Communication | Marketing | Programs
2022AYearInReview
Content 4 2022: A New Team Forms 6 Voter Education: Surround Sound 8 Did you say, “Geofencing?” 10 Fast Earned Media Facts 12 2023: Organizing around Outcomes
2022: A New Team Forms
Being the most senior communications team member by tenure, Randy LoBasso started with AARP AARP Pennsylvania in December 2021. As a new hire, he had little time to get oriented before becoming the sole communications staff member for the state office.
A social media vendor, SeedX, came on board in March 2022 and provided much-needed support with the state’s social channel management. TJ Thiessen came to the team as an internal hire from CSN’s OSA team as the Communications Director.
Around the same time, Kiley Roach transitioned to Team Pennsylvania from Team South Dakota, where she was acting as the state’s Communications Director.
To fill out the team, Katie Theriault came on as the Program Specialist in the early fall.
This new team came together quickly and, with an agile approach to project management, immediately got to work.
Among the many things we supported this year include an Rx takeover that included billboards and digital ads displayed in Philadelphia, Scranton, and Pittsburgh; creating a shared Juneteenth video shared across CSN; a joint fraud Teletown hall with Ohio; a YUGE(!) voter engagement campaign; and a statewide, end of the year Holiday Fraud push.
TJ Thiessen MGR - Communications
Randy LoBasso
Kiley Roach CTR - Communications
ASD - Communications
Katie Theriault Program Specialist
Voter Education: Surround Sound
Taking one of Bill Sweeney’s favorite phrases to heart, the team took a “surround sound” approach to voter engagement
Our first poll was released after the primary election in June 2022 We got some great press, and although none of our comms team has been here more than a year – we learned a lot While our first poll didn’t get an exclusive release, it still generated over 350 million impressions in earned media
In our second poll, we secured an exclusive with Politico National reporter Holly Otterbein. That story made the front page, and AARP was mentioned in the subhead We generated nearly 900 million impressions during the campaign and over five hundred thousand dollars in earned media coverage.
Team Pennsylvania sponsored the only Senate Debate between candidates Dr Oz and Lt. Gov. Fetterman, where they asked our proposed question on protecting Social Security. In a package deal, we also sponsored two congressional district debates in Lancaster and York, Pennsylvania.
The Senate debate was #1 in its time slot across the state, reaching 815,712 households, was nationally covered, and was even #3 in the Youngstown, Ohio, market
In addition to covering debates, our efforts included twenty-five social posts reaching 108,133 Twitter and Facebook users and generating 35,687 engagements
We engaged diverse groups of women during two Suburban women’s roundtables – one in the Philadelphia Suburbs, and one in the Greater Pittsburgh Region Locally famous radio hosts moderated both
The team sent 500,000 paper mailers to hard-to-reach audiences across the state to ensure that rural members and nonmembers were informed on how, when, and where to vote.
The Pennsylvania team was innovative Our new concepts included testing geofencing for voter engagement and leveraging our social and email channels to recruit poll workers In York, an advocacy email and targeted social media generated over 100 poll worker applications – double the amount the county office might normally see. Notably, our recruitment campaign on Facebook achieved 125% greater engagement than other voter education posts.
Our voter campaign reached or exceeded our set goals and positioned our office and team for success in 2023.
York, Pennsylvania
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2022: Fast Earned Media Facts* 2,026,189,389 Total earned media impressions $1,622,399.68 in total earned value 818 AARP staff or volunteer mentions *As of December 22, 2022
We started
capture
processes And we LOVE a good spreadsheet!
to
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2023: Organizing around Outcomes
2022 brought about many changes to the Pennsylvania team. We will continue through Bruce Tuckman’s group development stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing. We will grow, learn, and improve as a communications team and a greater Pennsylvania State team.
Throughout the steps, we’ve leveraged the tools available to us to form, sort out our priorities and processes, overcome disagreements, and organize around our successes. We are big fans of organization, backward engineering strategic effects, and thinking through tactical solutions that can achieve our immediate and long-term goals.
Some learning moments along the way showed that we must capture and communicate our processes, share our lessons learned, and clearly explain the “why” to any decisions. above all else, we’ve seen that we are a team that works together to achieve social change.
Here’s to 2023!