Led by Basketball G.O.A.T LeBron James, More Than A Vote is a non-profit coalition of Black athletes and artists who came together amid the BLM protests of 2020 to focus awareness efforts on the issue of systemic, targeted voter suppression in the Black community. Their mission? To educate, energize and protect Black voters. Our team was tasked with creating the brand’s first-ever influencer campaign with the goal of raising awareness of More Than A Vote and encouraging Black audiences to register, sign up to poll work and vote.

In the lead up to a high-stakes 2020 election, we chose 45 trusted Black content creators across 18 cities including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, and Birmingham.

This influencer marketing campaign was enacted in three-phases, each aligned with key voting dates in selected target states covering up to 18 cities. Given that different states have different voting timelines, including local influencers and aligning their content to said timelines was crucial. A marriage between timing and targeting with local influencers was key to powerfully achieve our partner’s goal. All three phases strategically worked together to raise awareness of the More Than A Vote initiative.

Phase 1: Influencers kicked off the two month ambassadorship with an in-feed carousel of photos depicting why they felt strongly that voting in 2020 was especially important. In the caption, they shared a short, personal anecdote or thought about a voting issue that is important to them and encouraged their followers to do the same. All content used the hashtag #MoreThanAVote and included a tag for the @MoreThanAVote handle.

Phase 2: Leading into state specific registration deadlines, influencers posted More Than A Vote story content aimed at generating awareness of our initiative and using native platform features to create an easy path to register. In this phase, influencers posted a total of two three-frame Instagram Stories promoting a custom More Than A Vote Stories template that elicited UGC and bolstered community visibility. All Stories frames included the social platform’s Register To Vote feature to ensure it was as easy as possible for followers to register ahead of the elections.

Phase 3: Our influencers posted Instagram Stories sharing their excitement over submitting their ballot and encouraged followers to spread the message. Stories creative launched two weeks before election day, as per voting-by-mail best practices dictate. Flighting was augmented in Louisiana because as research suggested, most voters would likely vote in-person on Nov. 3 due to covid-policy voting restrictions.