It’s the Election Season in Alberta! Prepare your signage! From Fort McMurray to Medicine Hat, councils will be changing. Just like businesses, elected officials need great branding. It is the trigger for you to be memorable with your voters.
In municipalities, there’s no party backing or colour palette to adhere to, so your options for branding are endless. Creating a brand identity can be your crucial play in being memorable in your voters and can increase your position on the ballot.
Branding = Name Recognition = Votes
A great example of branding in local politics is the 2010 Calgary Mayoral Election of Naheed Nenshi. Mayor Naheed Nenshi and his “Purple Revolution” campaign surprised us all when he beat out Ric McIver with over 28,000 votes. His campaign was loaded with various guerrilla marketing tactics and appealed to a whole new generation of voters through social media.
Effective parts of his campaign were:
- Brand awareness: the so-called Purple Revolution was neither liberal red nor conservative blue, and was particularly eye-catching in Cow Town
- Social media: Hyper engagement with voters
- Coffee parties: small gatherings to discuss platform and engage with voters personally
- Chalk graffiti: platform slogans on the pavement at high traffic locations
- Creativity: the volunteer body was allow to exercise their creativity and talent
- Media awareness: Nenshi’s name was everywhere!
- Personable: Nenshi engaged with Calgarians at every step of the way
- Rallies: the mass rally the evening before election day
Creating a Political Brand
Who are you? What is your platform? How will you drive your municipality forward? These are all big questions that you will have to answer throughout your campaign. Looking at your campaign through a marketing lens, the questions are: What makes you stand out? How will you reach voters? What is the message you want to share? What is your engagement with your potential voters?
Election Season is short with major stakes in the game, here is some inspiration to keep driving your memorable campaign to the end goal, Mayor.
- Social media: Hyper engagement with voters, advertising. Replies to comments make you personable, and this is an especially important medium to reach voters when health guidelines restrict large gatherings
- Events: Small intimate coffee gatherings where you can effectively engage with individual voters. Remember to practice social distancing!
- Rallies: Engage your mass voters with various large events planned
- Signage: clear, concise and consistent! Use a memorable font and colours, and cover all your marketing bases:
- Yard signs
- Event signs
- Billboards
- Graphics
- Storefront signs at your campaign headquarters
- Email marketing: relevant, on-brand and calls to action
- Public Relations: Get yourself in the media!
- Website: Tie all of your other marketing materials together on your website and create links to social media, events and other major campaign media
Why trust AlbertaSignRentals.com with your election signage?
This list is a small portion of opportunities for your campaign and is not exhaustive in planning a large scale campaign. Calgary, Lethbridge, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray, Red Deer, Medicine Hat and everywhere in between, we have your campaign signage needs and so much more. Our support team is on hand to handle graphic design, build, and installation at an all-in cost with no hidden fees, to get your campaign set up for success. And we now offer online marketing services to help you reach every corner of your constituency.
Giving your customers the right message at the right time throughout your campaign will be vital for your campaign to stay current and memorable during the election season. As an added bonus for launching your campaign: when you rent with us, you don’t pay until the END of the first month’s rental!
When you work with Alberta Sign Rentals, you get so much more than yard signage: it’s our expertise and support we are renowned for. Our dedicated team of experts can guide you through the options available to you and help you choose the right signs to meet your needs. Contact us today!
