Success on the Election Trail from Social-Impact

Cute and Cuddly? That’s not how you’d describe Jim Burke in his run for reelection as North Collier Fire Commissioner. He did have a good looking family, so we had a shot at portraying at least a friendly, responsible candidate.

Jim Burke served his community well as a fire commissioner, however, the Union wasn’t so pleased with him as he worked harder for the taxpayer than he did for the union.

In retaliation, the Fire Union put up and backed a respectable candidate, raised a lot of money to promote the candidate, and used a bunch of manpower to get their man into office, including covering the area with signage and staffing the polling places with multiple representatives at a time passing out literature to support the fire fighters.

I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to support the firefighters, our local heroes. It was a compelling sell.

Campaign Signage and Brand

Against that backdrop, Burke came to Social-Impact to market himself in a more palatable way to the public. You see, Burke is a very analytical person who is into numbers and facts. It isn’t as emotional of a sell to the public in easy sound clips.

Newsletter

The first step was to create a Public Relations strategy with a “Brand” and “Look” to carry through on all his marketing efforts, including new photographs that depicted this image of professionalism.

His brand was a solid, no frills candidate that used logic and common sense to improve service levels and reducing the tax burden on taxpayers.

The next step was utilizing new methods to get that message out.

Burke didn’t have a built up Social Media presence, so his effort would have to come through a method of utilizing a website for his information, and sending out broadcasts through branded newsletters to parties that have shown an active participation in the government process.

Signage was placed strategically, and advertisements were placed in the Collier Citizen, where he could get a strong reach, inexpensively, and the message could be received in communities to people who may not have a subscription to the Naples Daily News.

In addition, via the website, Burke published multiple commentaries explaining solutions he intended to bring forward. This information was also put out through newsletters and social media channels.

Facebook Reach

A Facebook page was developed that was branded and provided the information from his website and could be used as a tool to place his newsletters and other information.

Since Burke didn’t have much of a following on Facebook, a series of advertisements were used to target active political people within his district.

You can see the results of the advertising breakdown two weeks before the election, when early voting began.

Burke went on to capture 65% of the vote, to which he attributes the efforts of people telling him they heard his message via the internet and the website.

He attributed the 33,000 votes to Social-Impacts efforts.

Watch his video as he tells the story in his words: