The Vision
Sierra Club Independent Action’s 2020 campaign strategy focused on electing green candidates across the nation, and centered around relational organizing. The need: a clear, informative website primed for conversions and a digital campaign brimming with eye-catching graphics. This would move Sierra Club’s 3.5 million members to vote their values and take action to help others do the same.
The Challenge
Sierra Club members know their values, but don’t always see voting as a means of achieving their goals. Closing the gap between values and action required potent messaging showing why the planet’s future was on the line. Design for a c(4) required a strong grasp of the regulations differentiating these entities from their c(3) counterparts, and how those rules shape digital communications. Guided by a core content strategy, we had to move fast to design graphics and keep in step with the 24/7 news cycle.
Our Approach
To turn Sierra Club members who have not participated in civic engagement into fully activated green voters, we had to convince them that their priorities hung in the balance. A clean, high-performing campaign main page along with dozens of graphics—funny, shocking, or thought-provoking – helped to level up these audiences, showing them they could act to protect the environment by mobilizing others.
Results so far
The campaign outperformed Sierra Club’s digital programs to date. Graphics achieved record levels of engagement, activating SC members to write over 1.3 million letters, make over 5.5 million calls, and send over 20 million texts.
Whether addressing climate change denial or pledges for a clean energy future, we paired messaging and design to bring headlines from Presidential debates and other current events to life in compelling, urgent ways.
When the campaign ended after the January 2021 runoff election for US Senate in Georgia, Sierra Club members had helped to usher in a new Presidency and Democratic majority, marking a profound moment of possibility for the planet and its future.
The resulting graphics and website highlight COVID, systemic racism, and national security among other issues salient to Sierra Club members.
The website served as a landing page to convert social media shares into tangible action ahead of the 2020 election.
The campaign graphics were created with sharing in mind, highlighting high level talking points as well as directing viewers where to look to take further action.
