Mark Kelly for Senate
In Central Florida, NASA is as much a part of your upbringing as the beach, or even Disney World. I could watch the space shuttle arc into the sky from my back yard, and the sonic booms would shake our windows when they reentered the atmosphere. While I never got a call back from space camp, I did get to send one of the astronauts I idolized to the United States Senate.
As Mark Kelly’s Deputy Digital Director in 2020, I oversaw the development, quality control, and approvals processes of our bilingual English and Spanish paid media program, in addition to directing our digital opposition efforts, our campus outreach, and the coordinated campaign’s website relaunch, all while managing our in-house digital fundraiser and supporting our video team.
Level Up, Arizona
Working with the excellent creative team at Left Hook, I assisted in the development of what was arguably our most dynamic paid media product. We partnered with Ciara to use her hit “Level Up” alongside the speech Mark gave on his final mission as commander of the shuttle Endeavour.
GOTV Creative
While most of the pundits expected a quick night in Arizona, we knew things would be close. We had to earn every vote and went at GOTV from every angle, including extensive paid digital. I worked with Left Hook to develop, target, and time the distinct digital tracks below. Each had multiple iterations for scheduled release as deadlines approached—ballot request, early vote, ballot return, in person E-Day—and forwarded targets to our trackable Arizona IWillVote.com site, monitored and updated regularly by our coordinated campaign.
Closings and Openings
I joined our video director to concept and write a script for the closing argument to Mark’s 2020 campaign, and then after our victory wrote the opening argument script for his 2022 reelect. While I put the ideas to paper, she worked tirelessly gathering the footage and bringing it together in Premiere. We’re both really proud of the result.
Science, Data, Facts Series
Mark is an engineer, a pilot, and an astronaut, and one of the central arguments of his candidacy was to bring Science, Data, and Facts (SDF) back to the table in decision making in Washington. While traditional content gathering options were limited due to the pandemic, we developed the SDF series as a quick, fun, informative way to lean in on Mark’s central argument, while also rolling in elements of his platform and information about Arizona. I was a scriptwriter and copy editor for these, and helped brainstorm and refine the concepts.
Misleading
McSally
One of the projects I managed was the digital opposition content efforts of the campaign. I collaborated with the state party to hone in on the core arguments and contrasts we needed to make with Martha McSally, and developed MisleadingMcSally.com as the place to put them.
We arrived at Misleading McSally due in part to the many independent fact checks of then-Senator McSally, going back to her first campaign for Congress. We wanted the theme to reflect these fact checks, with elements showing what seem like red ink on paper.
Community involvement was central to the campaign, and we incorporated social share options, graphics, and prepared content for supporters to use on their own social media channels.
