A National Leader Facing Re-election in a Tough Political Climate

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer faced re-election in a midterm year that, by all accounts, should have been very unfavorable to Democrats. Even in deep-blue New York, sky-high inflation and crime fears pushed Democratic approval ratings toward historic lows. As a national figure, Majority Leader Schumer faced attacks from all directions and a highly polarized electorate. 

Trilogy broke the mold, using memorable creative, wall-to-wall creative testing, and new outside-the-box channels to remind voters that Senator Schumer is always putting New Yorkers first. 

Reaching Voters Where They Are — With Creative That Makes an Impact

To fight through the national political climate and communicate to New Yorkers that Chuck Schumer gets things done, Trilogy set out to produce unique creative that would not only stand out, but change minds. 

We produced more than 15 unique video ads highlighting Senator Schumer’s New York values and his many accomplishments for the state. After multiple rounds of creative testing, Trilogy used data to pare the collection down to eight spots served across five separate audience tracks — including young voters in New York City, Latino voters, and older voters upstate — along with boosted news content on social and native ads to highlight the senator’s major accomplishments. 

Our creative was so unique and impactful that it caught people’s attention — including Stephen Colbert's!

If Senator Schumer were going to maximize his vote share, his message needed to reach key voters where they were. That meant not relying just on go-to platforms, but thinking outside the box. Trilogy spearheaded a peer-to-peer persuasion and mobilization SMS campaign, sending over 3 million text messages to targeted New Yorkers. We utilized influencer marketing to promote long-form video content that couldn’t run on traditional media channels. And when folks took a taxi ride in New York City, they saw our ads persuading and mobilizing them to vote for Senate Schumer. In the end, we served 124.6 million impressions for 67 million video completions, reaching voters all across the state.

A Landslide Victory

Even with New York trending red this cycle, Senator Schumer won re-election to continue serving New York and the country as majority leader. His race was a landslide: He won 56.4% to 43.1% and far outperformed other statewide Democrats. In the process, Trilogy wrote a new playbook for statewide digital persuasion that other candidates can build on.