Objectives

Metro PR created this campaign in an effort to address record-low new voter registrations due to closed college campuses during the pandemic. We took this idea to our client, David Dobrik, and got him attached. Dobrik himself is not eligible to vote in federal U.S. elections as he was born in Slovakia and brought over to the U.S. as a small child by his parents. Dobrik is a DACA recipient, yet, he was passionate to partner with the Metro team and create an initiative to encourage his young audience (mainly consisting of first-time voters) to vote.

We proactively reached out to HeadCount.org and got them to join the initiative. With the support of private donors and the Good To Vote campaign (led by Ben Relles of YouTube), we were able to purchase five Teslas that we gave away as part of this campaign. We broke a record (stats below) and this campaign accounts for 10% of HeadCount.org’s new voter registrations since they launched their organization 10 years ago. 

Strategy and Execution

Using the power of social media, this campaign broke the internet as THE LARGEST VOTER REGISTRATION CAMPAIGN IN HISTORY. We used the strategic process below to create a successful campaign:

• We analyzed the gap created by the pandemic in encouraging young/first-time voters to vote. 
• We encouraged Dobrik to take on this initiative head-on using his incredible platform. 
• We created strategic partnerships with Headcount and Good To Vote to join us in this initiative. 
• We built a social strategy - Dobrik promised his social media followers a chance to win one of five Tesla 3 models if they share his post to their Instagram story, tag a friend’s handle in the comments and check if they’re registered to vote via nonprofit HeadCount’s website. 

  • The campaign launched Tuesday, 9/29, and ran through Sunday, 10/4. 

• We generated top-tier press coverage that hit on all of the core beats, including several headlines that mirrored our target messaging verbatim. 

Results

Results are highlighted below: 

• Dobrik broke HeadCount’s site on Tuesday, 9/29 with the launch of his custom voter registration page with unprecedented online traffic. 

• Dobrik drove nearly 10,000 new voter registrations within the first hour of launch and more than 23,000 verifications with the hashtag #GoodToVote.

• As of Thursday, 10/1 9 AM PT - Dobrik recruited over 101,329 new voter registrations and over 257,618 verifications, making it the largest voter registration campaign to date for HeadCount.

Media