Save the Children Action Network

New Mexico Governorship

We ran a Pollie Award-winning digital advertising campaign that consolidated a winning coalition to reelect Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Goal

Uphold Save the Children Action Network’s mission of supporting kids and early childhood education in New Mexico by reelecting Michelle Lujan Grisham as governor.

Challenge

After her successful election to the governorship in 2018, Lujan Grisham faced a tougher-than-expected reelection campaign. Save the Children Action Network wanted to support her reelection through ads focused on their core issues. To win in New Mexico, we needed to identify voters most likely to be interested in early childhood education, quality, affordable child care, and ending child hunger. We then needed to reach enough of these voters in a crowded media market with advertising showing them that Governor Lujan Grisham was a strong ally on these issues.

Approach

Through a diversified media buy, we initially targeted parents of school-age children, millennials, and Latinos, expanding to suburban white women with additional funding.

To reach more voters amid a competitive media market, we expanded beyond the usual go-to platforms to find more innovative places where we could run our ads at efficient rates.

Through demographic analysis, we identified five counties in New Mexico with higher concentrations of our key audiences compared to the rest of the state. Over 50% of our impressions were delivered in those counties.

We ran four flights of creative, each with static ads and 6- and 15-second video ads. All of our creatives were run in both English and in Spanish and contained clear messaging on how Governor Lujan Grisham had impacted children in New Mexico.

English and Spanish ad versions for Michelle Lujan Grisham

Results

Michelle Lujan Grisham won reelection by over 7 percentage points. Our ads’ high frequency and reach in key geographic areas made the difference on Election Day, with Governor Lujan Grisham winning four of the five counties in which we delivered the most impressions.

~22M impressions, 735k target voters reached

The diversified media buy, numerous creatives, and efficient target audiences allowed us to keep our average CPM below $20. As a result, we managed to over-deliver on projected impressions by over 20%.

All creatives had high delivery, and our total video completion rate came in at around 80%—well above benchmark.

Image illustrating that counties with high impact delivery went blue

This campaign was honored with a 2023 bronze Pollie Award for Independent Expenditure Campaign – For Governor.