When longtime Chicago mayor Richard Daley decided he wouldn’t run for re-election, it created a wide-open mayoral race for the first time in decades. Obviously, voter behavior had changed radically over the previous 20+ years, with social media playing an increasingly significant role in public elections. The opportunity was to continue evolving social media’s role by giving mayoral candidates the ability to showcase their modernity and relevance to younger, more tech-savvy voters. To do so, we created the Foursquarian Candidate, where you can “become mayor, then become mayor.” Candidates could check into a designated place on foursquare as often as they’d like up until our deadline. After that, whomever is the “mayor” of that location on foursquare would become the Foursquarian Candidate for the real-life mayoral race, and would win free campaign materials.

The visual look utilized the city of Chicago’s identity to create an “official-ness” to the design. The Foursquarian Candidate relied heavily on generating earned media, and used a website, a designated location on foursquare, and an aggressive PR campaign.

It received significant coverage from major news media in Chicago and beyond. The number of participating candidates exceeded the program’s goals by 104%. Candidate check-ins also far surpassed expectations, with leading candidates checking in an average of every 3 minutes on the weekend before the program’s deadline. In fact, the Foursquarian Candidate even earned accolades from foursquare’s founder himself.