How we helped SumOfUs generate

over 1 million actions

for their Google campaign.

The Client

SumOfUs is a global movement of consumers, investors, and workers standing together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and to forge a new, sustainable, and just path for our global economy.

The Opportunity

PGM has been fortunate enough to work alongside SumOfUs since the organization's inception. Our goal has always been to maximize their return on action (“ROA”) so they continue to grow and reach a wider audience. SumOfUs was setting the bar high with “Google Quit the Chambers.”

Their goal was to engage their audience, educate them on why Google should quit the chambers, and put pressure on them to do so. There were dozens of reasons why Google should quit the chambers (108 to be exact).

What reasons should we focus on? How can we educate the public in an engaging way and encourage them to take action? These were the challenges we went to work solving.

The Strategy

Our first task was to tackle the strategy behind the campaign. We worked with SumOfUs to identify the primary and secondary goals of the campaign and distill them into measurable actions. Once complete, we had a clear vision of what needed to be accomplished and the key performance indicators (“KPIs”) that would help measure our success.

The User Experience

Google is one of the most recognizable brands on the planet. Rather than fight against that fact, we would use it to our advantage to underpin the importance and impact Google has on our lives. We started by researching the usage rate of Google’s products and selected three of the most widely used at the time: Gmail, Google Docs and GooglePlus. We extracted the core elements of their designs and went to work building a unique site that looked and felt like a Google product.

One of our biggest challenges was educating visitors in an engaging way. How do you present 108 reasons for why Google should quit the chambers without overwhelming users with a sea of statistics? Digging deeper, how could SumOfUs learn from its users to make the campaign even more impactful?

To accomplish our goal, we chose a form of gamification that Google had deployed in the past. A pair of facts would appear on the screen, prompting users to select which face they thought was more important. Alternatively, users had the option of skipping the facts and moving to a new pair. The action buttons were designed to look like GooglePlus “+1’s”.

We created a “Top 10 Reasons” page and designed the user experience to look and feel like a Google Doc. Results were tracked and the top 10 reasons why users thought Google should quit the chambers were displayed there.

SumOfUs had two primary actions for this campaign: 1) sign a petition and 2) share the campaign with others to drive more awareness. They also wanted users to engage with the voting tool as much as possible to ensure high-quality results.

Using that information, we devised a strategy to keep people engaged and take both actions without overwhelming them in the process. Every 3-5 votes, a popup window would appear. Depending on where the user was in the daisy chain, the popup would trigger a petition or a social-sharing action. Once the action was complete, users were able to continue exploring and voting on the reasons why Google should quit the chambers.

The Results

Google Quit the Chambers was a rapid response development project. We built the microsite from the ground up using HTML5, CSS3, and AJAX in just four weeks.

The site launched with 54 randomly paired reasons for why Google should quit the chambers. The site quickly gained national attention, being featured on Mashable, Business Insider, PC Mag, Adweek, and many more news outlets.

Traffic to the site exploded. Fortunately, PGM had anticipated the traffic. We implemented a scalable technology solution to ensure 100% uptime for even the most intense periods of traffic.

The campaign was a huge success and generated over 1,124,500+ actions. Users cast 852,720+ votes for over 235,000 random pairs of reasons why Google should quit the chambers. Over 279,300 users signed the petition and shared the campaign, sending Google a clear message that their voices needed to be heard.

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