Wild Montana Action Fund Marketing Campaign
I developed the concept for this Emmy-winning satirical video campaign highlighting the difference between authentic and fake public land champions — a key message in Wild Montana Action Fund’s voter education strategy. I pitched the idea to the team, helped shape the character and tone, provided script feedback throughout development, and supported on-the-ground production during the video shoot in Missoula. The goal was to use humor and storytelling to engage voters and lay the groundwork for more targeted electoral messaging.
Background
Public lands are an important political issue in Montana, and it seems like every candidate goes out of their way to tout their public land credentials. However, a lot of these folks are just paying lip service to the idea, and turn around and vote in favor of bad public lands policies once they’re elected. Part of Wild Montana Action Fund’s strategy is to elect actual public land champions, and to do that we need to be able to define who is and isn’t one. Our goal with these videos is to introduce voters to the organization, and the concept of “real” and “fake” public land champions, priming people for more specific communications about real candidates and races in the future.
About Cal Conman
Our candidate, Cal Conman, is a caricature of a wealthy out-of-touch guy who’s running for an unnamed office in Montana. He’s ignorant and out of touch, but not necessarily mean spirited. He’s been told some of the talking points, but doesn’t have a clue how to actually represent them in a way that will resonate with Montanans. Accordingly, he’s always screwing up whatever he’s trying to do or coming across as fake. He’s pretty oblivious, though, so he keeps going no matter what, honestly thinking he’s representing what Montanans want, or at least doing what he’s supposed to do.