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October 5, 2020

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Alumni ad campaign encourages Texas voter registration

Encouraging people to vote in an election is important, but you can't vote if you aren't even registered in the first place.

According to MOVE Texas—a nonpartisan nonprofit in Austin—approximately 57% of Texans under age 34 were not registered to vote in 2018. In 2016, nearly 4 million eligible Texans weren’t registered to vote, and the presidential race was decided by 807,000 votes in Texas.

To help encourage voter registration amongst Texans, MOVE (Mobilize. Organize. Vote. Empower.) partnered with creative shop McGarrah Jessee on a campaign that primarily targets underrepresented youth voters in Texas. Brandcenter alums Meredith Makhoul (ST, 2019), Brian Marcolini (CW, 2018), and Claire Whigham (CW, 2006), and Sarah Wallace (AD, 2018) at McGarrah Jessee were proud to work on behalf of a cause they all care so deeply about.

"Our goal was to create as much attention around registering as there is around voting—because you can’t vote if you’re not registered," says Wallace. "We asked registered voters to proudly show off their status on their Instagram profiles via the registered (®️) symbol and then created an online store (for registered voters only) with merch to show off your registration out in the world. All proceeds from the merch go directly back into funding MOVE Texas’s efforts to register more young voters."

The campaign—which utilizes bright, neon colors and animation—has resulted in a 300% increase in voter registration requests according to MOVE Texas. Merchandise (including free stickers) is still available at shop.movetexas.org.

View the full campaign at McGarrah Jessee.