Middle Seat was thrilled to join John Fetterman’s campaign for the U.S. Senate from the very beginning. We’re so proud of our team’s hard work to build such a groundbreaking, successful digital program and are so grateful to have been a part of their incredible campaign team.

Wayyyyy back in November 2020, Middle Seat officially began working with John Fetterman and senior advisors (like communications expert Rebecca Katz) to begin building a winning grassroots campaign. We worked closely together for two years, from pre-launch planning through prevailing in a crowded primary and on to Election Night victory.

Here’s how Middle Seat drove this critical win:

1. We built the infrastructure *long before* Day 1.

John Fetterman had a following from his successful 2018 campaign for Lieutenant Governor, and he grew that following even more after the 2020 election, when he generated a huge amount of earned media by debunking Donald Trump and the GOP’s election denier lies.

This was a foundation upon which we could start building a successful U.S. Senate campaign — but it was still only a foundation. So, before the campaign even launched, Middle Seat assembled a comprehensive strategy that spanned web, email, ads, creative, social media, and texting.

We took Fetterman’s clean logo and monotone black-and-white color scheme and turned it into a fun & engaging website and brand experience. Our creative team leaned into a bright yellow accent color (inspired by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pirates, emphasizing Fetterman’s western Pennsylvania roots) and incorporated emojis and strong textures to bring Fetterman’s vibrant personality into the digital world. As we built out more creative collateral through ads, email, social, and web, we brought the witty and gritty tone of the campaign to life on digital.

Our goals from the very beginning were to fire up Fetterman’s existing supporters, as well as to recruit new supporters and mobilize them to take action and give on behalf of the campaign. While Fetterman came to the table with a small email list from his prior campaigns, that list hadn’t been regularly engaged with and contained a number of inactive email addresses, as well as out-of-date data. We knew we would need to work hard to revive as much of that list as we could, as well as to scale up rapidly to build a massive new email list that could support a U.S. Senate race likely to garner national attention and fierce opposition.

To kick this process off, we planned a soft launch — an exploratory campaign during which we both primed Fetterman’s existing list for the possibility of a Senate run and invested aggressively in acquiring new supporters. We captured data across digital touchpoints so that the campaign could fully harness and extend the power of this growing grassroots army.

This early soft launch was not without its challenges — we had to operate in an environment where political campaigns could not launch new ads on Facebook or Google. As a result, our advertising team sprang into action, building out acquisition testing plans that included dozens of sources of new supporters. This approach was effective — within a week of our soft launch, we hit a 128.50% ROI on our initial investments. These strong results proved that our approach was the right one, and that positioned us to make even larger investments in list growth.

When launch day came around, not only did we have all of the necessary digital infrastructure in place to set us up for success, we had a comprehensive multi-day launch messaging plan that spanned every single digital platform and property. This meant we could make a big splash early, capturing attention, driving the narrative, and generating huge fundraising returns.

Our plan worked — Fetterman raised more than $450,000 in the first 48 hours of his official U.S. Senate campaign launch. Altogether, this early and successful launch quickly established John Fetterman as the front-runner in what would become a crowded Democratic primary.

2. We got out ahead of the crowded primary — and stayed there.

Because open U.S. Senate seats don’t come about very often, we knew that our competition would be fierce. A key part of our strategy was for Fetterman to launch his campaign first — this meant we could start building support, growing his name recognition, locking down endorsements, and raising money before anyone else. By showing our strength at the very beginning of the election cycle, we planned to generate the resources, attention, and enthusiasm that would establish John as the front-runner.

Our strategy was effective — and ultimately necessary, considering that our opposition turned out to be formidable. Our primary opponents included a sitting member of Congress and an incumbent Pennsylvania State Representative, among others. Victory was by no means guaranteed, but our strong footing right out of the gate made sure our opposition would have to gain a lot of ground to catch up; locking down supporters and donors early left our opponents with significantly less room in which to maneuver or gain traction.

After launch, we kept up a steady drumbeat of multi-channel engagement to drive interest, action, and donations and to keep our launch momentum going long-term. Ultimately, we raised more than $3.5 million online through Q1 of 2021, building a substantial war chest before any of John’s primary opponents had even entered the race.

3. We pushed creative boundaries way beyond typical Senate campaigns.

John Fetterman wasn’t a typical candidate, so we knew he couldn’t have a typical digital program.

As a result, our team pushed the boundaries of what a candidate could do online, and ensured that every email, ad, tweet, and text sounded like John Fetterman, not a cookie-cutter Democrat. This became our strength — John’s digital program really stood out in the crowded primary field, and it also stood out in the general election among the many, many other Democratic candidates vying for attention and dollars.

In an election cycle marked by a deluge of emails boasting fake 1000x matches and high-pressure, the-sky-is-falling messaging, Middle Seat’s team gave a masterclass in how to make digital programs fun and engaging. We aimed for all of our content to be relatable, funny, personable, and accessible — just like John Fetterman himself.

We wrote long-form, personal narratives that told the stories of John, his family, his tattoos, and his western Pennsylvania roots, really driving home his personal narrative and message. We ran ads that stayed true to John and his brand. Our email, texting, and ads programs respected John’s supporters as much as he did — meaning no cheap gimmicks or coercive fundraising asks.

Even before his candidacy, John built up a well-known online persona that naturally lent to dynamic digital content. As such, we were able to lean fully into signature Jawn-isms, such as Sheetz vs. Wawa battles, content from his wife Gisele and the Fetterkids (who regularly made appearances on digital verticals), and even content voiced by the family’s internet-famous dogs, Levi and Artie. The success of the latter — including booping the dogs’ noses to make a donation, and text messages authored by our favorite dog besties (ilu!!! 💕) — proved that, regardless of what critics on Twitter say, funny and unique content works.

Plus, continually emphasizing John’s western Pennsylvania roots really helped the campaign connect with the communities that would become key to his primary and general election victories. And those deep roots and community connections would become even more important in the general election, where we faced off against New Jersey’s own Dr. Oz.

We weren’t just successful at raising money or mobilizing voters (though we did plenty of both!), but we also tried new things and ensured every facet of our program reflected John’s personality. We experimented with out-of-the-box ideas, like a weed facts quiz and archival video content to showcase John’s consistency on the issues, from abortion to the minimum wage. We launched Instagram takeovers with members of the campaign staff, like the Horton Brothers, to not only give insight into the enthusiasm of the campaign, but to put a face on those behind the scenes who know John best. We went where other firms wouldn’t — and leaned in even further.

4. We provided constant digital strategy and support all the way through Election Day.

For two years, the Middle Seat team collaborated with the Fetterman campaign on a daily basis to raise millions of dollars online, develop authentic content, and persuade and mobilize voters. When Team Fetterman built up their in-house digital team, we coordinated with them to further elevate this program and to achieve even more messaging, mobilization, and fundraising success.

In spring of 2022, we launched a multi-million dollar digital advertising campaign to persuade and mobilize primary voters, working closely with TV, mail, and field to ensure a cohesive strategy and message that took advantage of our early lead and John’s unique voice. And then we did it all again in summer for the general, going even bigger with uniquely-targeted programs for key demographics who are often forgotten or taken for granted in election season (after all, standing up for forgotten people and left-behind communities is what John Fetterman does).

At the same time, we were engaged by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to run their coordinated digital campaign, which added even more scale to our GOTV efforts. Middle Seat’s in-house video team built out engaging and authentic ads — and we turned around rapid-response ads literally overnight so we could respond to breaking news while it was still fresh.

We built one of the largest email lists in modern politics, a robust texting program, and a unified media approach across channels. We ultimately helped Fetterman grow his email list from 54,000 to more than 3 million people. By the end of this campaign, we spent nearly $6 million in email acquisition and over $1 million in phone acquisition to raise back more than $34 million from just those supporters. We maintained overwhelmingly ROI-positive direct donate campaigns to expand our donor base, and we executed clever persuasion and GOTV campaigns that prevailed against the tens of millions of dollars of Dr. Oz’s self-funding, as well as PAC spending from the GOP.

The results speak for themselves: a 67-county sweep in the primary, two statewide fundraising records (in Q2 and Q3 of 2022), and most importantly, a red-to-blue seat flip and a new Democratic United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

We’re incredibly proud to have been part of Team Fetterman from the very beginning and we’re so thankful that John is representing Pennsylvania in the U.S. Senate.

For more on our work with the Fetterman campaign, stay tuned! Case study coming soon.

And if your campaign is looking for a digital partner, reach out to our team and let’s have a conversation: