Reaching New Audiences Requires Unique Messengers

BACKGROUND

By late August 2024, the presidential election had a growing gender gap. Kamala Harris was struggling with male voters, particularly young men, while Donald Trump was aggressively courting them through podcasts, sports appearances, and digital media.

At the same time, Trump allies were promoting Project 2025, which called for pornography to be criminalized and threatened imprisonment for people who produce and distribute it. Yet the issue had received relatively little attention, particularly among younger male voters who would be directly affected by such restrictions.

The audience opportunity was significant. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 44% of men ages 18–29 and 57% of men ages 30–49 reported viewing pornography in the previous month.

Scott Goodstein saw an opportunity to reach these voters with an issue that was personal, immediate, and largely absent from the political conversation.

Rather than relying on politicians or traditional political surrogates, Goodstein created Hands Off My Porn and organized adult entertainers themselves to lead the voter-education campaign. They could explain what Project 2025 proposed and speak authentically to millions of people traditional campaigns were struggling to reach.

CATALYST:

Goodstein created and produced the campaign and organized more than 50 award-winning adult entertainers to become its public messengers and voter-education ambassadors.

The campaign initially launched with 17 adult entertainers, including Siri Dahl, Brittany Andrews, Holly Randall, Siouxsie Q, Michael Vegas, Allie Awesome, and Derek Kage. As attention grew, Casey Calvert, Freya Parker, Abigail Mac, Hazel Grace, and dozens of others joined the effort.

They weren’t paid influencers delivering political talking points. They were authentic messengers speaking directly to communities they had spent years building. Collectively, participating entertainers had more than 17 million Instagram followers, with millions more across other platforms.

Catalyst turned those voices into an integrated campaign built around HandsOffMyPorn.com, memorable branding, direct-to-camera videos, educational content, voter-registration tools, animated GIFs, digital advertising, earned media, and grassroots organizing.

The campaign faced an unusual advertising challenge. Meta, Google, X, TikTok, and even Pornhub blocked it from buying ads, while campaign content was also frequently blocked or shadow-banned.

So Catalyst found other ways to reach the audience.

The campaign used earned media, Reddit, performer distribution, adult platforms, gaming and sports websites, and targeted pre-roll advertising across seven battleground states. As additional funding was raised, advertising expanded to premium placements on Barstool Sports, Sports Illustrated, FS1, and popular gaming sites, including outlets that had rarely or never carried political advertising.

The campaign also moved offline. Adult entertainers distributed thousands of campaign stickers and conducted voter education at strip clubs and adult stores in key states—venues largely overlooked by traditional political campaigns but uniquely suited for reaching voting-age audiences.