Witches of Eastwick). That town's population is approximately 7500 people with nearly 5400 registered voters.
Recently, a town-wide election was held for several key local government positions including two (out of 4) open seats on the town’s board of selectmen.

One of the four candidates was our good friend, Diane Kennedy (no relation to the Massachusett's Kennedys that we are all familiar with). I have served with Diane on the board of the Cohasset Education Foundation as well as town’s local board for the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Locally, Diane is probably best know for her work managing the South Shore Art Center’s annual “Arts Festival on the Common.”

To support Diane’s campaign, Eymer Design developed the Kennedy campaign visual identity, as well as online and printed materials.

Diane Kennedy for selectman, post card + envelopeThese materials included:

• Yard signs (we purchased 100 and place them in strategic lawns around town)

• Fabric Banners (3’ x 6’, we bought a total of two but kept them moving around town so that it appeared like we had more)

• (2) Quarter-page Newspaper Advertisements that ran in the local (weekly) paper, the Cohasset Mariner, for the two Fridays before the election

• Post Cards and accompanying Envelopes which could be either personalized and mailed or handed out at candidates meet and greet sessions

• From an online and social media standpoint, we developed a small website that included up-to-the-minute campaign news as well as an input/registration form that encouraged citizen participation

• Through aggressively searching out Twitter followers and Facebook page “Likers” we were able to instantly communicate with 1534 Twitter followers as well as 102 Facebook page followers

• In reviewing the site’s data, “Diane’s Blog” was the main landing point of site visitors with the home page finishing a distant second. When new information was posted to the site, Tweets and Facebook posts were generated and sent out.

Diane Kennedy for Selectman, website + blogElection results.
With a 32% turnout of the towns 5398 registered voters (1727, each with 2 votes for selectmen), Diane received 1062 votes – the second highest vote-getter, behind the candidate for town moderator who was running unopposed and received 1275 votes.

Diane deserves all the credit along with her campaign managers and strategists. However, as a marketing communications firm we were able to successfully experiment with traditional campaign marketing materials, along with 21st-century tools. It has become blatantly obvious that social media is an extremely critical part of any political campaign – including small towns that have traditionally looked at the yard sign as the main vehicle for generating campaign buzz.

– Doug