Digital-driven political consultancy
Amber Integrated, Public Affairs, Oklahoma
Founded in 2019 Amber Integrated is Oklahoma’s only fully integrated public affairs firm offering services in government relations, political consulting, strategic communications, market research and advertising.
Amber Integrated was formed from FKG Consulting, the Right Strategy Group and Uppercase Strategies. They offer clients a full set of digital tools to achieve data-driven campaigning in political elections and advocacy campaigns.
Amber Integrated are at the forefront of bringing digital campaigning tools to the public affairs space. They understand that political campaigns particularly are investing about 40% more in digital campaign tools this cycle as compared with 2016 and they want to lead that charge in Oklahoma. As they say, “Our firm uses Ecanvasser to provide our clients the ability to perform voter outreach to the electorate in their districts in order to win their campaigns. The process is not only efficient in the onboarding phase, but also in functionality when the candidates interface with the app. It provides a clear and methodical method of capturing data so that we can use it to our advantage for a victory on election day.”
The challenge for 2020
Amber Integrated approached Ecanvasser as they had a full roster of political campaigns in 2020 that would be in need of grassroots organizing and field campaigning. They were looking for high quality campaign reporting and tracking with simple-to-use field apps. Their big challenge in recent years has been finding a tool that worked with a variety of campaign types, from ballot initiatives to election campaigns to advocacy campaigns. In Ecanvasser they found a really flexible tool that was easy for everyone to use but didn’t skimp on analytics and reporting. For public affairs firms reporting back to their clients is critically important so they need to be able to see at a glance how individual campaigns are doing.
Campaigning through Covid 19
Across Oklahoma State Amber Integrated onboarded and trained 10 different campaigns covering a mix of state and local races. During this time they also had to adapt their campaigns to the challenge of Covid 19 and having to move from field to phone campaigning. They were able to do this seamlessly with Ecanvasser’s feature releases in response to the crisis. The blended approach of digital and real-world campaigning strategy is a winning combination for their clients.
How they used Ecanvasser
For Amber Integrated, winning for their clients is everything but they also want to help candidates and organizations to build their support base so they will have better resources should they run again in the future. Ecanvasser’s supporter engagement mapping and communication tools are changing the way their client’s build their support bases. Amber Integrated has been leveraging the feature set of Ecanvasser Leader to great effect and in the process applying the learning from one campaign to help the others.
Brett Allred, who has been instrumental in bringing Ecanvasser to their clients, has become an internal expert on campaigning with Ecanvasser. As Brett says, “When our candidates capture data during the voter outreach phase, it allows us to see in real time what the voters in the electorate are saying and what their mindset is. This gives us the opportunity to modify and adjust our strategy for clients on messaging and targeting that allows us the ability to create messaging that is effective with the best chance to win the election.”
Like many Ecanvasser users they have developed their own guidance and training materials for clients so onboarding is smooth and efficient. Through the Covid crisis Amber Integrated still managed to have ten thousand conversations with voters and maintain momentum with all of their client campaigns when their competitors were stuck in lockdown.
Brett Allred
Brett Allred is an associate at Amber Integrated. Brett’s 20-year career in politics and public service has included serving as a policy aide to Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating; U.S. Congressman Wes Watkins as well as the office of the Mayor and City Council of Dallas, Texas.