Rob Shepardson is a political consultant and marketing strategist, who in April 2014 was named by Barack Obama to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN). He had become known for his work on the Barack Obama presidential campaigns of 2008 and 2012, as a member of the paid media team. Shepardson's marketing communications firm, SS+K was tasked with registering and winning the support of millennials (18- to 34-year-olds). In 2008, 66% of those under 30 voted for Barack Obama. In 2012, 1.25 million more millennials voted for Obama than in 2008, tipping swing states such as Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio in his favor.
Shepardson is a co-founder and partner of SS+K, a New York-based advertising agency. In addition to political work, the firm also has non-profit clients that include the LIVESTRONG Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Bono's ONE Campaign, as well as a range of corporate clients that include HBO, Starbucks, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Lyft, WhatsApp, Airbnb, and The New Yorker.
Strategy for reaching millennials
Shepardson maintains that young voters have little trust in Washington, D.C., regardless of the political party in power. “Millennials will align with somebody regardless of political labels, based on values. Communicate through issues, not through the candidate,” he advises. “Negative ads and politics-as-usual can turn millennials off. They are quite shrewd when it comes to marketing.” The best strategy to reach them, he suggests, is to “sell a politician by not being political.”
Political communications
Examples of Shepardson's political communications work with SS+K include: For the Biden-Harris Campaign, Shepardson and SS+K were asked to create important video segments for the Democratic National Convention. One showed the 2020 Democratic contenders unified behind the Biden-Harris ticket; another, contrasting the ticket's approach to gun violence vs. the status quo, featured Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez. A third segment which ran on the convention's final night featured the Democratic candidates sharing their favorite Joe Biden memories. During the NBA playoffs, Shepardson and the firm launched the We Got Next campaign for Lebron James' More Than a Vote and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, aimed at recruiting young people to serve as poll workers during the 2020 election. The effort succeeding in recruiting over 10,000 volunteers to work the polls. A second phase of the campaign launched after the Lakers' championship win, urging their audience to make a plan to vote. Your First Time (2012) – Targeting first-time voters, this tongue-in-cheek campaign for the Obama For America presidential campaign featured a video of author and director Lena Dunham, who slyly compared voting to losing one's virginity. "Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody," Dunham says. "You want to do it with a great guy." TIME Magazine called the Dunham spot the "most memorable ad of the 2012 campaign". The video won a Digiday Sammy Award for "Best Branded Viral Video". The sexual innuendo was both applauded and condemned along party lines, with liberal commentators cheering the humor and conservatives calling it “tasteless". For All (2012) – SS+K developed a second Obama For America ad campaign in 2012 called "For All" that included video, social media and print ads. It invited young voters to write an issue they cared about on their hand, photograph it and share it on Instagram. This campaign won a Digiday Sammy Award for "Best Social Engagement Campaign". Democratic National Committee Rebranding (2010) – The agency redesigned the Democratic National Committee logo, moving away from a kicking red, white and blue donkey to a bold blue "D" inside a thick blue circle with the slogan "Change That Matters". Obama for America Youth Campaign (2008) – SS+K developed the “Don’t Get Mad, Vote” campaign in 2008. It drove young voters to VoteForChange.org, the Obama campaign's voter registration site. On Election Day 2008, Barack Obama won the highest percentage of the youth vote (66 percent) since exit polling began in 1972. The Obama campaign, including the paid media team of which SS+K was a member, won the Cannes Titanium and Integrated Gold Lion advertising awards.