Synopsis: A digital campaign to engage AFSCME activists and pressure Congress, specifically Republicans, to raise more federal tax revenue by closing special interest tax loopholes.

Framing: This campaign explicitly links Republicans’ refusal to eliminate loopholes in the federal tax code with their desire to cut programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. AFSCME argues that any cuts to social programs would essentially be subsidizing tax cuts for the super rich and big corporations. Republicans would be continuing corporate welfare to the detriment of working Americans.

My Roles: Project manager for the e-mail portion of the campaign. Writer and producer for www.gifquester.com.

The Gifquester

Click here to visit Gifquester.com


Results: Gifquester quickly became a viral hit on online. As of Friday, March 1 – the page had been viewed 11,967 times and had been tweeted more than 500 times and was shared by more than 1,500 Facebook users — and that’s just the people who used the sharing tools we embedded on the page. Our reach on Twitter was 249,696 accounts.


Visitors to gifquester.com spent an average of 5:39 seconds on the page as compared to 2:17 seconds for afscme.org overall, signifying that they were highly engaged and read the entire post. Due to heavy traffic gifquester.com actually was shut down briefly.


We were mentioned in Politico and in a Tech President e-mail blast. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive for breaking down a complex topic into something informative and entertaining.


Gifquester was also very influential among opinion leaders. Listed below is a selection of tweets from influential reporters, political analysts, and organizations that spread the word. Click here for a more extensive list.

Website

Web Designer: Mike Carvalho

E-mails

Results: Over 15,000 petition signers.