2020 TEXAS CENSUS
Texas Secretary of State 2020 Census Campaign
The story of the multi-million dollar, seven-day-concept-to-launch, three-week-long campaign, filled with shifting deadlines, political sensitivities, and a mission that was critical to every single person in Texas.
March 1, 2021
At the end of summer 2020, one of the most unusual opportunities came our way. An opportunity that seemed not only massive in scale but massive in importance – the census count for the State of Texas.
But it also came with an almost impossible ask – we had to concept, pitch, and, if we won, execute the campaign in seven days.
Spoiler alert: We did it. This is how.
The back story
The State was facing low census counts due to Covid-19 making our multicultural homes in Texas shy to open their doors, as well as facing an abbreviated timeline for census fieldwork. Poor census participation would mean state and federal funding for everything from schools to support for vulnerable people as well as fair political representation could be jeopardized. It was a challenge that could ultimately change the fabric of Texas for the next 10 years.
The Busiest Four Days EVER
First, we had to convince the Secretary of State’s office that not only could our team at TAG take on this massive lift in seven days, but that we were, really, the ONLY team for the job.
Then we had to extend our group into a powerful team built precisely for the campaign.
We had four days from the day we were invited to pitch to the day we had to present. We suspected that it was likely, given the number of national agencies that had been poaching Texas businesses over the last few months, that we’d be facing off with some of the largest agencies in the country. Fortunately, we had no doubt that we, with our extensive knowledge of the state, and the remarkable talent we’d assembled, would be the best choice. We just had to show it and show it in a big way.
So we did. We went over and beyond the RFP. Way over and way beyond. Instead of answering if we could build a campaign, we built it. We built an entire campaign, complete with print, video, OOH, social media strategies, based on data analysis of the problem, utilizing our media buying acumen, driving with clear and compelling creative – all of it in four days.
Every time we send out an RFP at TAG, we ask Liz to burn a candle. She sets them up in her sink to reduce the risk of a fire, a precaution we all appreciate.
And we’ll be honest: we loved our campaign. We loved the mission. We loved the work we were presenting. And, as it turned out, so did the Secretary of State’s office. We’d won!
Now we had to execute it all – in three days.
Getting it done
While we had the entire campaign concepted, it was another massive lift to meet the deadline. We quickly launched a campaign landing page, social pages, created the foundations we needed for digital advertising, prepped our team for radio and TV spot production, and prepared to send out over 300 campaign assets to the media. The media team started fielding calls from every single media salesperson in the state who had gotten wind of our role in this spend. Many of those were the same salespeople we’d had to call months earlier to cancel placements when our tourism clients were pulling budget in the face of Covid.
We also faced another hurdle. As we dove deeper into the numbers it was clear: local census groups had gotten all the “easy” groups to count. What was left was a population that was much more resistant to being counted for a myriad of reasons, each of which had to be addressed by our overall strategy.
Through our data analysis work with Predictive Data Lab, we identified two statewide audiences as priorities: Rural and Underserved Communities. Within the county and zip codes identified, we targeted Spanish and African American dominant households, extended family members, and households with no internet. This meant we had to create a guerrilla marketing effort on top of our mass media outreach.
Fortunately, we’d built a powerhouse team of small, minority, and women-owned agencies to do our level best to reach every Texan within this audience segment through a cohesive, immersive, efficient, and effective effort we called, Let’s Count Texas. The team combined census expertise with The DeBerry Group, the most efficient strategic media and digital buying in the southwest through our Agency Trading Desk (ATD), a data science lab of analysts at Predictive Data Lab (PDL) with a background in using existing census data, and savvy leaders, strategists, and creative minds who understood what it takes to move people from varied parts of the state to respond. And with that team, we delivered more than 750M impressions, increasing the self-response rate by 1.5% and helping Texas reach an overall completion rate of 99.99%.
Just that increase will bring the state over $500 million in federal funding – funding that was in jeopardy of being lost.
I didn’t mind the 97-hour workweek or doing 93 newspaper ads in a little over 2 hours, that’s what I’m geared for…
— Steve Young
There were moments…
Throughout those incredible three weeks, there were moments we loved.
- There was the search for a barn which transformed into a Let’s Count Texas projection appearing on buildings across the state.
- There was the moment when sports mascots across the state posted social media videos about the importance of being counted.
- There was the moment we saw that our food distribution activation not only helped families in need but also ensured that these vulnerable population groups were counted.
We also became census geeks. Some of us followed shifting census news with an obsession usually reserved for celebrity gossip. We became consumed with examining different counties’ daily census numbers, tracking the efforts of census takers across the state. We were humbled by how much those local workers had already done and were inspired by their determination to ensure everyone was counted. We felt a ping of pride when someone would say “thanks for the reminder” or “I thought it was over, I’ll fill it out now.”
When it was over, we had piles of reports to compile. We had to account for every dime spent. We spent time doing what we always do: examine, learn, report.
And we also looked around at our team with humble admiration. Let’s Count Texas was the single most challenging assignment we’d taken on because of the speed, the sensitivity, the scale, and the demands. It forced us to bust through silos (don’t got time for that), to trust our instincts (we know this is the right message!), to communicate clearly and quickly (critical since our entire team was working remotely), and to create a playbook based both on experience and our own wild spirit for innovation (ok, that’s the fun part).
It changed us. It changed TAG. We went from The Atkins Group to, simply, the group. A collection of passionate professionals who will not only throw a hail mary – they’ll catch it and run it into the endzone.
And yes, they’ll dance there, too.
Here our group now knows what we are actually capable of and, with that knowledge, we know that together we can achieve the impossible.
