WORK WE’RE PROUD OF: EITC
When Susanne + I started this business about 6 years ago, we figured we’d end up working mostly for modern retail clients like Rue La La, where we met, or M.Gemi, where I was Creative Director. But before Rue La La, I was a creative director in a PR firm for 8 years where my focus was more on professional services and mission-focused organizations, and I’ve found that lots of them have come to us to put some of the edge of great ecomm businesses against their urgent goals.
We’ve found a great (and repeat) partner in 1235 Strategies, helmed by Leslie Kerns, whom I’ve known since my days at that PR firm. She’s a very sought after leader in impacting social change through communications, advocacy, creative, and campaign strategies. And we’ve each brought clients to the other.
In this case, Leslie came with an RFP she was excited about. Mostly because it was a problem she understood and deeply wanted to address.
Poverty rates for young adults are among the highest of any age group living in the U.S. While the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) has helped millions of low- and moderate-income people lift themselves out of or avoid poverty, the program excludes 19 to 24-year-olds. As a result, instead of getting a refund every April, these young workers get left further behind. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the inequity of the EITC exclusion, with an over-representation of low-income 19-to-24-year-olds from communities of color in the ranks of our country’s “essential” workers. In response, Congress temporarily expanded the EITC to include 19-to-24-year-olds who made up to $21,000 in 2021, even if they’ve never filed before. While not the permanent fix needed, the temporary expansion meant up to $1,500 in the pockets of millions of hardworking young adults. But to get the money they deserve, these young workers had to file their taxes.
The client, the EITC Funders Network, asked for bids to drive a specific action on a budget—with the April 18 tax deadline looming—they had to quickly reach young, low-income workers, about an issue they don’t typically follow, and with an action very few of us like to take (“do your taxes!”)?
Leslie brought together both HCC and digital cause marketing expert Daigneault Digital. On our first call, we poked the budget, and I asked: What if we gave the entire amount to influencers? It’s something that we hadn’t seen done in the space, but both Leslie and Steve Daigneault of Daigneault Digital are innovators, and they both said: This could actually work. So together we took a leap and went out on this limb in the RFP.
Lucky for us, the EITC Funders Network was open and ready to try something different. At kickoff, our team recommended the pilot campaign stay laser-focused on one ambitious goal: Drive low-income, young Black and brown workers to GetYourRefund.org (GYR.org), a 100 percent free tax service by Code for America where they could start filing their taxes. Putting the pilot campaign’s creative development entirely in the hands of a strategic group of authentic social influencers did so many things:
Assured they'd see creative they'd respond to because it was created by influencers they already cared about
Came with a built in distribution channel
Maximized the budget rather than wasting it on an unreliable ad campaign we then couldn't afford to distribute
The team suggested some short and sweet messages (“it’s your money, you deserve it, go get paid”) and then let our social influencer partners run with it, understanding they know their audiences best and the more authentic their content, the better. And Steve led a strategy of paid digital ads to test different creative content from our influencer partners and even further amplify the power of these influencers.
In just five weeks, the campaign generated over 141,000 homepage views to GYR.org. And as a bonus, these views turned into more than $626,000 in estimated tax refunds for 19-to-24-year-old workers. We created partnerships with nine social influencers (including seven on TikTok and two on Instagram) with predominant followings of young adults from Black and brown communities. Collectively, these influencers secured over 307,000 engagements and reached 2.7 million individuals. We also launched an ad campaign on Facebook with six sets of ad creative, which reached 1.3 million individuals, more than 80 percent of whom were within our targeted age demographic.
The pilot campaign’s top-performing influencer was @dukelovestaxes. Duke’s video used both humor and credible tax advice to motivate our targeted demographic.
The podcaster and TikTok influencer @ieinfriends used funny and personal messaging to drive traffic to GYR.org.
