A recent Instagram post from David Dobrik drove more than 100,000 voter registrations in a 24-hour ... [+]
Inspiring young people to register to vote is nothing new in 2020 — but the velocity with which audiences are responding to influencers’ calls to action is breaking records.
A photo posted Sept. 29 to Instagram by YouTube star David Dobrik showed the 24-year-old standing in front of a set of five white Teslas adorned with bright red bows. The caption: “Hi!! HeadCount and I are giving away 5 Teslas to you guys!! All you have to do is share this to your story, tag a friend in the comments and make sure you’re good to vote at my link in bio!! Winners will be announced Monday. Good luck!”
The post, part of HeadCount’s #GoodToVote campaign, earned millions of likes and more than 1.8 million comments — and, according to HeadCount, crashed its voter registration page, with more than 100,000 new voter registrations in a 24-hour period.
“I spend a lot of time at YouTube trying to understand what builds an audience - what gets views, what increases subscribers, what drives watch time,” said Ben Relles, Head of Innovation for YouTube Originals. “But the stats on ‘Good to Vote’ were a fun change because as we learned what worked and why, we knew it was resulting in new first time voters. Nothing against views, but when the registration stats started coming in on the David Dobrik post I was completely flipping out.”
Dobrik’s messaging is part of the broader #GoodToVote campaign, developed by Relles and Tess Finkle, CEO of Los Angeles-based Metro Public Relations. The 2020 campaign also includes contributions from Samuel L. Jackson, Emma Roberts, Hailee Steinfeld, Josh Gad, Alisha Marie, Remi Cruz, DeStorm Power, Tina Fey and the cast of Mean Girls, the original cast of hit reality series Laguna Beach, and more.
Of the more than 160,000 new voter registrations that the campaign has driven, more than 85% are under the age of 30. According to Relles, the success has been many years in the making.
“Some of the first people that agreed to do a ‘Good to Vote’ — Epic Rap Battles, Vsauce, Corinne Leigh, Destorm, Rebecca Black, Rhett and Link — those were channels I've known for more than 10 years and were willing to help me try the idea out, so I'm really thankful for that,” Relles said. “They have some fans that probably started watching when they were 10 years old and are now voting for the first time.”
Media influencers have leveraged their voices for decades to drive voter registrations. But according to Relles, “YouTube creators definitely showed a level of fandom we didn't see on any other platform.”
“Personally I love when influencers use their platform for social impact, and I never saw more of it than in 2020,” Relles said. “They have a really loyal audience they built on their own, and I'm always impressed when they use their platform for good.”
“This campaign is the byproduct of our team at Metro coming together earlier this year to discuss our unique access to individuals with influence, and the responsibility we have to leverage these relationships in ways that can make significant impacts on society — specifically around this election,” Finkle said. “We brought our client David Dobrik and a campaign idea we knew would resonate with his audience to HeadCount with the goal of addressing the challenges around in-person registration events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Both HeadCount and Ben Relles have been incredible partners and we are so proud of the record-breaking numbers we reached with this campaign.”
This story has been updated to add comment from Metro Public Relations CEO Tess Finkle.
