Activists in NYC along with the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed new construction projects that would restrict and change traffic patterns on Fifth Avenue, widen bus lanes, and add bike lanes. Our client was a nonprofit organization representing the high-end retailers of Fifth Avenue who would have been negatively affected had this proposal gone through. Majority Strategies ran a comprehensive campaign, from setup to finish, and was successful in pressuring the city’s lawmakers to kill the NYC DOT’s plan to restrict Fifth Avenue traffic.
Our Client
Fifth Avenue Association Business Improvement District (BID) is a non-profit started by the retailers of Fifth Avenue. While they mostly focus on promoting foot traffic and their brands, here they shifted to advocacy and stopping a proposed plan by the City of New York that would negatively affect Fifth Avenue commercial retail businesses.
The Problem
Activists in NYC along with the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) wanted to restrict and change traffic patterns on Fifth Avenue, widen bus lanes, and add bike lanes. There was a complete disregard for retailer’s concerns that these efforts would block traffic and prevent shoppers from returning.
Fifth Avenue Association wanted to send a clear message to NYC influencers in City Hall and at the DOT that this was not the time to block Fifth Avenue from a recovery.
The Team
Majority Strategies joined a team that included a traditional lobbying firm and a public relations firm. Majority Strategies created a specialized advocacy website, a new issue-awareness video, and created a targeted digital advertising campaign.
The Goal
Fifth Avenue Association wanted to defeat this NYC DOT plan to restrict street traffic in order to best serve the retail stores on upper Fifth Avenue.
The Plan
Majority Strategies’ campaign consisted of two parts:
1. A grassroots effort urging New Yorkers to support the economic recovery of Fifth Avenue by sending emails to city officials asking them to stop their plan.
2. A campaign delivering targeted ads to employees and regular visitors of NYC City Hall, employees and influencers at the NYC DOT, and NYC city council members.
Fifth Avenue Association required a website tailored for this issue that didn’t interfere with its brand, so we created a dedicated URL, supportfifthavenue.nyc, for the advocacy campaign to ensure that the client’s traditional branding was not disturbed. Digital advertising included static and animated ads on social media and display, search advertising, and a 30-second video to explain the issues to the targeted audiences.
Grassroots Efforts
To put pressure on individuals in City Hall and the DOT, we needed a successful grassroots effort where constituents would contact their city council member and city officials. To accomplish this goal, we created a website with a “Take Action Now!” form immediately visible to visitors giving individuals the ability to send an email to city officials and demonstrate their opposition to their proposal.
We then ran a targeted advertising campaign with Majority Strategies-created audiences and insights from our data science teams. Our audiences consisted of
• Our proprietary National Engagers audience filtered and modeled for NYC; and
• Individuals who live near Fifth Avenue and would object to the DOT plan.
Majority Strategies’ National Engagers are a custom modeled audience of individuals who are HIGHLY likely to engage with online political or advocacy content. These aren’t users who have just “Liked” political content online; these are behavior-modeled political advocates who interact with ads 10x more frequently than the industry average.
With support from our NYC National Engagers and the added support of targeted constituents who live near Fifth Avenue, we collected 815 sign-ups. The sign-ups generated emails sent to city council members and influencers we needed to pressure.
These emails were the deciding factor in convincing the city to kill their proposal.
Influencers
Alongside our grassroots effort, we delivered video and static ads to NYC Influencers. We targeted these influencers using our mobile location database, which captures coordinates on all devices an average of 6x per day. We save trillions of data points, allowing us to build audiences based on current and historical visitation – perfect for targeted communication in the new normal of reduced face-to-face advocacy opportunities in NYC.
To build our targeted audience, we pulled device IDs from the NYC City Hall and Annex Buildings, then further filtered the list so it contained only individuals frequently seen in both locations.
The Results
After the city’s proposal was killed, the client noted that Majority Strategies’ targeted campaign generating email submissions to influencers in city hall was the deciding factor that influenced the city to kill the DOT’s proposal.
City nixes Fifth Ave. ‘squeeze’ ahead of holidays
The Post, 10/24/21
“The proposals ‘threaten Midtown’s and New York City’s economic recovery,’ Jerome Barth, president of the Fifth Avenue Association told The Post in August. ‘Not one business here supports the plan.'”
Keys to Success
Majority Strategies’ sophisticated targeting and insights, decades of advocacy experience, and creative and digital professionals worked to produce a complete, from the ground up advocacy campaign with the desired results.
• We designed the website, created the call-to-action form and constituent contact capability, kept everything up-to-date, and constantly optimized for maximum performance.
• We tested multiple creatives, ultimately drawing on our political and advocacy experience to drive engagement with more unique, impactful creatives that we produced in-house.
• We used our internal data science teams to create customized modeling for the client that resulted in engagement much higher than the industry average for a smaller-than-average budget for legislative advocacy.
Highlights of Results Delivered
- 815 individual New Yorkers signed the form and sent emails to NYC Influencers in City Hall and the DOT
- Conversion rates (% of visitors to your website that complete a desired goal) were 3x industry standards
- Cost-Per-Acquisition stayed under client’s goal
The Majority Strategies Difference
- Our experience and resources for utilizing mobile location data
- Our data insights, our political background and results-oriented focus
- Our ability to execute successful advocacy efforts with our in-house data and analytics, strategy, creative, web design, and more, allows clients new to advocacy to run successful campaigns from beginning to end
Reach out to the Majority Strategies team today to learn more and get started.