F E AT U R E
VISUAL POLITICS: Jordan Gibson to the Republican Space BY PETER SCHORSCH
J
ordan Gibson’s forming of her company came from a desire, as she put it, to “bring creativity to Republican politics.” “I think I would go online or see mail pieces and it tended to always be that the Republicans were less creative, and they lacked a lot of creative talent within the party,” she says. “For me, that’s been a focus, not only finding people who are talented conservatives and who are creative, but also using my creativity in the Republican space.” Gibson is the star behind Ello Creative, the as-yet little known social media shop that has many blue chip clients. The campaigns of Gov. Ron DeSantis, CFO Jimmy Patronis, and Agriculture Commissioner candidate Matt Caldwell all have been customers. “In this business we have chosen, to have creative talent, technical skill, and strategic thought on your squad often requires three people,” said veteran
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Republican political consultant David Johnson. “But Jordan Gibson has all three attributes. That makes her a most valuable team member.” “When I first moved (to Tallahassee), I got a job with the Republican Party of Florida,” Gibson says. “I was brought in by Dan Dawson, because I was helping him out with some creative, and from there I was hired on as the new media director. I started doing graphics, and I think we just saw immediately how much graphic design can change the amount of social media reach. “From there it just snowballed that we wanted to reach everyone. After staying with the party and then doing Gov. (Rick) Scott’s re-election, we just saw how many times you could go viral just by wording things appropriately in a creative manner, and having a graphic. Before, you might not reach very many people at all; now, you post a graphic
reaching over a million people.” Success, however, sometimes still comes as surprise: “Once or twice a week we were having viral graphics. We’ve just taken that now to advertising, where we can see that if you have a creative advertisement, versus something that is not as creative, you can see the difference … I think many people don’t know that, so they might not put a high price on creative. At the end of the day, it could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially in a state this large.” It all starts with sitting down with candidates and finding out what message they most want to get across. “Then, we break it down into ways that people can understand it,” Gibson says. “Then you base the creative work around it. I always like to think that the graphics should be a simplified message that everyone can get on board with. Like, ‘I can sure stand for school