Case study
Electoral Commission / Reputation Matters
To translate complex information into an easily understood format so that as many voters as possible knew about the referendum on our voting system and felt confident enough to participate.
The referendum had no or low interest from voters and no or low personal relevance to them. It was a highly complex subject matter, about which voters were largely uninformed. There was also lots of environmental competition for the public’s attention, given the campaign was held close to the 2011 Rugby World Cup!
We adopted a voter-centric communication and engagement approach based on two insights:
We used plain English to translate complex content into simple messaging ‘chunks’.
We developed a range of interactive tools to help make it easy for people to access the information they wanted, depending on their level of interest.
We carefully phased the campaign and left the promotion to closer to polling day to provide space after the Rugby World Cup.
We surrounded the campaign with an engagement strategy targeting key influencers and the media, to ensure people understood how and why the campaign was constructed and executed the way it was.
Benchmark, pre and post campaign research confirmed that all campaign measures had been exceeded.
Auckland • Hamilton • Wellington
PO Box 7122, Wellington 6242