The idea
San Diegans pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country, and almost nobody could tell you why. We broke the bills down line by line. Around 80% of a typical bill was fees and taxes, about 60% was distribution fees alone, and those distribution fees were earning the utility more than a million dollars in profit every single day from the city alone. One in four SDG&E customers was behind on their bill by more than $600. Power San Diego was a citizens' initiative to fire SDG&E and replace it with a not-for-profit, publicly owned utility. When I joined, it was an idea and three people. I was the fourth. No name anyone knew, no brand, no website, nothing to hand a stranger on the street.
The odds
We were taking on a monopoly utility with a war chest, armed with a subject most people tune out the second they hear the word "rates." Qualifying for the ballot meant collecting more than 80,000 valid signatures from city voters, and we had to build the entire machine to get there while the clock was already running.
The move
I built the brand from nothing, down to every version of the logo, and I moved fast. Inside two weeks we had a logo, a mission statement, print materials, presentations and training kits in the hands of the team on the street, and a live website to back them up. I designed the site to explain, in plain language, exactly where every dollar on an SDG&E bill goes, and to turn that anger into action. Then I used social like a testing lab, running paid and organic messaging side by side and rewriting talking points based on what people actually responded to. Every lead we generated went straight to our campaign coordinator to build the volunteer army. Influencers and supporters started sharing the content on their own, and the press followed with articles and news segments that gave the campaign real credibility.
The result
In July 2023 it was four of us. By April 2024 it was a full staff, more than 500 volunteers, current and former San Diego officials, and endorsements from more than 30 organizations. The paid campaign delivered nearly 800,000 impressions, 14,938 click-throughs and over 61 hours of content watched, all on an ad budget under $5,000, and organic reach passed a million impressions on top of that. We collected more than 30,000 signatures. It wasn't enough for the November 2024 ballot. What we built was a massive movement against every odd, one that put public power in front of the City Council and got a whole city asking why their bill looks the way it does. We didn't get it all the way there, but we armed San Diegans with information. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789, “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
Results at a glance
Gallery
Credits
- Campaign coordinator Dorrie Bruggemann
- Public relations and photography Frances Motiwalla
Sources
- American Public Power Association, May 2024
- CBS 8 San Diego
- NBC San Diego
- campaign ad and platform reporting