For years, the Equal Rights Amendment could not get a vote in Virginia. The amendment had broad public support and a decades-long campaign behind it, and a legislative bottleneck still held it in place. Then the 2019 elections shifted control of the Virginia legislature, and the time to act became short. We aligned the communications to that compressed decision window, and in January 2020 Virginia ratified the ERA as the 38th state.
That is what an advocacy campaign looks like from the inside. The advocacy campaign examples below come from our own work, and each one is told the same way: what the campaign set out to change, who it had to reach, how it reached them, and what came of it.
| Campaign | What it set out to change | Who it had to reach | What came of it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equal Rights Amendment | A legislative bottleneck that had blocked a vote in Virginia for years | Virginia's legislators, through national and state partners | Virginia ratified the ERA as the 38th state |
| Save the U.S. EPA Campaign | The loss of the EPA's workforce, treated as internal politics | The national press and the public | Sustained national visibility and more scrutiny of agency leadership |
| Save the Housatonic | A PCB cleanup decision treated as a technical matter | The communities downstream and the public officials deciding the plan | More scrutiny of GE's approach and louder calls for safer alternatives |
| UNITED SIKHS and Freedom Drivers | CDL enforcement framed as a safety measure | National broadcast, print and policy outlets | Coast-to-coast coverage and scrutiny of enforcement practices |
| NRDC and the endangerment finding | A threat to EPA's climate authority treated as an internal regulatory matter | Reporters and the public at each federal decision point | Scientific integrity and public health kept at the center of the debate |
| "I Will" Act on Climate | Climate engagement confined to policy circles and major media markets | Persuadable regions across 30 states | Climate action carried beyond the usual advocacy audiences |
The Equal Rights Amendment: the window the 2019 elections opened
The Equal Rights Amendment campaign was in its final stretch, decades after it began, and it had stalled in Virginia. Public support was broad. The obstacle was procedural: a vote that could not reach the floor.
We worked with national and state partners on a coordinated, multi-state strategy that kept legal, advocacy and media pressure moving together. When the 2019 elections changed who controlled the legislature, the window to act opened, and it was short. The communications had to fit it.
The House passed the resolution on January 15, 2020, and the Senate on January 27. A dormant historical effort had become constitutional business that needed an answer.
Save the U.S. EPA Campaign: the people who do the science
AFGE Council 238 represented roughly 9,000 scientists, engineers and public-health professionals at the EPA. The pressure on the agency came from several directions at once: deregulation, budget cuts, attacks on its science, forced retirements and hostile working conditions. The risk was that the loss of that expertise would read as routine governance, a fight inside the building.
We designed and ran the national Save the U.S. EPA Campaign as a rapid-response effort. Earned media, op-eds, digital strategy and public events were timed to each policy development, and the voices at the front were the agency's own people, connecting what was happening to their work with what it would mean for air, water and public health.
The campaign held national attention, raised scrutiny of agency leadership, and made a simple point stick: defending environmental protections means defending the people and expertise that make them possible.
Save the Housatonic: from a cleanup plan to a question of who bears the risk
For decades, PCB contamination from General Electric, using chemicals supplied by Monsanto, polluted the Housatonic River across Massachusetts and Connecticut. When the cleanup came up for decision, the risk was that it would be treated as a technical matter. The plan for local disposal would have moved the long-term risk from the polluter to nearby communities, particularly downstream, without their consent.
We helped lead the Save the Housatonic campaign by putting residents at the front, framing the fight as one of environmental justice, and applying pressure at the public and policy moments that counted. The debate moved to the questions that mattered to the people living along the river: who is exposed, who decides, and who bears the consequences.
The campaign increased scrutiny of GE's approach and strengthened the demand for safer alternatives.
UNITED SIKHS and Freedom Drivers: a safety rule that worked as something else
A wave of commercial driver's license enforcement in California put thousands of immigrant truck drivers, many of them legally authorized to work, at risk of losing their licenses. Federal regulators framed the rule as a safety measure. It did not strengthen safety standards. State DMVs applied it inconsistently, often without notice or hearings, and it opened the door to profiling and subjective roadside enforcement.
With UNITED SIKHS, we built the Freedom Drivers platform to document the impact in real time, aligned the communications with active legal filings, and ran a disciplined earned-media effort that connected individual drivers' cases to a pattern of institutional failure. The story moved from "safety-driven enforcement" to what the policy did in practice: legally authorized drivers losing their livelihoods without due process.
The coverage ran coast to coast across national broadcast, print and policy outlets, and it put enforcement practices under scrutiny.
NRDC and the endangerment finding: timing the work to the decision
The EPA's "endangerment finding" is the scientific and legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. When it faced potential rollback, its significance was easy to minimize: it is technical, often misunderstood, and simple to describe as an internal regulatory matter.
For the Natural Resources Defense Council, we aligned earned media and rapid response with the regulatory review, the development of the administrative record and the related litigation. Interviews and expert visibility were timed to federal decision-making, so NRDC's experts were in the coverage at the moments that counted.
The issue moved from an internal regulatory debate to a public one: weakening the finding would undermine the EPA's statutory responsibility to protect human health and the environment. NRDC kept scientific integrity, legal authority and public health at the center of how the agency's actions were reported.
"I Will" Act on Climate: thirty states, local voices
National momentum on climate policy was not reaching the regions where the argument still had to be won. Climate advocacy was concentrated in policy circles and major media markets.
We helped drive the earned media strategy for the "I Will" Act on Climate bus tour, a 30-state campaign that brought climate action directly to communities. National narratives were made local and tied to each region's economic priorities, and the voices were people the region already listened to: business, industry, faith, labor, public health and frontline communities. We have written before about knowing who your audience trusts; this tour was that idea at the scale of thirty states.
The tour widened both the reach and the credibility of climate engagement, and moved the issue out of advocacy circles toward a shared, cross-sector priority.
More advocacy campaign examples from our work
These six are part of a longer record; the rest of our campaigns are on our work page. Each one sat where policy, the press and the people affected meet, which is the center of our policy communications work. We have also written about how strategic communications turns audiences into stakeholders.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does an advocacy campaign take?
As long as the decision takes. Our work with Mobile Baykeeper ran through the 87 days of the Deepwater Horizon crisis; America's Most Endangered Rivers, with American Rivers, has run every year since 2006.
Aric Caplan
Founder, Caplan Communications
Aric Caplan has advised national nonprofits, coalitions, and public agencies on high-stakes communications for more than two decades. He founded Caplan Communications in 2004, building a practice grounded in integrating earned media, message strategy, and rapid response into policy and regulatory processes. His work spans climate action, environmental protection, civil rights, and public health.
