AUSTIN, TEXAS —A bipartisan panel judging political communications across the nation for the  2018 election cycle has recognized Chism Strategies for innovation in direct mail. The Annual Reed Awards recognizes the nation’s best political campaign work in a range of categories.

Chism Strategies’ direct mail work was a finalist in the category of Social Pressure Mail for the use of innovative techniques to drive Democratic turnout in the Mississippi 2018 general election.

“We do everything we can to give our clients a competitive edge and want to thank Mike Espy for his confidence in our firm,” company President Brad Chism said.

The mailers targeted three sets of low propensity minority voters: new registrants, voters who had not participated since President Obama’s election, and infrequent voters living in households with frequent voters.

The first two mailers were adaptations of proven social pressure techniques as catalogued by the Analyst Institute, the nation’s leading progressive think tank on campaign best practices. The third piece—using frequent voters to mobilize infrequent voters at the same address was groundbreaking. It used traditional social pressure ratcheted up by the family connection between the reliable voters and the infrequent voters living with them.

Turnout results in the state’s largest county confirmed the impact of the program Among new African American registrants receiving the mailers, voter turnout was a whopping 87 percent more those new registrants who did not receive the mailers. For the voters who had not been to the polls since the Obama elections, the lift among those who got the mailer compared to those who did not was  36.7 percent.  And with the mailer to frequent African American voters asking them to help shepherd their live-in infrequent voters to the polls, we saw a 56.6 percent increase in turnout among the infrequent voter in the household.

Chism Strategies is a full-service political communications firm for Democratic candidates and progressive causes headquartered in Jackson, MS with offices in Atlanta, Memphis and Washington, DC.