National Association of Wholesalers-Distributors
The United States of Amazon
The National Association of Wholesale-Distributors (NAW) sought a legislative victory around a crucial piece of legislation, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act. Although the legislation advanced out of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the bill had yet to be introduced for a floor vote by either chamber, and the 117th Congressional session was coming to a close. NAW needed to find a way to get the attention of lawmakers before the year's end to avoid the bill getting killed.
The Challenge
While NAW was hard at work educating policy decision-makers on the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, they needed a public-facing campaign and effort to accompany their lobbying efforts. They were going up against Amazon and other big tech companies. The challenge was to create something that was both biting and funny while only having a couple of weeks to launch an effective campaign before the end of the Congressional calendar.
The Approach
We knew breaking down a complex policy issue around anti-competitive practices involving arguably the largest online retailer would not be easy. We needed to develop a compelling creative strategy utilizing images and messaging that could uniquely showcase the issue for a digital paid media campaign.
That’s where we came up with the animated video How Amazon Holds Small Business Hostage. We worked with members of the NAW team to develop a thorough understanding of the issue, develop the script and messaging, relevant imagery, storyboard, and more.
Our in-house creative team illustrated the designs and illustrations to stay true to the NAW brand while explicitly identifying the main culprit the legislation targeted. We used 3D animation to personify a shipping box to convey literal depth and scale, perfectly illustrating the figurative scale at which Amazon has been “swallowing” up main street businesses left and right.
We developed 6s, 15s, and 30s versions of the video to maximize our deliverability, inventory, and reach and created accompanying static display graphics for consistent branding across all distribution channels.
The Data
Custom Influencer Target Audience
Reaching elected officials and key policy influencers was critical to this campaign. This is why we employed custom research in creating a comprehensive policy insider audience of 15,000 high-value individuals. We could then effectively reach these individuals across numerous digital channels, whether they were in DC or back home.
Utilizing this custom audience, we could track unique individual engagements, ensure the audiences were seeing the ads via video completion rate tracking, and optimize based on frequency and impressions across platforms.
Everywhere All At Once
Since we were honing in on a small, but valuable audience, we used an efficient ad budget launched across LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Connected TV, pre-roll, and display to make the target audience feel like this ad campaign was a 7-figure effort.
The Results
We were able to turn around a high-quality animated explainer video with an expedited timeline that drove high engagement and clicks to educate decision makers around the issue. We are able to measure this through the use of our custom dashboard reporting that is updated in real time to show campaign metrics that we use to optimize our campaigns. Utilizing a small budget compared to the likes of the opposition, we were able to creatively and tactically reach the target audience effectively.
Ultimately Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer never brought the legislation to a floor vote during the 117th Congress, effectively killing the bill. The campaign did help lay the groundwork, messaging strategy, and tactics for future digital advocacy efforts around the issue.
STATS
82.4%
video completion rate (VCR) across advertising platforms.
1,875
social media engagements from individuals in the target audience, including an anti-trust lawyer with the FTC.
72%
video completion rate (VCR) for the target audience on LinkedIn.
.16%
click-thru-rate on display static ads (.09% above the 0.07% industry average)