Building a digital platform that connects citizens directly to lawmakers

An Illinois consulting company specializing in public affairs and government relations was spearheading an effort in their home state. They were looking for a digital partner to provide strategic direction, execution and more importantly provide an online tool that allowed citizens to directly engage with their elected officials and let their disapproval of a specific House bill be heard.

Herospace designed and developed a microsite to educate users about the piece of legislature in the Illinois General Assembly and the coalition opposing the bill. We partnered with Jeff’s Journeys to curate content pieces. The centerpiece for this microsite was a custom designed and developed engagement tool that would allow users to input their name and address. Once the user clicked submit, the system would quickly and directly let their district legislators know they did not support this bill.

The second piece of the approach was an ad campaign reinforcing the coalition’s momentum directed at lawmakers and their staff.

The engagement tool has some very complicated development structure behind it but it also offers a very simple design and pleasant user experience. Once the microsite launched, over 200 submissions were generated within the first couple of days. Through the content management system, the client is able to download a real time tally of submissions received and filter by elected official, zip code, district.