Baldwin EMC Ballot Initiative

Since its inception in the late 1930s, the electric cooperative had relied on an annual meeting to determine its elected board and policy changes. However, with the growth of Gulf Shores condos which led to members living in nearly every state in the nation, as well as declining meeting attendance, the cooperative was experiencing difficulty attracting a quorum to enact important policy changes. Therefore, Baldwin EMC decided to conduct a massive mail-in ballot campaign to select its leadership and determine future direction. In addition to the ballot and voting information, the client wished to enhance the communications effort by distributing its annual report separately. These undertakings represented two 40,000 individualized mailings throughout the U.S. and 12 foreign countries.

The agency accepted this massive challenge despite its stringent deadlines. We designed an iterant ballot mailing piece which would satisfy the restrictions of the cooperatives by-laws, as well as accompanying voting instructions and literature. In addition, Strategy Public Relations, with assistance from Denson/Reed Marketing, designed and printed a 27-page, full-color annual report to be distributed at the same time.

The voting referendum initiative involved four separate pieces which had to be printed, carefully collated and addressed to 40,000 members. The annual report, sent separately, had similar constraints.

Bottom line: We received approval for all pieces on Tuesday and they were in the mail that Friday. The error margin proved insignificant.