Hi, I'm Eric Reif. I've spent the past decade at the intersection of political strategy, advertising, and fundraising. I've launched first-of-their-kind marketing campaigns, built teams to run complex programs in high-stakes environments, and raised millions of dollars for Democrats and progressive causes.
Things I’ve Done Recently
Bringing Omnichannel Advertising In-House on a Presidential Campaign
Warren for President
Elizabeth Warren's presidential campaign took a lot of risks. One big one: taking our paid media program entirely in-house, for the first time ever on a presidential campaign.
I brought on a team of strategists, planners, buyers, and analysts from a mix of political and agency backgrounds to run traditional and digital marketing initiatives that touched every facet of the campaign.
Our program brought in more than a third of the campaign's total revenue, reached millions of potential Democratic voters, and proved that political campaigns can meet the challenges of an evolving modern media landscape without having to give up control of their paid media programming.
You can read a bit about what we did and watch our TV and digital video creative (made in collaboration with our also-in-house video production team).
Persuading Voters at a Critical Moment
Everytown for Gun Safety & Independence USA PAC
My team at Bully Pulpit Interactive managed millions of dollars in spend for Democratic super PACs and independent expenditures during the 2018 midterms. Two groups — Everytown for Gun Safety and Mayor Mike Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC — came to us in September with plans to start spending big in the final few weeks of the election to bring it home for Democrats.
In a matter of days, we put together and launched targeted persuasion campaigns in 27 congressional and more than a dozen statewide and legislative races. We used a complex mix of digital video, audio, social, display, and out-of-home media — “the largest digital investment ever made by a Democratic non-profit to win the House” — to maximize our impact in each race at a critical juncture.
And it paid off big on Election Day, with wins up and down the ticket that helped take back the House for Democrats and weaken the NRA's stranglehold on statehouses across the country.
Raising Millions of Dollars for Democrats
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee’s multi-million person email list is one of the Party’s loudest megaphones and its largest grassroots fundraising asset. During the 2016 election, I led the team that wrote, sent, and optimized the DNC email program.
With rigorous experimentation, we pioneered new tactics in graphic emails and hyper-personalization. I also built up the DNC's online sustaining donor program, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, and spearheaded the acquisition and onboarding of two major assets: email lists from President Obama's and Secretary Clinton's presidential campaigns. By the end of 2016, in spite of tumultuous primary and general elections,
the DNC had raised more money online than in any previous election cycle.
Marketing a New Way to Get Covered
Obamacare’s Health Insurance Exchanges
In 2013, three years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the federal and state governments were preparing to open their health insurance exchanges for the first time. At Weber Shandwick, we were tasked with getting the word out about a new way to buy health insurance before the start of the first open enrollment period.
To do it, I developed and ran targeted digital marketing campaigns for the federal Health Insurance Marketplace, Covered California, and the DC Health Link. These programs were designed to meet the challenge of making young, healthy people — who were largely uninterested in their own health coverage — aware of their new options and requirements for purchasing health insurance, while also operating within the constraints of federal and state government contracting.
A Bit More About Me
I’m originally from the Washington, D.C. area and currently live in Somerville, Massachusetts with my cat, Cleo (not to be confused with the sloth held here). I studied history and American culture at Washington University in St. Louis, where I worked on research projects for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations, National Archives and Records Administration, and Missouri State Archives' St. Louis Circuit Court Records Project — before I eventually caught the political campaign bug volunteering for Claire McCaskill in her first run for the Senate.