Google 2020: An Election Year Experience

In 2019, Google approached Bridget’s agency at the time with a lofty task: They wanted to engage and entertain policymakers and residents in DC with content focused around civic education in the months leading up to the 2020 election.

Unlike other Google activations, this one wasn’t meant to promote any of the brand’s products or services. It was pure brand marketing, wrapped in Google’s core value of “helpfulness”: Provide useful educational content to the right people (voters), generate a ton of earned media in the right market (DC, where policymakers live), and when the time comes, laws and regulations will be passed in Google’s favor thanks to positive brand recognition.

As strategy lead, Bridget developed a plan to rent a rowhome in DC in Capitol Hill, a neighborhood where most of Google’s KOFs (key opinion formers) lived, and transform it into a Civic Education Center with ongoing programming, fireside chats, workshops and more.

The pandemic ended up squashing the project just before launch, but it remains one of the Google team’s – and Bridget’s – favorite environmental activations to-date.