Election Starter Pack: Everything You Need for a Winning Student Council Campaign

While a strong, resonant message is the most important asset for any emerging leader, compelling visuals and a savvy marketing strategy play key roles in educating the masses and engendering support for your cause. And in today’s political landscape, traditional campaign methods and social media strategy must converge in order to reach potential voters. With its easy design solution, Adobe Express’s campaign poster maker can help you create a strong brand and compelling content that’ll give you the edge on the campaign trail. Consider the following guide your checklist for delivering your message consistently and beautifully online and offline.

For the purpose of this starter pack, complete with design tips, social media ideas, and editable free poster templates (just click to make them your own!), we’re taking a look at *Student Body President candidate Arial Corriente’s campaign to ban plastic straws from her school’s cafeteria, which was inspired by Lonely Whale’s real-life Strawless Ocean campaign.

(*Arial and Del Mar High School, home the Sharks are fake; the plastic facts are real.)

An Eye-Catching Logo and Cohesive Imagery

When making visuals for your campaign, your main goal is to build recognition—to get people to remember you, your name, and what you stand for. Your logo, colors, and fonts should work together to be the “silent ambassador of your brand.” Here are a few things to keep in mind when working on the visual brand elements of your political campaign.

• A logo plays a big role in reinforcing your brand, especially because you’ll want to add it to every piece of content you share. The candidate’s name is the most important piece of information you want people to remember, so make sure to give it the most visual weight. In Arial’s case, her first name is the focal point of her design because that is how most of her classmates know her.
• Color is a powerful tool in creating consistency that boosts brand recognition and invokes emotion and action. Arial’s goal is to create a bold campaign that inspires people to join her cause, but she also wants to bring a tongue-in-cheek tone in an effort to resonate with potential voters (aka her classmates). Pink (and especially this fuchsia), being the color of playfulness, works hand-in-hand with Arial’s cheeky slogans. Similarly, high-contrast black and white text packs a powerful punch to go with her equally punchy, urgent word choice. Don’t know where to start? Check out our simple three-step process to picking your brand colors.
• Fonts also play a key role in bringing a voice to your brand. Here the stately Abril Fafta font of the logo and the hefty Bebas Nue font of the assets reinforce the urgency of Arial’s words. Learn how to pair fonts for maximum impact.
• Similarly, the imagery, shapes, and icons you choose from Adobe Express’s free library can help reinforce your brand attributes. For this campaign, every icon carries a similar visual weight and playfully personifies the issue of plastics in the ocean. That choice helps shift the focus from the doom and gloom of the situation to something more fun, which can sometimes be an effective invitation for change.

Pro-Tip: Got your logo, colors, and fonts ready to go? Let Adobe Express subscription auto-generate templates in a variety of use cases for you!

Now that you have the basics of your visual brand covered, the next step is to think through the marketing collateral your campaign needs. Here’s a checklist of content that will power your campaign:

Campaign Posters to Distribute and Hang Up

The humble, timeless poster is still an important tool of persuasion and branding in today’s politics. Today campaign posters are used predominantly to create a memorable visual association, rather than provide a bunch of information. Most campaign posters feature the candidate’s face, name, and central message of their campaign.

Pro-Tip: Once you’ve landed on a poster design you like, supercharge your output by using Adobe Express’s resize feature to modify the content for multiple surfaces. For instance, you’ll notice the same design elements below for social media covers.

Event Invitations and Flyers

Campaign rallies and fundraisers are important for galvanizing supporters offline, where you’re more likely to build the relationships that will make you successful. Create your invitations and event flyers in a snap with Adobe Express and keep in mind the best flyers communicate key information like who, what, where, and why.

Check out more event flyer templates!

Campaign Videos

The best campaign videos educate people about the issue you care about and end with a strong, specific call-to-action. There are many ways to use video storytelling to influence hearts and minds, but here Arial takes the tactic of leading with a staggering stat in order to hook viewers. A little camera shy, Arial opts for Adobe Express‘s video narration feature to lend a personal tone to the video. You can use videos like this to introduce your speeches or debates or share the content on social media.

A Way to Activate Your Network of Supporters Online

Your message will reach more people if you tap your network to share their support. To do so, you gotta make it super easy for people to participate. Consider the editable template above. Arial can ask her supporters to share her message by asking them to edit the design by adding their name and photo, sharing it on social, and passing along the link for the next person. All she needs to do is equip her network with a remixable template link (hint: tap “make remixable copy” under the share flow to get a link).

Pro-Tip: Most viral moments on social media don’t happen on accident. Most of the time, content gains traction through a tactic called broadcast diffusion, which requires coordination of multiple people who flood the networks with a message or share one central piece of content in a small timeframe, causing the content to spread faster. To make it happen, recruit your friends and supporters to tweet or share a specific message with a specific hashtag at a specific time. Read more about how you can use broadcast diffusion and Adobe Express to help your message spread on social.

Branded Covers for Your Social Media Pages

Your social media covers are powerful branding opportunities. Consider creating a consistent presence from Twitter to Tumblr.

Branded Social Media Graphics, Infographics, and Videos

Where as central branding pieces, such as your social media headers and campaign posters, should focus on your campaign’s main call-to-action (Vote for you!), your social media content can and should captivate potential supporters by diving deeper around certain topics. Here are a few of the use cases you might employ for your social media pages:

• • Informative videos that discuss the cause or issue central to your campaign.
  • Make sure your videos support your campaign’s main message and includes a clear CTA. Pro-Tip: resize your videos between landscape and square so you can share your videos across multiple channels. Infographics that explain why people should care about this issue.
    
  • Pro-Tip: Use a grid layout and icons to create an ordered design.
    
  • Easily populate a robust content calendar by maintaining the basics of a design and updating it with new facts or slogans. Boom in a few minutes, you have consistent branded content that educates and gets your name and campaign in front of people.
  • Branded quote graphics
    
  • Similar to infographics, quote graphics are useful tools in a politician’s arsenal because of their flexibility. Attending a meeting with school organizers? Or listening in on a talk about the issue central to your campaign? Use a quote graphic template to quickly share key pieces of info in a visual way!
  • **Shareable slogans
    
  • **Punchy campaign slogans and rally cries give supporters reason to share your message with their network, while a branded hashtag related to your campaign can help your content trend online.
    **
    **Pro-tip: Use Adobe Express’s auto-resize to adapt your designs for any social media surface.

How are you effecting change in your communities or becoming a leader? Send us a message on Twitter or Instagram to let us know and you could see your story here!

Sources
Strawless Ocean

Photo by rob walsh