2023 Winner
SilverBest Disruption
SilverBest in Social Media
SilverBest use of Influencers
BronzeBest in Consumer Engagement
BronzeBest Integrated Campaign
Government of Quebec
"Reverse the Trend"
Cossette Média
"Reverse the Trend"
Cossette Média
There has been a steady decline in provincial voting turnout across the country, especially in the younger demographic, and Quebec is no exception, with a 20% drop since 1976. To halt the decline, they needed to rejuvenate the voter base by attracting younger people to the polls, without alienating older voters.
Further challenges were that the outcome of the vote was pretty well predetermined and due to electoral law, they only had one month to motivate their constituents into action. Disruption was necessary to be effective, with this target and with this daunting challenge.
Since people are voting less and less, they decided to use that troubling fact as an important part of their rallying cry. “People are voting less and less.” “Since nothing has worked before” “To “reverse the trend they will do the opposite of what they’d normally do.” They introduced the communication platform – Let’s “reverse the trend”. Let’s all vote.
They deployed a disrupted, integrated approach across tv, social, out of home and earned, given their limited time-frame to influence. They had a consistent ‘always-on’ strategy with tv and radio and kept media and creative engaging by continually providing fresh ideas in social/digital and broadcast integrations. All channels worked as a collective, deploying their unique strengths that were orchestrated to build inclination to vote on election day.
Young adults are an audience disengaged from the traditional political system, but are highly engaged and concentrated on social platforms to share their opinion and beliefs. So not surprisingly, social media added to the disruptive elements of their campaign.
It did so in three main areas: on TikTok due to the high daily engagement and impact of the Quebec Government engaging on this channel in an innovative manner – they created new content every day for 35 days. People ate it up and engaged with recommending new uses.
On the mainstays of Facebook and Insta they disrupted young adults with humorous messages that had them become part of the advocates to vote, due to the massive sharing they did. They also disrupted the typical influencer strategy – they used ‘non’ influencers on these channels, creating tremendous earned coverage for the breakthrough idea.
On TV they complemented their tailored programming buys that gave people reasons not to vote, with a large scale program integration on the highest rated program for their primary target – the influencer reality show – Occupation Double, and in connected tv and video.
On radio, they tried to attract as little attention as possible by whispering. Radio station hosts mimicked their ads and whispered content about getting out to vote, disrupting their content. They also added innovative audio with things like the popular ‘Rince-Crème’ podcast with infamous Quebec comedians that provided absurd reasons ‘not to vote’.
In addition to the many ways of innovating how they used all their media channels to ‘non-influence’ detailed in the above execution elements, they also acquired several plots of virtual land to place their billboard messages in the metaverse, via Sandbox. Not surprisingly, not many people went to see them. But the idea got picked up and shared on social media and then earned media, including even Radio Canada creating news about it. Earned media was a very powerful component of the whole campaign as the news outlets and entertainment shows couldn’t stop talking about how surprising and effective the integrated campaign was at breaking through voter malaise.
Something very unusual happened: people actually started talking about the campaign. A lot. They achieved unprecedented media coverage for a Quebec election and never-before-seen engagement on their social platforms. They garnered over 40 million impressions (in only Quebec!) in earned media. Over 160 news reports about the campaign! Massive engagement with editorial helped influence people to vote.
Social engagement was through the roof! Their engagement spiked by +588 on on Facebook; +1,623 on Instagram and they garnered 115k likes on TikTok, with their top performing video delivering over 350k organic views.
‘They shook up electoral campaigns,’ 98.5FM
‘Creativity and daring for the good of democracy,’ Radio Canada
Most importantly, the campaign had a real impact on the desire to vote, with the majority of their 18-35 year old target audience saying the campaign influenced them to do so.
Overall voter turnout reached 66.2%, stopping the decline from the 2018 provincial election, which was 66.4%. (In great contrast to Ontario that dropped from 57% in 2018, to 43% in 2022.)
The campaign achieved a 90% awareness rate amongst all adult residents of Quebec and 93%(!) against 18-35 year olds.
TVA summed it up best – ‘This year, Elections Quebec hit it out of the park.’
And their clients couldn’t have agreed more, ‘I have heard and read several times in recent days in the media that the big winners of the election period on social media (among others) are Elections Quebec!’ Anne-Moisant-Lapointe, Elections Quebec.
Further challenges were that the outcome of the vote was pretty well predetermined and due to electoral law, they only had one month to motivate their constituents into action. Disruption was necessary to be effective, with this target and with this daunting challenge.
Since people are voting less and less, they decided to use that troubling fact as an important part of their rallying cry. “People are voting less and less.” “Since nothing has worked before” “To “reverse the trend they will do the opposite of what they’d normally do.” They introduced the communication platform – Let’s “reverse the trend”. Let’s all vote.
They deployed a disrupted, integrated approach across tv, social, out of home and earned, given their limited time-frame to influence. They had a consistent ‘always-on’ strategy with tv and radio and kept media and creative engaging by continually providing fresh ideas in social/digital and broadcast integrations. All channels worked as a collective, deploying their unique strengths that were orchestrated to build inclination to vote on election day.
Young adults are an audience disengaged from the traditional political system, but are highly engaged and concentrated on social platforms to share their opinion and beliefs. So not surprisingly, social media added to the disruptive elements of their campaign.
It did so in three main areas: on TikTok due to the high daily engagement and impact of the Quebec Government engaging on this channel in an innovative manner – they created new content every day for 35 days. People ate it up and engaged with recommending new uses.
On the mainstays of Facebook and Insta they disrupted young adults with humorous messages that had them become part of the advocates to vote, due to the massive sharing they did. They also disrupted the typical influencer strategy – they used ‘non’ influencers on these channels, creating tremendous earned coverage for the breakthrough idea.
On TV they complemented their tailored programming buys that gave people reasons not to vote, with a large scale program integration on the highest rated program for their primary target – the influencer reality show – Occupation Double, and in connected tv and video.
On radio, they tried to attract as little attention as possible by whispering. Radio station hosts mimicked their ads and whispered content about getting out to vote, disrupting their content. They also added innovative audio with things like the popular ‘Rince-Crème’ podcast with infamous Quebec comedians that provided absurd reasons ‘not to vote’.
In addition to the many ways of innovating how they used all their media channels to ‘non-influence’ detailed in the above execution elements, they also acquired several plots of virtual land to place their billboard messages in the metaverse, via Sandbox. Not surprisingly, not many people went to see them. But the idea got picked up and shared on social media and then earned media, including even Radio Canada creating news about it. Earned media was a very powerful component of the whole campaign as the news outlets and entertainment shows couldn’t stop talking about how surprising and effective the integrated campaign was at breaking through voter malaise.
Something very unusual happened: people actually started talking about the campaign. A lot. They achieved unprecedented media coverage for a Quebec election and never-before-seen engagement on their social platforms. They garnered over 40 million impressions (in only Quebec!) in earned media. Over 160 news reports about the campaign! Massive engagement with editorial helped influence people to vote.
Social engagement was through the roof! Their engagement spiked by +588 on on Facebook; +1,623 on Instagram and they garnered 115k likes on TikTok, with their top performing video delivering over 350k organic views.
‘They shook up electoral campaigns,’ 98.5FM
‘Creativity and daring for the good of democracy,’ Radio Canada
Most importantly, the campaign had a real impact on the desire to vote, with the majority of their 18-35 year old target audience saying the campaign influenced them to do so.
Overall voter turnout reached 66.2%, stopping the decline from the 2018 provincial election, which was 66.4%. (In great contrast to Ontario that dropped from 57% in 2018, to 43% in 2022.)
The campaign achieved a 90% awareness rate amongst all adult residents of Quebec and 93%(!) against 18-35 year olds.
TVA summed it up best – ‘This year, Elections Quebec hit it out of the park.’
And their clients couldn’t have agreed more, ‘I have heard and read several times in recent days in the media that the big winners of the election period on social media (among others) are Elections Quebec!’ Anne-Moisant-Lapointe, Elections Quebec.
Credits
Media agency: Cossette MédiaMedia Director : Amélie Lemieux
Media Planning: Alec Blondin Stewart
Media buy: Marie-Pierre Desrochers, Émilie Loignon, Lynda Dufour, Marylee Lavoie, Félix Vachon
Agency: Cossette
Executive Director: Nicole Laplante
Client: Élections Québec
Director(Corporate Communications): Valérie Julien
Coordinator (Strategic Council Team): Anne Moisan-Lapointe
Coordinator (Digital Strategy Team and Digital Strategist): Sandrine Charron