The $10aDay Child Care campaign is a non-partisan initiative by the Coalition of Child Care Advocates of BC which seeks to solve BC's child care crisis. We helped the $10aDay Child Care Campaign build a strong campaign identity and develop and execute a digital strategy that has had a significant impact on the success of their campaign. With our help, the $10aDay campaign achieved their goal of building broad public support for their $10aDay Plan, and achieved a major campaign goal — the election of a provincial government committed to implementing the $10aDay Plan.

Building a strong campaign identity

A big part of the support we provided for the $10aDay campaign involved building a strong campaign identity.

With origins in the world of academia and public health, $10aDay’s messaging was often very technical and policy-focused. We helped them refine their messaging to make it more digestible and easy to understand. We helped build a narrative that informed British Columbians about the crisis, told the story of those impacted, explained the contributing factors, and how the $10aDay Plan is the solution to BC’s child care crisis.

“Their creative and strategic abilities to consistently present the right 'tone' meant that their work became a seamless extension of our organization. We highly recommend Van City Studios.”
Sharon Gregson, $10aDay Child Care Campaign

We worked with the $10aDay campaign to establish a strong visual identity through the design of a versatile campaign logo, and development of new visual identity and brand guidelines. We crafted an action-oriented website built to communicate their key messages, drive engagement, and build relationships with their supporters. Throughout the course of the campaign, we helped manage their email blasts, social media, and other outbound mass communications, ensuring a consistent voice and message across all of their digital communications streams.

Developing and executing a successful digital strategy

A good digital strategy involves choosing the right digital tools to help meet your goals. We worked with the $10aDay campaign, using NationBuilder as the backbone of $10aDay’s digital strategy. NationBuilder is a Community Organizing System that combines both a website and a CRM into one integrated service. NationBuilder’s suite of integrated digital tools helps campaigns build community and deepen the level of engagement of their supporters.

For example, NationBuilder’s integrated website management tools meant that actions taken by supporters on the $10aDay website or on social media are automatically logged and tracked in NationBuilder. This allowed $10aDay to build a detailed profile for each of their supporters and track engagement on a supporter-by-supporter basis, while at the same time gathering “big data” to evaluate progress, inform decision making, and adjust strategy throughout the course of the campaign. NationBuilder’s advanced filtering and targeting tools meant that we could help $10aDay effectively segment their audience to tailor communications to better build relationships with supporters.

We supplemented $10aDay’s digital strategy with the use of other tools too. For example, using NewMode’s campaign engagement toolset helped us facilitate $10aDay supporters in sending letters to the editors of their local newspapers, and send messages of support for the $10aDay Plan to their local elected officials. These tools helped us amplify the voice of those living with BC’s child care chaos.

Another key part of $10aDay’s digital strategy involved amplifying their social media presence through Facebook paid advertising. Using Facebook advertising meant that we could target audiences most likely to convert to supporters in strategic geographic regions, and maximize our impact on a minimal budget. 

“Van City Studios has made a significant difference to the success of the $10aDay campaign in British Columbia. Their digital skills provided a boost to our outreach and subsequent levels of visibility and support.”
Sharon Gregson, $10aDay Child Care Campaign

The results

With our support, the $10aDay campaign was able to engage tens of thousands of voters from every riding in BC. Together, we tripled the number of petition signatures supporting the $10aDay Plan, and helped thousands of British Columbians send messages about the impact the child care crisis has on their lives to local provincial candidates. The $10aDay campaign gained support from hundreds of local governments, school districts, labour organizations, businesses, and more. We helped the $10aDay campaign organize dozens of local community events and stroller brigades in support of the $10aDay Plan in communities all across BC. The $10aDay campaign has reached over 1 million people on social media, and coverage of the child care crisis in traditional print and broadcast media had an estimated earned media value of over $800,000.

The strength of the $10aDay campaign resulted child care being a key election issue with broad public support during the 2018 provincial election. Polls showed that support for $10aDay child care grew consistently over the course of the election period, ending with a majority of British Columbians wanting their new government to implement $10aDay child care.

While only the BC NDP officially committed to implementing the $10aDay Plan, the visibility and broad public support for $10aDay child care resulted in all three major parties committing to making some form of significant investments in child care — another huge victory for the $10aDay campaign.

The BC NDP won the election, and has taken bold steps to address BC's child care crisis. 

“We plan by year five to have 66,000 new spaces and the $10-a-day plan, which has been advocated not by me, not by Greens, not by Liberals, but by child care providers and advocates who have been working on these issues for a decade. I believe it’s a plan that can work, and we’re going to implement it.”
John Horgan, Premier of British Columbia

While BC is headed in the right direction, the child care crisis continues. Solving it will take time, investments, and continued public support — the $10aDay campaign is far from over. Learn more about the $10aDay campaign and take action to support the $10aDay Plan at www.10aday.ca.