Political Campaign – NO to the abolition of the tax package initiative

Enigma Strategy & Branding took up the challenge of elaborating a political campaign aiming at informing people on a complex topic and getting its message across by polling day.

Ambition

The aim of this political campaign « NO to the abolition of the tax package initiative» lead with the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services (CCIG) and USAM, was to spark an interest about this complex topic, in order for this initiative to be rejected; a topic often thought off to be too far from one’s individual preoccupations.

Actions

The political campaign strategy put in place happened through several steps:

• Testing the waters: all interested individuals should access the correct information prepared by the CCIG when they research the topic. The promotion of an educational video towards a large public, a video illustrating the initiative and its consequences if it were to be accepted. This video was produced for both the french-speaking and german-speaking regions of Switzerland, putting forward arguments specific to each linguistic region. This video was very successful and it generated over 938’000 minutes of attention nation wide.
• The concepts and arguments were A/B tested in a large public to ensure each part of the population was approached with a message that drew their interest. The chosen concept was based on a medical theme; intertwining the consequences of the initiative with medical symptoms.
• A 360 campaign with all online and offline tools available in order to multiply the possibilities of reaching the targeting audience.

All the outlined actions were planned and adjusted according to poll results from the few weeks prior to the voting.
Similar actions were carried out in Swiss-Germany during the last few weeks of the campaign as to curve the pro-initiative tendencies apparent in the polls.

Results

The implemented strategy proved effective. Mastering the online and offline actions, as well as the bilingual aspect of the political campaign, lead to both the federal and cantonal initiatives being rejected, by 59.2% for Switzerland and 68.3% for Geneva.