Making the Stakes Clear for New Jersey Families
Challenge
Make the Road Action NJ and Valiente Action Fund needed to reach low-propensity voters during a high-stakes governor’s race, especially Latino families facing rising rents, utility costs, and grocery prices. Surveys showed voters felt economic pressure and uncertainty about how policy shaped their budgets. They also revealed concern about detention activity affecting mixed-status families. We needed to turn these findings into messages that matched what voters cared about most.
Strategy
Our strategy combined quantitative insight, cultural segmentation, and creative execution. Key steps included:
- Using polling data to identify priority concerns and layering cultural insights to enrich the findings and shape messages that connected on an emotional level.
- Reflecting the makeup of New Jersey’s predominantly Caribbean Latino population in tone, vocabulary, and casting choices so the creative felt familiar and grounded.
- Grounding scripts in real household pressures and structuring them for fast comprehension so viewers stayed engaged.
- Developing Spanish and English creative with strong visual hierarchy and mobile-first pacing to reduce tune-out and maintain attention.
- Pre-testing ads to measure recall, relevance, and directional movement across segments and refining scripts and visuals based on performance.
Results
Ad testing showed strong persuasive impact across voter segments statewide. Voters moved by more than four points toward an unfavorable view of Ciattarelli, and conservative voters moved by three points. Latino and Black voters showed the highest levels of message clarity and motivation to act. After the ads aired, the campaign appeared in an Associated Press story that highlighted authenticity of the language and lifted lines from our scripts to illustrate how the ads connected.