Voter registration in Wisconsin has seen devastating suppressive measures in the years leading up to the 2020 election. Wisconsin Voices came to us to create a platform where underserved communities could easily maneuver through the often difficult rules in a user-intuitive, simple way, removing the burden and significant barriers to a new voter registration.
While the app was originally designed for canvassers doing fieldwork, COVID-19 presented a new set of challenges by instantly eliminating all in-person events from the DNC to contact with potential registrants. Persist quickly shifted gears to create a web version of the app and a robust marketing plan to drive traffic to it. Our awareness and conversion campaign launched digital and television ads targeted to crucial audiences throughout the state, and overlaid bus wraps and on-board messages in key cities. A social influencer campaign added credibility, name recognition and word-of-mouth via a livestream round-table with new young voters and an in-person activation at GeeЀs Clippers, MilwaukeeЀs famous health- and community-building barbershop.
We created an incredibly easy interface for a complex platform, giving people the ability to register either online or through the app. We made the app available not just to canvassers and partner organizations, but to anyone who wanted to help family, friends, and members of churches or the community through the voter registration process.
Persist spearheaded an intensive UX phase for both the app and registration website, to ensure all registration situations our canvassers may come across were accounted for in the app. We talked to stakeholders, canvassers, partner organizations, and general Wisconsinites, to create user data flows which allowed for registrations and follow-up from our communications team to ensure newly-registered voters were reminded to vote.
We delivered 67 million impressions across Digital, OTT, Television and OOH, and 2+ million more through PR. Registered more than 30,000 voters directly via VoteWisconsin.com, and more via the state site (Biden’s Wisconsin margin was about 20,600 votes!)