JTC 373 Blog post #1: Promoting Bernie Sanders at Moby Arena

Two days ago, on Sunday, February 28th, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders hosted a rally at Moby Arena at Colorado State University. As a huge Sanders supporter, I had tons of fun at the rally (showed up 6 and a half hours early), and even got a selfie with him at the end.

Now, what does this have to do with digital promotion management? The rally was announced to the public less than 48 hours before the rally. Given this, the event was largely promoted on social media. Once people saw the announcement from a variety of original sources (I first saw news of the rally on my feed posted by the Collegian). Once people started sharing these sources, news of the rally spread like wildfire. In addition, a Facebook event was created by the official campaign to further encourage people to attend and RSVP. In public media, the event was announced in the Coloradan newspaper, as well as the Denver post. Bernie’s campaign itself also promoted the event through text messages and phone calls to previous volunteers/donors in the Northern Colorado area. I personally received two text messages and a phone call from different campaign representatives. Finally, there was a press release on the campaign’s official website. The collective goal of these promotion efforts was to get word of the event out as fast as possible, given such short notice. All in all, it was a success. Over 6,000 people showed up to support the Vermont Senator two days prior to the Colorado Caucus.