Galvanize USA’s 2024 Messages

Galvanize USA’s issue education message campaign is winding down for the year! We really love this year’s set of messages—they’re hopeful, they give women something to be for, and they all feature America’s favorite in-group: adorable children. Let’s take a look at the messages we shared with our audience this spring and summer.

We made two brand-new ads about reproductive freedom this year: More Not Less and Beacon of Hope.

More Not Less is a fantastic example of in-group care. The volunteer messenger is looking out for her daughter and for other kids who deserve to grow up in a world with reproductive freedom. This extra-empowering message is one of Executive Director Jackie Payne’s personal favorites this year!

Beacon of Hope was created shortly after Alabama’s Supreme Court declared that embryos created through in vitro fertilization count as children and therefore cannot be discarded. This decision caused fertility clinics to halt treatments and seriously jeopardized the future of IVF in Alabama, the status of which remains murky today. As this ad shows, IVF is a lifeline for many Americans, all of whom deserve the freedom to make their own choices about their family and their future. 

You may notice that neither of these ads is specifically about abortion: that’s because reproductive freedom encompasses so much more than just ending a pregnancy. It’s critically important for our audience to understand that it isn’t simply abortion rights that are in jeopardy, it is all facets of choosing what we want our families to look like and navigating reproductive healthcare. 

Even without directly mentioning abortion, both of these messages were highly effective at strengthening women’s support for reproductive freedom. Specifically, each of them moved women to agree that “any law that restricts why and when someone can have an abortion is unfair,” and “decisions regarding pregnancies should rest with women, their loved ones, and medical professionals,” in our lab tests. 

As a Mom was so effective last year that we ran it again this summer.

This ad meets our audience right where they are on the issue of gender equity. They don’t always know the right words to say, and some even feel like conversations about gender and identity are moving faster than they are comfortable with. But our audience loves their kids deeply, cares about safety for all children, and deeply values politeness—they would never want to be seen as rude. So this message that emphasizes kindness and compassion really resonates with our audience and helps them make strides toward accepting transgender people and talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools. 

In addition to lab testing this ad, we showed it to women in in-depth interviews we conducted this summer to dive deeper into how our audience perceives this message. Here’s a real reaction from a 73-year-old viewer who enthusiastically supports trans people:

“It’s a great commercial, should run all the time. The mother was so supportive! So many of these kids are afraid to come out to their parents, and kudos to her for mom-ing up and being there for her child!”

And here’s another reaction from someone who is a little more fearful and conflicted: 

“You never are happy when someone makes your kid feel bad, so I can relate to her.”

That response is exactly why this ad works: the emotions it evokes are relatable for moderate women, even if the subject matter pushes them out of their comfort zone. When we tested this message in the digital lab, it moved women to agree that views on people who don’t identify as a man or woman are either not changing quickly enough or changing at about the right speed (as opposed to “changing too fast”).

It also moved women to somewhat or strongly disagree that “discussion of sexual orientation and/or gender identity in public schools should be banned,” and to disagree that  “People advocating for the rights of transgender people have gone too far in recent years.”

We also brought two of our favorite economy ads back: New Program and Best Investment. 

New Program is one of the best examples of why our ads work. It’s so relatable, featuring a regular, hard-working mom hustling to get her kids out the door. Showing her hard work makes the message heavy in merit, which helps to defuse notions about who “deserves” childcare or other government support. 

Best Investment reinforces the idea that all children deserve safe care and a quality education. It’s effective because it directly acknowledges concerns about government spending and uses patriotism to remind viewers that America has enough to go around. 

These economy messages are both about childcare and making ends meet; they’re not about the GDP or the stock market. Childcare is an excellent proxy issue for larger economic concerns, and talking to women about the economic issues they face every day is more effective than fact battling about tax policy. 

Both of these messages moved women to agree “even if I wouldn’t personally benefit, I would be willing to increase taxes if the money goes to federally-funded childcare,” and also “I trust the federal government to implement solutions that help people like me make ends meet.”

This year we deployed these nonpartisan educational ads to moderate women across eleven states—expanding outside of the Midwest regions where we’ve focused our efforts in past years—to strengthen support for reproductive freedom and for policies that help families make ends meet. This resulted in over 450 million impressions, which means 450 million opportunities to build support for reproductive freedom, gender equity, and economic policies that put children and families first.