Grassroots

Southwest Airlines needed to overturn a 30-year law that prohibited their expansion into larger markets. Their opponent was a major industry competitor who outspent them 8 to 1 in advertising, lobbying, and grassroots advocacy. In addition, their opponent had been engaged in local, state and national organizations for thirty years longer than our client. While our client had lots of national, state, and local goodwill, and is consistently ranked as one of the best places to work, their opponent had deeper ties to the third-party groups that mattered in this influence campaign.

We were hired to research prevailing public attitudes toward their legislative goal, as well as attitudes toward their opponents. We employed the Crossfire technique, which revealed that the economic arguments frequently used by the company to persuade citizens and legislators, while accurate, did not test as favorably as the messages we uncovered. Our messages generated more public empathy and understanding, and successfully positioned them as “David” to their opponent’s “Goliath.”

We counseled the staff to integrate the new messages into all advertising, grassroots advocacy and legislative communications, and designed a narrative turn-key presentation for staff and employee ambassadors. They carried the story to community groups, which resulted in new surrogates and supporters.

Our clients’ legislation passed, their customer volume is up 20% in the targeted markets, and the overall growth has moved their Fortune 500 ranking up 33 spots.

One of the patterns we see with our consulting collaborations is increased senior management support, visibly and financially, for the government relations function. In fact, over 85% of our long term consulting clients have experienced an increase in senior management recognition, human resources and financial support. Sometimes clients can make significant improvements with a one-day “tune up.” They have the right foundations and structures in place for grassroots involvement, but they have reached a “success plateau” and want to integrate more best practices into their operations. Because we are constantly conducting research among high-performing government relations operations, we have the answers.

For Kentucky and Tennessee State Farm Insurance employees, we delivered a campaign involvement school to facilitate employee relationships with elected officials. We also assisted the staff with participant screening and evaluations, and provided implementation timelines and benchmarks to maintain the post-training momentum. Within a week of training, over 70% of the participants signed on to a campaign.

For State Farm Insurance employees in Colorado, we conducted a Key Contact workshop that resulted in a 300% increase in Key Contact and lawmaker interactions.

The American Cancer Society hired us to work with their national advocacy staff throughout the country to develop tools and motivational strategies for their grassroots advocates. We equipped volunteers in select presidential primary states on a “Campaign Against Cancer” initiative. The goal was to urge presidential candidates to make finding a cure for cancer a top legislative priority. We trained volunteers across the country on how to approach presidential candidates and the media at town hall meetings, rallies, and fundraisers. From “working a room,” to asking provocative questions, and telling their personal stories to candidates, we helped build an elite team of confident advocates.

The ACS advocates made over 140 personal volunteer contacts with presidential candidates, and over 35 news articles were published that featured ACS issues discussed at town hall meetings.

Based on the new level of volunteer activism, grassroots advocacy has become a vital part of the American Cancer Society’s culture. The Campaign against Cancer was integrated into the American Cancer Society’s culture with increased staff, budget, national events and collateral materials.

Southwest Airlines asked us to provide counsel on how to create persuasive messages and train their employee grassroots volunteers to carry their message throughout their communities. We provided ongoing strategic influence counsel to the Legislative Awareness team, conducted focus groups and developed salient focus group messages for use in the campaign. We also wrote and designed a persuasive turn-key presentation for employee use at community group meetings. Southwest won the issue, and this represented a cultural change in how they tackle major legislative influence challenges to a research-based approach.

For the National Safety Council (NSC) we re-organized a dormant statewide organization through the initiation of a regular newsletter publication, volunteer recognition, meetings with key volunteer leaders and the creation of a turn-key grassroots recruitment presentation for the Coalition’s volunteer leaders. We increased the Coalition’s membership by over 30% in six months. The legislation went further in the legislative process than it had in the previous four years. As a result, we were asked to present our methodologies to other NSC state grassroots consultants. The NSC staff stated that “your work in Ohio will serve as a model for our grassroots initiatives in other key states.”