PATTY MURRAY FOR SENATE, 2010 

Challenging an opponent in Wall Street's pocket

The Challenge

Winning over men was going to be no easy task. Patty Murray was facing a tough reelection campaign in Washington State. Although she had a 50-44 approval-disapproval rating among women, her numbers dropped to 42-52 among men. It was obvious that to win the election, Murray, the self-proclaimed “mom in tennis shoes” would have to focus her effort on winning over more men. To do this, she would need to show voters that opponent Dino Rossi would be no friend if he won the election, and landed in Washington, DC. What program would show that Rossi was beholden to Wall Street instead of the people of the Evergreen State? 

The Solution

Our goal was to get male voters to understand who Dino Rossi really sided with, and it was going to take a creative plan to get there. To engage men in a conversation about Dino Rossi’s negatives, we designed a program that used auto interactive calls (push 1, 2 or 3 on your phone). Through careful research and meticulous planning, we laid out very clear positions that would resonate with men in Washington State – and get them to question Rossi’s loyalties. We reached out to men in Washington to ask them about what qualities they wanted in their Senator. The goal was to demonstrate Rossi’s history of siding with big money. We focused these efforts in a two-pronged approach: by first asking them to press a button to identify what was most important to each voter and then showing examples related to their particular concerns; and followed up these interactive calls with auto calls, giving social proof of how others felt about Rossi’s history. Stones' Phones ended the push with a scary Halloween call that would be hard to ignore.

The Result

The calls rolled out over the course of several weeks, targeting a universe of 140,449, opening a conversation about who Rossi would be friends with if elected. The creative strategy worked; on Election Day, Patty Murray outperformed the pre-election polls. This bump among white males pushed Patty Murray to victory in the closest Senate race of 2010. 

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