A proposal from Spero Studio · Scope C: Digital Advertising and Content Production.
00 / THE BRIEFOUR SELECTION
Built centrally. Adapted for every state. Ready to launch.
New South Rising exists to solve a scale problem: ten Southern state parties facing the same pressures, but without the shared infrastructure to respond to them together. Digital is where that gap is most visible: outmatched messaging, no shared creator networks, no coordinated response capacity. Our role is to build the system that closes it.
Here's how we'd run digital advertising and content production for New South Rising, from first ad to Election Day, across all ten states.
What we know
01
We already run coordination, not just campaigns
Coalition work fails when nobody owns the coordination — every state ends up freelancing its own creative, its own vendors, its own timeline. Digital shouldn't just be relegated to advertising, digital has a role to play within the coordination itself: shared systems, one production calendar, one place every state can see what's happening. That's not new for this RFP — it's the infrastructure we already operate for multi-state and multi-candidate programs today. Coalition management is our strongest asset in this proposal, and we bring tools with us to get the job done.
02
We stay in the South between elections
Most firms show up for the cycle and leave. We don't. Programs like the Black Power War Room (BPWR) and its All Roads Lead to the South, and our work with the Delta Regional Authority (DRA) and the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission (SCRC), run year-round, off-cycle — which means our read on what works in the Black Belt, the Delta, or Appalachia isn't a guess made in October. It's built from work we're doing there right now.
03
Recognized for it
6 Reed Award wins and 14 finalist placements across 2025–2026, including Best Creative Agency and a finalist nod for Public Affairs Firm of the Year.
Scope of Work SelectionC. Digital Advertising and Content Production
02 / EXPERIENCE & PROOFANSWERS Q1–Q2
Built for high-stakes work.
About the firm
Spero Studio is a Black- and woman-owned communications agency, founded in 2017 to reach audiences most campaigns overlook. Our political and advocacy clients include the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Delta Regional Authority, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission, Organize Tennessee, Texas Democratic Party and Texas Majority PAC's Texas Together. Our work spans national committee races, multi-state redistricting work, and standing state coordination systems.
We consider ourselves 'makers first'. We have incubated Gavel America, a 501(c)(4) to serve judges and judicial candidates across the South. This grew from a single season of judicial races into standing civic education infrastructure, and a 2026 Reed Award winner. And we have also incubated the Black Power War Room, a real-time command center that connects leaders, coordinates messaging, drives rapid response across the country, and provides the digital infrastructure for The Movement. We are focused on voting rights now, but our mandate evolves with the crises facing our communities.
$150M+PAID MEDIA MANAGED
3PRESIDENTIAL CYCLES
12FULL-TIME TEAM MEMBERS
Where we've already worked
SPERO WORKED STATESNSR COALITION
THE RECORD / STATE BY STATE
Our work is rooted in the South. Through BPWR and its All Roads Lead to the South program, we build and maintain district-by-district redistricting and representation intelligence across the region, and produce digital campaigns for Southern audiences week after week.
AL
Mobile 2025 mayoral — the virtual door knock (case below) · BPWR district briefs · DRA region
AR
DRA region — agency of record, digital storytelling across the Delta
FL
SCRC region — agency of record, seven-state social strategy
KY
DRA region
LA
DRA region · BPWR district briefs · New Orleans regional clients
MS
DRA region · BPWR district briefs
NC
SCRC region
SC
SCRC region · SC Revenue & Fiscal Affairs — first grantmaking communications strategy · BPWR
TN
Shelby County 2026 mayoral primary (case below) · Organize TN · BPWR district briefs · DRA region
WV
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What it taught us
A message that works in Memphis can fail in rural West Tennessee.
Gulf Coast Louisiana and the ArkLaTex are different media worlds.
Black Belt counties, metro suburbs, and Appalachian communities each need their own creative register.
We plan for this at the production level. Casting, music, dialect, faith, and place are deliberate decisions for each audience, made with people who know those communities in the room.
CASTINGMUSICDIALECTFAITHPLACE
CASE / SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE2026 MAYORAL PRIMARY / PAID DIGITAL
Shelby County, Tennessee — first to launch
A crowded primary, seven candidates, and a spending disadvantage. The job was name recognition, early. With our media partner VDX.tv, we launched before anyone else in the field and stayed on air for the ten weeks into Election Day across streaming, programmatic, Meta, and YouTube, targeting households that had voted in a recent Democratic primary.
Mickell Lowery finished first of seven with over 32% of the vote. Launching early neutralized the spending gap and built momentum before better-funded opponents were on air.
1 of 7FINISHED FIRST IN A SEVEN-WAY PRIMARY
32%+SHARE OF THE VOTE
3M+IMPRESSIONS ACROSS YOUTUBE, STREAMING, PROGRAMMATIC, AND META
10WEEKS ON AIR, FIRST IN THE FIELD
CONNECTED TV · WEB · INSTAGRAM · MOBILE
CASE / MOBILE, ALABAMA2025 MAYORAL / PAID DIGITAL
Mobile, Alabama — the virtual door knock
A racially polarized, technically non-partisan mayoral race with almost no field capacity. We treated paid digital as a door knock: every dollar drove voters to one specific, trackable action, with creative built to feel like a conversation instead of an ad. Plain language, direct address, no campaign polish.
Black voter turnout rose about 60% over the prior cycle, from roughly 12,000 to 20,000. Democratic votes climbed from 13,582 to 23,715. A 62.5-point blowout closed to a 3-point runoff, while we were outspent four to one.
+60%BLACK VOTER TURNOUT VS. PRIOR CYCLE (~12,000 → ~20,000)
4 : 1OUTSPENT — AND STILL CLOSED THE GAP
62.5 → 3BLOWOUT MARGIN COLLAPSED TO A RUNOFF, IN POINTS
23,715DEMOCRATIC VOTES, UP FROM 13,582
03 / THE COORDINATION PORTALANSWERS Q3 + Q6
A coordination portal, not just a shared folder.
STATE DASHBOARDS / SHARED CREATIVE / LIVE REPORTING / POOLED AD BUYS
Coalition proposals usually describe infrastructure that doesn't exist yet. Ours does. We're the digital partner behind Texas Together, the coordinated infrastructure for Texas's 2026 statewide campaign, and behind the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation's Unity Command Center, a national coordination platform connecting 120+ Black-led organizations across six pillars of work.
For New South Rising, we would build that same system for ten state parties. Each party gets its own dashboard, a shared creative library it can pull from and edit, pooled ad buys it can opt into, and live reporting on what its program is doing.
What that means in practice: This isn't a pitch for something we hope to build. It's an offer to bring infrastructure we've already proven works at scale, across two different coordination models, and adapt it for New South Rising.
SHARED COALITION PORTAL
DASHBOARDLIBRARYREPORTINGPOOLED BUYS
01
STATE EDITS
States edit their own versions of shared creative, live, without a designer on staff.
→02
STATE OPT-IN
Each party controls what it joins and what runs in its state.
→03
COALITION BUY
Pooled dollars buy media at scale, and the ad runs in every state in the pool.
EACH STATE CONTROLS WHAT IT OPTS INTO
ALARFLKYLAMSNCSCTNWV
LIVE REPORTING FLOWS BACK TO EVERY STATE
WHAT NEW SOUTH RISING GETSSIX PARTS OF THE BUILD
01
How it works
Most coalition work runs on email threads, shared drives, and hope. We build something different: a live, password-protected portal where every state party can see what is happening across the coalition, pull ready-to-use creative, and pool resources with other states, all in one place. We are not proposing to build this from scratch. We already run this exact system for Texas Together, the 2026 coordinated campaign infrastructure covering candidates statewide. It is live right now. For New South Rising, we would adapt the same platform to work across ten state parties instead of individual candidates.
02
A state dashboard
Each party gets its own view showing what is already being invested on its behalf, broken out by category: staff support, literature, voter contact, events. It also shows where that party's program stands in the coalition's overall calendar. No guessing what is happening in the region. It is visible the moment they log in.
03
A shared creative library
Ready-to-post social graphics, organized by message theme, built once centrally and available to every state. States edit their own versions live, swapping in a candidate's name or a local issue, with no designer on staff. If a template doesn't exist yet, any state can request it and every state gets it.
04
Live reporting
A secured dashboard showing voter contact and research data as it comes in, filterable by state, geography, and contact type. States are not waiting on a monthly PDF to find out what is working.
05
Pooled ad buys
This is the piece most coalitions do not have. States can commit dollars toward a shared regional ad campaign built around one message: cost of living, healthcare access, education, whatever the coalition prioritizes. Once enough states have committed, the coalition buys the media at scale, and the ad runs in every state in that pool. A state that could not afford a strong digital program on its own gets the reach of a much bigger buy, because it is pooling with the other nine.
06
What the coalition team sees
Our team sees everything happening across all ten states in one view: which states have signed on, which are pending, what has been invested where, and what has been requested. States can flag what they need, whether that is a new creative asset, a new pod, or a question about the program, and the coalition team sees it immediately instead of it getting lost in a group email. When a new state party or partner organization asks to join, that request lands in a single queue where our team reviews it and grants access, with no separate onboarding process for each state.
This is not a description of a process. It is the system the process runs on, and it is already running today in Texas.
04 / TEAMANSWERS Q4–Q5
12FULL-TIME TEAM MEMBERS
Team size and structure
Spero Studio is a Black- and woman-owned firm with 12 full-time team members. The structure is intentionally senior: the people who plan the work also make it. We were founded to reach overlooked and skeptical audiences across many fragmented demographics. We extend locally for casting and field production when the work calls for it.
FIRM LEADERSHIP
Jenelle S. Coy
Founder & CEO
Materially involved in the work. Supports quality control so every deliverable carries executive oversight, and maintains the relationship with New South Rising leadership.
Austyn Burton-Burns
Director of Operations
Owns contracts, payments, and firm administration, working most closely with our founder and CEO.
THE ACCOUNT TEAM WE'D DEDICATE TO NEW SOUTH RISING4 SENIOR DISCIPLINES / ONE TEAM
01
Grace Lowe
Vice President, Political Strategy
The coalition's single point of accountability; owns strategy, message architecture, and state-party relationships.
02
Paden McNiff
Senior Account Director
Owns digital strategy, ad scheduling calendars, disclaimer and compliance QA, and the coalition reporting cadence.
03
Uri Israel
Creative Director
Owns the shared creative system and reviews every state adaptation before it ships.
04
Zach Adams
Paid Media Lead
Owns platform strategy, buying, optimization, and reporting across participating states.
For coalition work, a small senior team means fewer handoffs and faster decisions, and every state party deals directly with a decision-maker.
Available to begin immediately upon contract award.
We plan and buy against the full arc of a voter's decision, with creative and budget built for each stage.
02
Awareness and inoculation
Reach-optimized video and CTV that defines candidates and issues early, including pre-buttal creative in markets where attacks are expected.
03
Persuasion
Message-tested creative delivered to modeled persuasion universes, sequenced so a narrative builds across exposures.
04
Mobilization
Registration and vote-by-mail creative timed to each state's deadlines, tailored to low-propensity and new-voter audiences, with attention to the registration friction and rural access issues specific to Southern states.
05
GOTV
Precision-geo creative in the final window, ballot-completion content for long Southern ballots, and creative response to Election Day conditions as they develop.
06
How it's managed
Budgets rebalance between stages as performance data and race dynamics change. Measurement is matched to each stage: reach and recall for awareness, lift studies for persuasion, turnout-matched analysis after certification. Every learning feeds the coalition's shared intelligence.
PROGRAM PROOF / DCCC 2024SIX DISTRICTS · CANDIDATE & ISSUE
In 2024 we ran the DCCC's paid program across six congressional districts and produced all of the creative for it. Much of it ran in rural and small-town markets: steel and manufacturing counties in Indiana and Ohio, farm counties in Nebraska. The channel mix covered the full funnel: connected TV, online video, YouTube skippable and non-skippable, display, social, streaming audio, digital out-of-home, and terrestrial radio.
Our core team carries strategy, creative direction, copywriting, graphic design, motion design, editing, and review from first brief through final cut. We extend locally for Southern directors, DPs, crews, casting, photography, field production, animation, and audio when the work calls for it.
Production is modular by design. Master assets are framed, scripted, and edited for versioning from the start, so state adaptations, cutdowns (:06/:15/:30), aspect-ratio variants, and platform-native versions are planned deliverables in every production budget. A single shoot day is engineered to yield a full campaign's asset tree.
This gives the coalition range — broadcast-quality video through daily social content — at a cost structure suited to political budgets, with surge capacity for launch windows and election season.
SELECTED WORK / PRODUCTION RANGESIX PIECES / THREE FORMATS
01TURNOUT / LANDSCAPE
02TURNOUT / STORIES
03ADVOCACY / 9:16
04GOTV / 16:9
05ADVOCACY / PORTRAIT
06REGIONAL / IMPACT
C3 / PLATFORM EXPERTISE
Platform expertise
HANDS-ON CAMPAIGN DELIVERY / FIVE REQUIRED PLATFORM GROUPS
01Facebook / InstagramEXPERT
02Google / YouTubeEXPERT
03Programmatic Display & Video (DSPs)EXPERT
04Connected TV (CTV)EXPERT
05TikTok / Snapchat / XEXPERT
9:16 / SOCIAL
1:1 / SOCIAL GRID
16:9 / CTV + VIDEO
MASTER ASSET → EVERY FORMAT
These ratings reflect hands-on campaign delivery: political-advertiser verification maintained on each platform, working fluency in each platform's political-ads policies and their state-by-state quirks, and creative produced platform-native — vertical-first and sound-off-ready for social, six-second-disciplined for YouTube, household-graph-aware for CTV.
In the South, platform mix is itself a targeting decision. CTV and YouTube carry outsized weight in rural, broadband-limited media markets. Meta remains the backbone for older base voters. Short-form vertical is where younger Southern voters, especially younger Black voters, spend their attention. We set platform allocation state by state and audience by audience.
MESSAGE PROOF / COST → CHOICE → CHANGECREATIVE BUILT AS A SEQUENCE
C4 / RAPID RESPONSE
Rapid response
Rapid response at Spero runs on standing infrastructure, maintained whether or not there's a fire that week.
0hMOMENT BREAKS
1hFIRST RESPONSE
4hSTATIC LIVE
24hVIDEO LIVE
48hFULL PACKAGE
01
Readiness
A dedicated intake channel for every state party with a guaranteed first-response SLA. Pre-cleared creative shells — disclaimer-locked, brand-consistent, sized for every platform — sit ready, so a breaking moment needs only message and media.
02
Speed benchmarks
Static and text-forward response creative within hours. Edited video response within 24 hours. Produced response packages within 48. Platform verification, payment rails, and audience segments are pre-built in every state, so ads can start running as soon as creative clears.
03
Editorial control
Every rapid-response asset still passes compliance gates, and a senior strategist owns the go/no-go on each one. In Southern political environments operating under national scrutiny, that judgment is part of the service.
04
Coalition reach
When a moment breaks in one state, response creative and learnings are immediately adaptable for every other participating party, on the same news cycle.
RAPID PROOF / EIGHT DAYS / TENNESSEESTATIC SYSTEM / SAME-DAY MESSAGE
06 / PRICINGANSWERS Q7–Q8
Pricing structure and coalition efficiencies
For coalition and statewide political work, Spero uses a production fees plus a flat 10% media commission. Production is quoted from a rate card agreed at the start of the engagement, covering the dedicated pod, the shared creative system, and agreed production volume. At coalition scale, shared infrastructure can reduce overhead 50–60%: an illustrative independent model across 20 races ($1.8M) becomes a coordinated model of approximately $720K.
EACH STATE CONTRACTS ALONECOALITION MODEL
WHERE COALITION SCALE SAVES MONEY:
01
Adaptation instead of re-production
A master creative adapted for each state costs a fraction of separate productions in every state. The underlying creative investment happens at the center; state budgets cover adaptation.
02
Pooled media
Consolidated buying earns better rates, and volume discounts negotiated with platforms — typically 8–15% on platform buys — are passed through to the coalition at full value. Audience learnings from every state's spend inform every other state's targeting.
03
Shared fixed costs
Tooling, licensing, ad-ops, and reporting infrastructure are carried at the coalition level instead of appearing in each state's budget.
07 / COMPLIANCE & DATA SECURITYANSWERS Q9–Q10
Federal and state compliance
Compliance is its own production stage. Our DCCC and multi-state work keeps us fluent in Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules: disclaimers, "paid for by" attributions, platform verification, and expenditure limits.
Every asset clears compliance before it runs. Per-state disclaimer templates are locked, so attribution is automatic. We hold political-ad verification on Meta, Google, and programmatic platforms, keep spending records in each party's reporting format, and work with state-party counsel.
NSR / AL / V.03CREATIVE ASSET
FEC disclaimer✓
State disclosure✓
Platform verification✓
Counsel review✓
AL✓AR✓FL✓KY✓LA✓MS✓NC✓SC✓TN✓WV✓
Data security and confidentiality
How political and voter data is handled:
01
Access
Least-privilege, role-based access to all client data. Multi-factor authentication across the full stack. Access reviewed at engagement milestones and revoked immediately when someone rolls off.
02
Storage and transmission
Client and voter data stays in access-controlled, encrypted environments. It does not live on local machines, in personal accounts, or in email attachments. Transfers happen through secured, logged channels.
03
Separation
Each client's data is segregated. Coalition membership does not commingle data: each state party's voter and performance data remains its own. Cross-state learnings are shared as aggregated insight unless a party directs otherwise.
04
Confidentiality
All team members and local production partners work under NDA. Sensitive strategy materials are shared on a need-to-know basis. We maintain a written incident-response protocol with immediate client notification.
Spero Studio carries Cyber/Privacy liability coverage at a $1M limit, alongside commercial general liability, professional liability, auto, and workers' compensation coverage.
