CLIENT: Karen Bass is the first African American woman to hold the position of Mayor of Los Angeles. 

KEY ELEMENTS: Surrogate Engagement, Project Management, Events, Campaigns

CHALLENGE: In a hotly contested mayoral election which garnered significant national attention, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Karen Bass was facing a massive shortfall in campaign financing and was being outspent by her opponent nearly 10-to-1. The candidate needed a way to break through the barrage of negative advertising and hit pieces saturating the LA airwaves. To address this problem, Millennium partnered with LA-based political and philanthropic consultancy Partnerships for Purpose (P4P) to help the campaign connect with powerful culture leaders to enable them to authentically leverage their platforms and reach to serve as endorsers and amplifiers of the candidate and her message.

SOLUTION: Together, Millennium and P4P led the campaign's surrogate outreach program, creating an in-depth strategy to build, maintain and organize productive relationships with influential culture leaders for the duration of the general election campaign. The effort involved:

• Conducting direct outreach to introduce and enroll highly visible and credible third-party influencers.

• Coordinating and aligning existing networks of supporters to engage culture leaders.

• Deepening cultural engagement, building visibility and generating momentum by coordinating involvement of culture leaders in a series of cultural and political activations.

The effort which was aligned with the campaign's media strategy and served as a cost effective approach to scale awareness and amplify campaign presence across traditional and social media. The effort secured endorsements from over 30 influential celebrities and drove millions of impressions across the media ecosystem. Ultimately, Karen Bass won the election by a margin of nearly 10%, becoming the city's first female Mayor.