1 Jessica Cowin | Eva Marnen | Kendall Martin

CASE STUDYCASE STUDYCASE STUDY

ROCK THE VOTE The Situation

Legendary music executive, Jeff Ayeroff, founded Rock the Vote in 1990 as an nonpartisan, non-profit organization that would presumably com-bat government censorship by influencing young voters. Focusing primarily on how censorship affected young people, Ayeroff hoped that this population would realize the power voting has and how they could influence change in politics. Rock the Vote eventually became much more than a simple fight against censorship however

Despite governmental strategies such as provid-ing easier registration opportunities to increase youth voter turnout, 18– to 29-year-olds were not exercising their right to vote in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The root of the problem was attributed to a myriad of reasons such as lack of confidence in the government, failure to view voting as a civic duty and absence of personal connection (MacManus, 1996). As a response to this issue, the Rock The Vote Campaign targeted young adult voters and sought to address the problem of dismal voter registration and turnout among the youth demographic.

ROCK THE VOTE The Organization

(Birkner, 2016). The campaign found ways to empower youth and urge them to make their voice heard in politics and deciding election outcomes. Since that founding year, Ayeroff and Rock the Vote have stuck to the slo-gan “Building political power for young peo-

ple”. From the beginning, the campaign has

used celebrity endorsements as a marketing tool to get younger voters to the polls. Bank-ing on the fact that the younger voter popula-tion can and will relate to someone they look up to, Rock the Vote has partnered with ce-lebrities from Madonna (featured in the ‘90s ads) to current stars like Kendall Jenner and Lil’ Jon.

The Goal: To interest youth in the political process, increase voter registration and boost turnout at the polls for young adults in prima-ry elections, namely in the 1992 Presidential election between Bill Clinton and G.W. Bush (Burgess et al., 2000).

ROCK THE VOTE The Goal

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The Rock the Vote campaign draws primarily on two communication theories: participatory and social marketing. In contrast to imposing a one-way flow of communication, participatory theory instead us-es participation as a means of involving the target population in the process of change (Dutta, 2011). The campaign was and is centered around various forms of entertainment education, which is a strate-gy that is often coupled with participatory theory. The campaign messages were initially distributed through participatory channels such as television, radio and live performances and have since expand-ed to include online videos and social media. Social marketing theory guided the campaign as well, specifically in its focus on changing the behavior of youth voters. Social marketing theory proposes a “move from acquisition of knowledge to adjust-ment of attitudes toward behavior change” (Waisbord, 2001). Rock the Vote, for example, distributed information about the issues and candidates, thus engendering the acquisition of political knowledge for the targeted youth demographic. The campaign also sought to change the attitudes of young adults towards voting and politics in general and in following, motivate a behavior change that entailed regis-tering to vote and actually going to the polls on election day.

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There are numerous strategies that the Rock the Vote campaign used initially in order to obtain its overall goal of getting young people involved in politics and voting (Rock the Vote, 2016): 1) Engage youth voters and make registering and voting easier—meet them “where they are”.

2) Personalize messages to youth voters and make politics personal for them.

3) Enlist the support of the entertainment industry to educate the youth voter demographic.

4) Use entertainment education to distribute messages about the importance of political activism.

5) Employ creativity and technology through social marketing to raise awareness about voting.

TA

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ICS

Throughout the span of 26 years, Rock the Vote has implemented a variety of tactics that are constant-ly evolving as technology and social media simultaneously progress. The first mass media campaign for Rock the Vote was launched during the 1992 presidential election and partnered with the then-popular cable music channel, MTV. The campaign featured a series of PSAs with popular musical celeb-rities like Madonna and LL Cool J urging young people to get out and vote (Birkner, 2016). The cam-paign also made voter registration accessible to youth by constructing voter drives not only on college campuses, but also at concert venues and other events in order to reach young adults outside the col-legiate population. In order to make voting a personal priority with their target demographic, the cam-paign developed pledge cards that invited participants to verbalize their individual commitment by completing the sentence, “I will vote because___” (Burgess et al., 2000). In more recent years, Rock the Vote has collaborated with Snoop Dogg on a campaign bus tour around the country and also part-nered with Tinder on a “Swipe the Vote” app that paired users with their ideal political candidate.

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IMPACT For the 1996 election, over 1,000 people volunteered their time to distribute more than 80,000 pledge

cards to young adults across the country. Some of the cards had the prompt, “I plan to rock the system by

exercising my right to vote on November 5, 1996”, while a second, newer version of cards stated, “I plan to

vote because…” and urged people to write in their own personal reasons. A study conducted in 2000

attempted to measure how effective the cards were by sending out surveys to people who took the RTV

pledge. Roughly 70% of the people who filled out the first type of pledge cards and 83% of people who

filled out the second pledge card voted in the election. In 2004, 20.1 million 18-29 year olds voted with a

9% increase in voter turnout from 40-49%. In 2006, turnout grew by 3% and in 2008, it increased by more

than 100%. RTV led the “largest non-partisan youth voter registration drive in the nation's history” (Rock

the Vote, 2016) that year by registering roughly 2.6 million young voters. In fact, the age range of 18-24 was

the only group that showed a significant increase in voter turnout, moving from 47% up to 49%.

CRITIQUE Rock the Vote really came out with a bang in the early

1990s, but popularity and focus has dwindled. Its media

presence is much lower than when the campagin first start-

ed. Currently, If viewers want to see a new ad campaign,

they have to search for it on the RTV website or, as with the

Katy Perry video, find it through YouTube or Funny or Die.

There are campaigns to get out and vote, but they are not

presented under the “Rock the Vote” headline.

RTV has celebrity endorsements, but the lack of “in-your-

face” media has had adverse effect on the visibility of the

campaign. Their social media efforts are there, but are not

resonating with millennials. On Facebook, they have a pres-

ence, yet there are not many “likes” or user-generated ac-

tion. Separate pop-up campaigns such as “Everyone Votes”,

“OneNation”, and #TurnOutForWhat create a fractured ap-

proach, not a concentrated effort where they are all work-

ing as one under “Rock the Vote”. The campaign could

better address why individual votes are important in decid-

ing elections and also possibly provide

examples or demonstrations of how

voting does actually have and effect on

political issues.

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REFERENCES

Birkner, C. (2016, July 31). After 26 Years, Rock the Vote Is Still Driving Young People to the Polls.

Adweek. Retrieved from

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/after-26-years-rock-vote-still-driving-

young-people-polls-172593

Birkner, C. (2016, September 9). Rock the Vote and Virgin America Want You to Register to Vote, In-Flight

New PSA aims to curb millennial apathy. Adweek. Retrieved from

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/rock-vote-and-virgin-america-want-you-regis

ter-vote-flight-173392

Burgess, D., Haney, B., Snyder, M., Sullivan, J. L., Transue, J. E. (2000). Using personalized messages to

motivate voting among young adults. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 64(1), 29-52.

Dutta, Mohan J. (2011). Theorizing Social Change Communication. In Communicating social change:

Structure, culture, and agency. (Chapter 1). New York: Taylor & Francis.

File, T. (2014, April). Population Characteristics Young-Adult Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections,

1964–2012. Population Characteristics, 20(573), 1-12.

Katy Perry STRIPS Down In Video To Raise Voting Awareness [Video file]. (2016, September 27). In

YouTube.com. Retrieved September 29, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=ZXuRKessS1M

MacManus, S.A. (1996). Young v. old, generational combat. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Madonna - Rock The Vote! Advert (1990) [Video file]. (2008, April 12). In YouTube.com. Retrieved September

29, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGlE44xuTs

McGuirt, M., (2009). Young black turnout a record in 2008 election. ABC News. Retrieved from http://

abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8140030

Rock the Vote. (2016). About Rock the Vote. Retrieved from

http://www.rockthevote.com/about-us/?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Waisbord, S. (2001). Family tree of theories, methodologies and strategies in development communication.

Rockefeller Foundation, 99.

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