In 2016, the presidential race was dicey. We wanted to do our part to ensure that the progressive values we hold could remain intact. We decided that meant a campaign to Stop Trump. We had an idea to create a website that would build a “virtual” wall, allowing folks to add a brick and a reason as to why they weren’t voting for Trump. We pitched this idea to the AFL-CIO as a list-building and visibility campaign, helping them reach newer audiences while engaging their current audience base.
The Stop Trump campaign needed to be interactive, fun, but also have a very clear message. It was important to keep the text as short as possible, and letting the visual and interactive aspect – the brick wall and the ability to add bricks – stand out the most. We also wanted to give people some ownership of the bricks, so gave them the ability to select a color for their brick and write a reason of why they weren’t voting for Trump. It was important for the website to be dynamic and able to handle a potentially large number of bricks. For this campaign, it was important to reach as many people as possible, thus developed an extensive data science and A/B testing plan to ensure we were continuously using the most effective language and experience and ran social media ads.
For this project, it was important to get the user experience right. We spent a good amount of time up front discussing how the interaction should work, what would happen when someone clicks on a brick, how it’d be added, and how the wall would grow. From these, we created wireframes that we shared with the AFL-CIO for feedback. Once approved, we created a brand and graphic illustrations for the campaign. We then built the website using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a Ruby on Rails application to handle the storage and display of bricks and user information.
We launched the website 2 weeks before election day. Throughout these 2 weeks, we conducted extensive A/B testing, testing out such things as language, background image, layout, and prompts.
Overall, the site attracted a substantial number of visitors and engagement was quite high. On average, 80% of visitors clicked on an empty brick, and 40% of all visitors added a brick to the wall. There were over 55,000 bricks added (making for a pretty tall wall!), and the site succeeded in adding over 25,000 new members to the AFL-CIO list.
