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Mayor of Warsaw

Background

Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (HGW) was the incumbent mayor of Warsaw up for reelection in 2010.

While effective, she did not receive a lot of publicity, often giving media opportunities directly to city departments.

2010 was the beginning of a social media marketing revolution in Poland, with Facebook gaining 44% of internet users, up from 5% in 2009.

Challenge

People tend to get used to good things very quickly.

Warsaw changed dramatically under HGW’s governance, but not in obvious ways ordinary citizens could put their finger on.

4 other candidates criticized changes the city underwent, undermining HGW’s administration.

Solution

Since voting is a rational as well as an emotional process, we decided to:

1. Have HGW “shake hands with the voters” off- and online

2. Show exactly how Warsaw changed in her four years of administration

3. Show her plans for the next four years

Execution

With a tagline “More good changes to come,” HGW was one of the first Polish politicians with truly two-way conversation on social media. We interacted with citizens to answer very specific and difficult questions on social media.

We used infographics  and videos to visualize HGW’s accomplishments. They illustrated how public education, arts and culture, roads, public transport, and public health dramatically transformed. Distributed in public transit, all city departments buildings, and digital media, we reached out to every voter.

To visualize her plans for the next term, we published a map showing future city investments, distributed in all major daily newspapers.

Impact

Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz won in the primaries with 53% of all votes. The second candidate had 23%.