Biden Harris 2020

Get out the Vote Campaign

2020 was a particularly challenging year to have your voice heard - confusing voting processes within of one of the most significant pandemics of the modern age made voting that much more duanting.

Biden Harris knew that standard tactics to inform voters wouldn't work - we had to cut through the chaos. Enter Barbarian - as a disruptive creative agency, we were well equipped to reaching consumers in novel ways.

As design director, I'm usually responsible for making things visually consistent. However given the nature of the brief and the chaotic climate we were working in, we instead let the energy of the creativity of the work shine through. We leaned into an anti-design aesthetic as an antithesis to the highly groomed messaging that voters mistrusted and ignored.

We cut through voter's skepticism and bitterness with Votey's joy and innocence.

The cornerstone piece became the Votey McVoterson series created by Psyop. Inspired by a naive, friendly Schoolhouse Rock animation style, it stuck a nerve of joy and innocence in an environment rife with doubt and bitterness.

We leaned heavily into animation styles for a number of pieces, including the Simpsons-inspired Sad Eagle that empathized with the destitute, lonely experiences we were all having in 2020.

It was a creative dream project. Almost every idea that we wanted to execute was green lit.

While we focused on digitally delivered ad formats, we also rolled out a limited series of posters across university campuses nationwide. 

We even created a movie trailer in the vien of cheesy 90s action movies that understood the dangers of voting, but made that danger cinematic.

The results speak for themselves - the voter turnout in each of the states we worked in was markably improved, with the democrats winning 4 out of 5 of them.

AGENCY Barbarian
ROLE Design Director