Ask Bee Anything: Three Takeaways on Get Out the Vote Campaigns

Welcome back to one of Beekeeper Group’s newest yet most entertaining traditions: Ask Bee Anything!

In our second iteration of ABA, we’ve compiled an expert panel of public affairs and communications practitioners from right here inside the Hive to help answer your innermost advocacy questions. 

If you’re unable to join one of our live webinars–fear not. Recordings will be available for all registrants and recaps (just like this one!) will be published here on the Beekeeper blog.

To kick this season off, we begin with a topic that we’ve already seen plenty of questions about from our colleagues and clients: Get Out the Vote campaigns, or GOTV for short. This extension of your existing grassroots strategy has traditionally been a straightforward touchpoint to keep your audience engaged throughout the election cycle.

But how does that change in our current environment? And do the usual tactics still work?

These questions and more were covered during our first ABA of 2026. Let’s recap what we discussed. And if you want to watch the full ABA recording, you can access it below.

It’s best to start with the basics: A GOTV campaign is functionally no different than any other advocacy communications effort. It’s an educational touchpoint designed to inform your audience about the process of voting while empowering them to participate in their civic duty.

Growing up in the 1990’s, the first time I ever came across a GOTV campaign was with MTV’s Rock the Vote. This voter registration initiative, aimed at 18-24 year olds, featured prominent musical acts urging everyone to simply get out there and, you know, vote. 

The messages are definitely a relic of the past, but you can see how they easily melded into the programming at the time.

Rock the Vote was the brainchild of Jeff Ayeroff, an executive at Virgin Records who had worked with some of the biggest acts of the 80’s. He founded the campaign leading up to the midterm elections of 1990 in direct response to what he saw as encroaching government censorship. So, the message was simple: Register to vote, and tell your elected officials to stay out of artists’ way.

Rock the Vote would go on to have a real legislative impact. It was pivotal in helping support the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, or the Motor Voter bill, which was signed into law by President Clinton and requires state governments to offer voter registration to any eligible person renewing their driver’s license or accessing public assistance.

President Clinton, years later according to Ayeroff, would personally recognize Rock the Vote as being instrumental in his presidential election win thanks to the prominent youth turnout fueled by the campaign. 

In 2016, it was estimated that Rock the Vote had helped register 6 million voters. By all accounts, it remains one of the most successful voter activation campaigns in pop culture history.

A successful GOTV campaign relies on three core pillars:

1. It has a clear and well-defined audience. Narrowing your target audience provides a much more manageable and achievable goal. There’s an old adage in advertising about trying to boil the ocean. If you aim to reach everybody, your resources will eventually run out. 

2. It has a simple call-to-action. The best campaigns remove any excess barriers that could possibly dissuade the audience from participation. In a Get Out the Vote campaign, that makes it simple: Encourage your advocates to educate themselves on the issues at hand and empower them to make a plan to vote.

3. It meets the audience where it’s at. Your message should look and feel like the media your audience is used to seeing. When it blends in with the rest of the content landscape, it’s much more likely to be received and remembered. There’s a reason so many ads now look like memes.

You can expand some of these themes out more based on the current available research. The Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, in their 2006 look at GOTV tactics, suggested a number of interesting takeaways that have aged surprisingly well:

• Personalized methods and messages work better.
• Social networks and interpersonal influence can be powerful mobilizing forces.
• The content of mobilization messages is not as important as the quality, timing and delivery of messages.
• Mass email has yet to be proven effective.

OK, so they went three for four in their analysis. That’s pretty good for 20 years ago! Back then, I was trying to pull off a white tuxedo at my high school prom, so in retrospect, I can relate to being confidently wrong.

While every advocacy opportunity is different, we tend to stick to a few tried-and-true methods when we hep clients approach adding GOTV to their advocacy communications mix. These include:

• Establishing a voter information hub. Your campaign needs somewhere to live, so your hub should be an extension of your existing advocacy web presence. We recommend including three key components:
  • A tool for advocates to check their voter registration
  • A state-by-state directory featuring the must-know information around deadlines and voter access
  • A resource library around how this particular election impacts your issues

• A rallying cry asset. This is usually a compelling short video or infographic. You need to grab your audience’s attention to direct them to the hub, so this is your chance to get both creative and catchy.

• A drumbeat of information. Remember what our friends at Yale said about quality and timing? This is where a content strategy is critical. Your advocates are looking to follow a path that leads to voting–so meet them along the way with a steady series of materials instead of an all-at-once data dump.

With these tools at your disposal, you’re well on your way to activating your network of advocates to vote with confidence. Feeling stuck about the rest? That’s where our team of experts can help.

Thank you to all of our attendees, and don’t forget to register for the next Ask Bee Anything event on February 18 where we’ll be debuting the findings of our brand new Future of Advocacy Report. See you then!