RememberWhatTheyDid’s Cleveland, OH billboards were featured by Radio One and NewsTalkCleveland in advance of President Trump’s arrival for the first presidential debate. They created a video tracking Trump’s route from the airport to the Cleveland Clinic, highlighting each of our nine billboards and reminding him of his failures on numerous issues. Over a dozen urban radio stations tweeted this feature and all of the Clear Channel Radio stations ran this feature on-air and online.
News
RememberWhatTheyDid Launched in Cleveland, OH – Ahead of First Presidential Debate
RememberWhatTheyDid Campaign has launched in Cleveland, OH, becoming the fifth city home to our billboard campaigns. Our presence in this battleground state was crucial for many reasons. With the first presidential debate taking place in Cleveland on September 29th, we knew we had to make a powerful statement coinciding with President Trump’s arrival.
We carefully coordinated the locations of our billboards with presumed road closures to ensure that they were visible not only to Trump, but to members of key demographics as well. These billboards also covered key debate topics in radical language that Biden would not use. This launch also had personal significance, as I am a Cleveland native and Jeff Rusnak was my first campaign manager, board member of Artist United for Change, and an all around good-trouble maker! So with his expert plotting of locations, and Scott’s work with local Cleveland organizations, this “Cleveland Project” was sure to make an impact.
Our Cleveland Billboard campaign launched just ahead of the first presidential debate taking place on September 29th and it generated significant national press.
Karlene Lukovitz’s of Media Post writes about the personal significance of the Cleveland campaign, “The Cleveland arm of the campaign was organized by Goodstein and Jeff Rusnak, both Cleveland natives, and Bell, known for doing video projections on the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.” Lukovitz also comments, “The ads feature images from artists across the country, and quotes from Trump, to ‘take on Trump’s failures’ on various issues, in the group’s words.”
In Tonya Pendleton’s front page article for theGrio, I commented, “New polling shows Ohio is dead even and no Republican has won the White House without Ohio. It’s clear Trump and Pence are worried and with good reason. But to vote them out, we all need to stand up and be counted. Forty percent of voters aren’t reached by the usual voter-file matched political advertising and many of these voters are in communities that are underrepresented at the polls. So we are bringing our message to the streets because in an election year this important, we cannot allow any of our communities to be overlooked.” theGrio
For the Washington Examiner, Katherine Doyle writes, “We are reminding voters of the harm Donald Trump has caused the Buckeye State through his words and actions,” said Jeff Rusnak, a longtime Ohio Democratic strategist and co-founder of Artists United for Change. “Think about what Donald Trump said. Think about what he did and ask yourself, ‘Is this your America?’” Washington Examiner
The photos of the Cleveland campaign were graciously provided from volunteer Bob Glick.
Artists United for Change Launched RememberWhatTheyDid Billboard Campaign in Four Cities This Week
It was an honor to co-found the RememberWhatTheyDid campaign and I am excited after months of incubating this project, it is finally out and into the world! I co-created this effort with Robin Bell and Artists United For Change (a political action committee). Our goal is to create fact-based artwork dedicated to reminding voters what public officials have said and done… and ask folks to pledge to #VoteThemOut.
We launched this project for three main reasons.
- Joe Biden is not going to speak directly to key constituents on several issues that matter most. Issues like immigration, criminal justice reform, and the rising bigotry in America, Joe needs others to help him show the radical differences between Democrats and Republicans on these issues. In the US, citizens can legally create a PAC and speak directly to key voters and do issue education.
- We wanted to make sure the creative was not watered down. Too many times in American politics the creative is determined by tax-status instead of using the best and most emotionally compelling argument. We wanted to take facts and direct quotes from Donald Trump and Company and pair them with emotionally compelling and shocking artwork to cut through the clutter and shock unregistered voters into taking action! We commissioned some of the nation’s best street artists, visual artists, graphic designers and gaming artists to participate without handcuffing their work by legalese, tax rules, or old polling information.
- Digital marketing data will never fully reach transient audiences. Unfortunately, I understood the dirty secrets of digital marketers and feared that just matching voter-file data, using cookie based targeting etc. was not enough. The match rates on these datafiles is only 55% to 60% on a good day. So… this efforts goal would be to break into that other 35% to 40% that were not messaged by every other progressive group that is running digital ads. We felt it was necessary to reach communities where they are during the pandemic. So outdoor and display advertising can be placed in targeted neighborhoods where AfricanAmerican, Latinx and young voters work, live, buy groceries, get gas, etc.
Billboard Magazine’s Gil Kaufman writes, “‘Remember What They Did’ Campaign Aims to Get Out Youth Vote Using Billboards and Street Team Tactics.”
He continues, “tapped into the long history of punk and hip-hop spreading the word through street art and guerrilla marketing campaigns in an effort to, literally, get word out on the street in four battleground cities: Detroit, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Phoenix. To date, 4-6 billboards have gone up in key neighborhoods in each city, accompanied by a poster street art campaign led by local partners.”
You can read the whole article here.
RememberWhatTheyDid and Jay-Z’s Team ROC Face Issues with Billboard Companies
RememberWhatTheyDid Campaign and Jay-Z’s Team ROC have been facing backlash from billboard companies not wanting to post their factual information on this year’s elections.
Chuck Creekmur of AllHipHop, reports that both organizations are engaged in conflicts regarding ads speaking out against white supremacy.
While billboard company Lamar, the source of contention for Team ROC, publicly justified their response, RememberWhatTheyDid has not received sufficient communication from the billboard companies. Creekmur writes, “Goodstein maintained that he has gotten no consistency and that he’s gotten a myriad [of] reasons his billboards have not on up, ranging from ‘delayed start dates, approved billboards, then new delay for a different reason, and additional reviews we weren’t told about.’”
“It’s a controlled oligopoly of a few large companies that put right-wing religious stuff up all over the interstate but have a problem with us posting anti-white supremacists messages,” Goodstein stated
You can read more here.
Video: Check Out RememberWhatTheyDid’s First Appearance on MSNBC
I was honored to speak about the RememberWhatTheyDid campaign on MSNBC with Joshua Johnson.
Scott Goodstein & Shepard Fairey Discuss RememberWhatTheyDidCampaign with MSNBC’s Joshua Johnson:
It Looks Like Kanye West Is Still Running For President, But Why?
There are plenty of candidates in the 2020 election. In Gil Kaufman’s Article “It Looks Like Kanye West is Still Running For President, But Why?” Scott Goodstein comments on the situation and the importance of humility when deciding to run for president:
“Anyone who wakes up and thinks, ‘I can be President of the United States’… it’s not a normal thing for any human to do, so they have to have a bit of humility or someone who checks them,” says Goodstein, who adds that was in conversations with “very wealthy” people in the most recent presidential primary campaign, who asked friends and people they didn’t know that well, including him, whether it was a good idea to run. ”
You can read the entire piece here.