Vote Vogelheim
Goal
How do you make a pro-choice, pro-environment Republican winnable in a Democratic county?
Challenge
Paul Vogelheim had served his local community for over a decade as a county commissioner. During his decade and a half of service in Teton County, his political party had shifted from focusing on managing budgets and protecting the local environment to becoming a group of MAGA supporters. Paul wanted to show the community that there was still a Republican who believed in putting the community first and that national loyalty was irrelevant to his service to the community. However, most of Teton County had become registered Democrats, so Paul needed to convince the citizens that he was a different kind of candidate.
Process
We started working with Paul in September, focusing on creating a digital strategy to present him effectively to the voters. Our concern was that many would see the Republican next to his name and instantly suspect that he was misrepresenting how moderate his stances were. Yet, Paul had genuinely served his community for over 20 years in 12 different nonprofit organizations. Our belief was that we needed to reframe the election from Republican vs. Democrat to a humble servant running against a rich billionaire who had done nothing more active than donating money.
We strategized with Paul on various content he could capture versus things that we would do when we were in town. We hoped the mix of organic and professional content would help paint a picture that showed he was authentic in what he was advocating.
Solution
The message we wanted to drive home was that Paul had been consistently and humbly serving his community. Our work began with filming a 2-hour interview that we spliced up into 6 different videos highlighting Paul’s background of serving on various nonprofit boards, starting multiple nonprofits, caring for his dying wife, and becoming a stepfather (we’ve merged all six to one long video below). Additionally, we worked with Paul to start morning videos that would put a smile on people’s faces and to begin collecting media of him serving his community that we could post daily on social media.