Local elections are often won or lost on a handful of votes, which makes it a tough game for consultants trying to get a candidate noticed. In the 2026 mayoral race for Brookhaven, Georgia, we ran a full digital strategy built on brand storytelling for a challenger, Sarah Chen, who was up against a very well-known incumbent. This is the teardown of how we did it, covering the strategy, the creative we ran, the targeting we used, and the real numbers we saw over the 10-week campaign.

Brookhaven Mayoral Race 2026: Campaign Overview

For Sarah Chen’s campaign, our job was pretty straightforward: get her name out there, sell her vision for Brookhaven, and push voter turnout. The incumbent had been in office for two terms, had all the name recognition, and a big campaign war chest. Our candidate, Chen, came from a community organizer background with a solid track record at local non-profits, so we needed a clear, relatable message to cut through his noise. The digital ad budget was locked in at $85,000 for the 10 weeks before the November 4th election.

It was obvious from the start that a simple list of policy points wasn’t going to cut it. We knew that voters in Brookhaven, especially in neighborhoods like Ashford Park and Lynwood Park, care about authenticity and community connection. That insight became the entire foundation of our brand storytelling strategy.

Strategy: The “Brookhaven Connected” Narrative

Our whole strategy was built around the “Brookhaven Connected” theme. The idea was to frame Chen as someone with deep roots in the community who knew how to work with people to solve problems and had a vision for a city that included everyone. We focused on telling stories that people could connect to their daily lives, hitting on specific Brookhaven issues instead of generic political talking points, which meant we spent time highlighting her work with the Brookhaven Farmers Market, her push for better public transit on Peachtree Road, and her plans for the Dresden Drive commercial district.

We broke the campaign down into three distinct phases:

1. Phase 1 (Weeks 1-3): Introduction & Problem Identification. We focused on introducing Chen, her background, and her personal connection to Brookhaven while also starting to touch on the pain points people in the community felt.
2. Phase 2 (Weeks 4-7): Solution & Vision. This is when we started rolling out Chen’s specific solutions to those problems, using a lot of testimonials from actual community members to back her up.
3. Phase 3 (Weeks 8-10): Call to Action & Urgency. The final push was all about driving voter registration, getting volunteer sign-ups, and running a massive get-out-the-vote operation, all while hammering home the “Brookhaven Connected” message.

We went with a multi-channel digital plan, mostly leaning on Meta Ads (so, Facebook and Instagram), Google Ads (for both Search and Display), and targeted email. A big chunk of the $85,000 budget went straight to video production because we were betting it would be the best format for storytelling.

Creative Approach: Authentic Stories, Real Brookhaven Voices

Our creative strategy was all about user-generated-feeling content and short, documentary-style videos. We completely avoided the slick, overproduced political ads you usually see. Instead, we made a bunch of 60-90 second videos of Chen just talking with Brookhaven residents about local stuff at real places like the Blackburn Park playground or the Brookhaven Library. One video, for instance, followed Chen while she volunteered at the Latin American Association, which was a perfect way to show her commitment to the diverse communities in the Lynwood Park area.

Video Content: The Foundation

In total, we produced 12 main video assets and then chopped those up into over 30 shorter versions for different ad placements. The foundation was a 2-minute “Meet Sarah” video, shot almost entirely in Brookhaven, that just showed her walking through her own neighborhood talking straight to the camera about why she was running. We pushed that video out hard in Phase 1. And it’s not just a hunch, Nielsen’s 2023 report on ad formats found that this kind of authentic, narrative-driven video can boost ad recall by up to 25% compared to a standard commercial.

One ad called “Our Streets, Our Future” was a huge performer. It showed Chen talking with small business owners on Buford Highway about their worries over infrastructure and safety. That single video pulled a CTR of 1.8% on Meta, which completely blew away the 0.9% CTR we were getting from our static image ads.

Static Ads and Carousels

Video was our workhorse, but we didn’t abandon static images and carousels on Meta. They were mostly good for featuring strong photos of Chen with people in the community, with a powerful quote from her or an endorsement from a local leader overlaid on top. The carousels worked really well for breaking down her policy platform. Each card would tackle a different part of her “Brookhaven Connected” plan, like fixing traffic or improving parks.

Targeting: Precision at the Precinct Level

We got really granular with our targeting. On Meta, we built custom audiences using public voter registration data that we cross-referenced with demographic info. This let us target specific Brookhaven precincts, especially ones that historically had low turnout or were full of undecideds. We zeroed in on precincts around the Brookhaven MARTA station and in the areas bordering Chamblee, since voter opinions can really shift block by block there.

For Google Ads, we layered our targeting. We used geography (the Brookhaven city limits), keywords (like “Brookhaven mayor,” “local elections Georgia,” and “public safety Brookhaven”), and audience lists based on interests like local government and community events. We also set up sequential retargeting campaigns, so if someone watched at least half of our “Meet Sarah” video on Facebook, they’d start seeing Google Display ads that got into the nitty-gritty of her policy proposals.

Making the call to invest in a voter database integration was a big one. We paid a third-party vendor to plug our volunteer sign-up and email forms directly into our voter file. This meant we could immediately stop showing “persuasion” ads to people who were already registered supporters, which made sure every dollar was being spent trying to win over someone who was actually on the fence.

Campaign Performance: Metrics and Insights

The campaign ran for 10 weeks, starting August 26th and ending on November 4th, 2026. Here’s how the numbers broke down:

What Worked

• Video Storytelling: The real, community-focused videos crushed the static images. Our best video ad had a CPL of just $4.50, which was almost half the campaign average, proving how much narrative matters in local races. We saw engagement rates (likes, shares, comments) on those videos that were 2.5 times higher than on static ads.
• Hyper-local Targeting: Going after specific precincts and even streets inside Brookhaven let us run super-relevant creative. Ads we showed around Murphey Candler Park, for instance, talked about park improvements and got much higher engagement.
• Retargeting Sequences: Hitting people with a Meta video and then following up with a Google Display ad about policy was a great way to pull them deeper into our funnel. That retargeting group had a 30% higher conversion rate than our cold audiences.
• A/B Testing: We were constantly testing ad creative, headlines, and CTAs. We found early on that calls to action like “Join Sarah” got 15% more volunteer sign-ups than “Vote for Sarah,” which was a key insight for the first few phases.

What Didn’t Work as Expected

• Broad Demographic Targeting: In Phase 1, we tried some broad demographic targeting (think “parents in Brookhaven aged 35-55”). It got us a ton of impressions, but the CTR was awful (around 0.6%) and the CPL was through the roof at $18+. We killed those ad sets fast and moved the money to our precinct-level targeting. It was a good lesson: you can’t be general in local elections, because you miss all the neighborhood-level nuance.
• Text-Heavy Google Display Ads: Our Google Search ads did fine, but the first batch of text-heavy display ads we ran on the Google Display Network were a total flop. We had to switch to image-based and short video display ads, which bumped the CTR up by 40%.

Optimization and Adjustments

We were living in the analytics, and that let us make a few key adjustments on the fly:

1. Budget Reallocation: After just two weeks, it was clear Meta was performing better for video, so we moved 20% of the budget from Google Display over to Meta ads to chase the lower CPL and better engagement.
2. Creative Refresh: We rolled out new creative every two weeks to keep ad fatigue from setting in. This could be as simple as changing the background music on a video or swapping in new testimonial quotes, but even those small tweaks could give us a 10-15% bump in CTR.
3. Audience Refinement: We were constantly tweaking our custom audiences on Meta, making sure to exclude people who had already signed up to volunteer and building lookalike audiences from our most engaged users. It’s an iterative process that keeps the messaging sharp and your budget efficient.
4. Landing Page Optimization: We A/B tested our landing pages for volunteer sign-ups and donations. We found that a simpler form with fewer fields gave us a 20% lift in conversion rates. Simple is almost always better.

Here’s an editorial aside: a lot of consultants really underestimate the amount of hands-on, granular work a digital campaign like this takes. It’s not something you can just set up and walk away from. You have to be in the ad platforms every single day, looking at the data and making tiny adjustments. The gap between winning and losing is often just that relentless focus on efficiency. For more on that, check out our guide on how consultants cut time on AI marketing reports in 2026.

The “Brookhaven Connected” story, told through authentic video and targeted with surgical precision, is what let Sarah Chen get her message out and actually connect with voters person-to-person. The campaign’s willingness to adapt based on live data was what made it all work.

If you’re a consultant working on a local race, the takeaway is simple: spend money on real stories, get incredibly specific with your targeting, and be ready to change things every single day. That’s how you get a candidate’s message to stick and turn someone’s awareness into an actual vote. Knowing how to use emotional branding is essential for 2026 survival in these kinds of competitive races.