Situation

St. Tammany Parish has experienced a population boom over the last two decades. There have been many new residential developments to accommodate the population growth. Residents often voice their frustration with traffic, and they worry about flooding and inappropriate drainage systems in their neighborhoods.

St. Tammany Parish President Mike Cooper announced a proposed moratorium on new home construction in the parish to remedy increased flooding and traffic challenges. The moratorium was put on a fast track to be introduced to the St. Tammany Parish Council, with a public meeting following a week later and then a vote on the matter the very next week.

The Northshore Home Builders Association (NHBA) and its members, as well as other business groups in St. Tammany Parish, opposed the measure and wanted to create a campaign to have their message heard.

Gambel Communications worked with NHBA to assess the issue, create messaging to advance NHBA’s point of view, and plan and implement a communication campaign to advance their objectives, which included:

• Advocate against the moratorium; stand up for the home builder industry

• Increase awareness of the negative impacts of the proposed moratorium

• Create the rationale the Parish Council needed to vote down the moratorium

Strategy

 Gambel Communications began its work with NHBA by conducting a listening session with stakeholders, including staff, board members and a small group of past presidents of the organization. The listening session gave these stakeholders an opportunity to lay out their views related to the proposed moratorium, as well as the challenges the moratorium was slated to address – namely, flooding and traffic. From the listening session, we helped prioritize and proactively address the situation with strategic recommendations for a communication campaign that included social media, email, governmental relations and media relations.   

To define and position the organization and its stance on the moratorium, we developed key messaging to focus attention on the reasons why the moratorium was not a good idea. The messaging was integrated into all elements of the campaign and focused on the following slogan: WE NEED A PLAN. NOT A MORATORIUM.  

Gambel Communications’ approach to rolling out this messaging was two-fold. We identified NHBA members willing to be quoted about the detrimental impacts of the moratorium on their businesses and gave them speaking points to testify at the council meetings where the measure was heard, featured them in social media and quoted them in an email series to their fellow members. We also compiled a series of data points to communicate through email, social media and in an open letter to the Parish Council.   

Gambel worked to spread this message both on NHBA’s social media as well as through third-party personal pages of NHBA leaders and influencers. We developed branded content and created a toolkit of content for NHBA leaders and influencers to post on their social media accounts. We used member testimonials to engage the community and data points to overcome some of the information being spread regarding flooding and traffic controls related to why the parish president wanted to put the moratorium in place. To extend reach, we planned and allocated social media advertising on Facebook.

Our team communicated with local media to generate publicity that would create broader awareness in the community, knowing that the coverage would elevate the issue in the manner we wanted with the Parish Council.

As part of the campaign, we advised NHBA on its direct communication with the Parish Council. We developed speaking points for meetings and penned an open letter to the council as part of the governmental relations strategy. The open letter served to communicate focused points of the campaign and was designed to be purposefully public so that the community understood and heard from NHBA on what it was telling the Parish Council.   

Result

In a matter of weeks, Gambel Communications and NHBA mobilized key stakeholders to advocate against the moratorium, and ultimately just 90 days later, the measure was voted down by the St. Tammany Parish Council in its original form. Ultimately, the Parish Council adopted a much reduced version of the moratorium limited to curbing high density new residential developments. This was considered a win for NHBA and its members. 

With strong media relationships and a keen understanding of how the media works, our team garnered coverage via broadcast and print media, including ongoing coverage throughout the campaign from WWL-TV and nola.com. Following the successful campaign opposing the moratorium, NHBA was featured on the cover of Biz New Orleans about how the organization worked to overcome the moratorium and help set the stage for more planning and problem-solving with regard to both traffic and drainage in the parish.