CASE STUDY
No on F
MISSION
A grassroots campaign to preserve the right to private short-term home rentals
Challenge
In 2014, the City of San Francisco signaled its intent to regulate home sharing in the city. With San Francisco’s affordability crisis occupying center stage in the 2014 political conversation, thousands of homeowners and residents who utilized home-sharing services as an important source of their supplemental income now faced the real possibility that the practice would be banned altogether. And in 2015, a well-funded proposition to impose harsh restrictions on private, short-term home rentals qualified for the ballot.
Approach
50+1 Strategies lead the management and oversight of AirBnB’s efforts to organize its hosts and guest communities, to engage them in a grassroots effort advocating for the sharing economy, and to help shape the conversation about what City legislation might look like. 50+1 Strategies started a public awareness campaign and reached out to the company’s hosts and guest networks. Once the community was engaged, 50+1 Strategies commenced a large-scale grassroots lobbying campaign, encouraging stakeholders to write to their local supervisors and testify at legislative sessions on the merits of the home-sharing economy.
As general consultants for No on F, 50+1 handled all strategic message development, political outreach, logo design and branding, research development and polling, field management, paid communications, and campaign compliance. We created dynamic new research strategies to develop the most effective core message and deployed it early and aggressively to every community and in every format available. Our creative team designed and sent 16 pieces of mail to a universe of approximately 100,000 households. We commissioned billboards throughout the city, produced and placed numerous TV ads, and ran a robust online campaign to reach voters digitally. We made sure that all visuals, branding, and messaging connected seamlessly across all outlets and formats.
Results
Our campaign was victorious, with an overwhelming Board of Supervisors vote to legalize home sharing and a majority of voters rejecting Proposition F. Despite initial polling showing a dead heat, No on Proposition F won by 11 points. We created a massively effective communications strategy, built a grassroots coalition of supporters and mobilized them to action, and trained and empowered hundreds of volunteers and leaders. 50+1’s work on the measure won the American Association of Political Consultants’ award for Ballot Measure of the Year.
