CONTEXT:

For over a century, Planned Parenthood has grown into the nation's leading women's health care provider and advocate. In 2017, the organization was facing an attack—though this one was at an unprecedented level—as politicians in Congress and in the Trump White House sought to block millions from going to Planned Parenthood for affordable, preventive health care as part of a "defunding" provision in both the House and Senate Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal and replace bills.

So called "defunding" would have a devastating impact on the 2.4 million people that rely on Planned Parenthood for care—including 8,118 patients that could be turned away in a single day if Planned Parenthood health centers are forced to close.

Approach:

Enter "I Stand with Planned Parenthood": a multi-faceted campaign to educate and engage the public to Stand with Planned Parenthood by urging policymakers to #StandWithPP and reject any and all efforts to block patients from going to Planned Parenthood for care. In collaboration with other agencies around the US, our team helped mobilize Planned Parenthood supporters in the state and helped launch a vocal, persistent opposition to the efforts to defund it to amplify this campaign in California. Our team began with taking it to the capitol steps in Sacramento with our "Pink out the capitol" public relations and followed it up with a persistent integrated digital campaign that leveraged email, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat along with influencer and legislator outreach.

Results:

All told, Planned Parenthood grassroots and digital organizing was a driving force in the successful, bipartisan effort to stop the efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and protect people's access to it.

Not only were our efforts able to contribute to #IStandWithPP becoming a #1 trending topic, we grew Planned Parenthood's Twitter following by 700K as a result of this campaign. Ultimately however, the true measure of success for this campaign was that not only was it protected, but CA passed a $50 Million INCREASE in funding for Planned Parenthood.

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