The so-called "affluenza" case of a Texas teenager who caused a fatal car crash, killing four people and severely wounded others, made national headlines in 2013 when then-16-year-old Ethan Couch's defense team used "affluenza" as an unusual, laughable argument.
When Ethan Couch was seen violating his probation by attending a party with alcohol present, he and his mother ran to Mexico, only to be caught by the FBI 11 days later.
MADD wanted to shine a light on this horrible tragedy – and the thousands of others it represented – to provide some form of justice for the victims and change the conversations surrounding DUI/DWI sentencing.
We had lofty goals:
Influence the outcome of the case: Because of his age, Ethan Couch was originally tried in the juvenile court system. With his 19th birthday looming, we saw the opportunity to have the case moved to the adult court system, where Ethan stood a much better chance of spending some time in jail.
Create urgency and relevancy for our brand: We wanted to use the natural time crunch imposed by the upcoming hearings to our advantage. We focused not on generating "impressions" but, instead, on making an impression and shining a light on the continued injustices in our legal system in order to shake people out of their complacency. We needed to stir the simmering outrage to spur people into action.
With the clock ticking, we locked five strategies into place:
- Leverage existing public interest – Ethan Couch was front-page news, but, in our ever-changing news cycle, he wouldn't remain there forever. We needed to act decisively and quickly to harness the building momentum. Otherwise, the entire campaign would fail.
- Do something – In this case, that meant a little less talk and a lot more action! Our roots began with protests and hands-on events but, somehow in the past few years, we had drifted into issuing statements. A press release wasn't going to cut it. Even though it felt like scary new ground, we wanted to push ourselves to do more.
- Create an action the public can do – We wanted people to feel like they were part of the solution. Therefore, we needed something significant as a call-to-action.
- Amplify the message – It wasn't enough to produce a campaign if we couldn't get it in front of enough people to make a difference. To succeed, we were going to need our brand advocates and supporters to sign on to the mission and share it for us.
- Create ongoing value/connections – New relationships are well and good, but what about the next step? We wanted to take this campaign go further by making plans to grow and nurture those relationships.
With the back-end planning in place, we executed the following tactics:
- An online petition asking for 30,000 signatures
- A strong social media presence
- Media relations
- Paid digital advertising and Google Adwords
- Email marketing
Execution
- We launched an online petition to #FightAffluenza that including a landing and "thank you" page. We shared a goal of collecting 30,000 signatures – and email addresses – in support of moving Ethan Couch to the adult court system.
- We attended every Ethan Couch hearing, often with our National President Colleen Sheehey-Church delivering a statement and answering press questions. These events also were live streamed.
- We extensively shared the petition online, asking our advocates to help spread the word. We provided a "twibbon," an infographic, and socially shareable graphics to give each post enough visual punch to break through the "noise."
- We kept the conversation going by securing placement of an editorial by MADD's President in USA Today and received many other media mentions, including PR Week, CNN HLN, and the Washington Post.
- We developed an extensive drip email campaign to slowly welcome to MADD the people who signed the petition. The series started with a large funnel of people generally interested in MADD, but as people signed the petition, we ended with those passionate about the case who had signed. The series included several case updates and a thank you. Then, we began sharing related news, such as a similar case, before moving on to more general MADD emails
The "Affluenza" campaign was our most successful campaign of the last ten years. It far-and-away achieved our goals, positioning MADD as a leading authority on drunk driving and earning us new, loyal fans. Some of the high points include:
- Hitting our goal of 30,000 signatures within 24 hours, eventually accumulating more than 52,000 names
- Setting a new record for most visits to MADD.org in one day
- Adding more email addresses to our list in one month than in all of 2015
- Achieving a 52% increase in giving in the first two weeks of the year vs the same time in 2015
- Hitting a nearly 20% increase in volunteer interest
- Earning an above-average open rate of 17.93% for our email series
- Obtaining nearly 350 million media impressions in one month. Some of the publications included:
- Reaching more than 87,000 people on Facebook with paid advertising, which garnered more than 1,400 visits to our website petition
- Finally, even without a specific ask, we saw donations go up 52% in the first two weeks of the year compared to the same time last year.
