Meeting our greatest challenges with relentless creativity
Soft Power Studio in the 2026 Midterm Elections
Across 26 states and Washington, D.C., we helped shape three defining conversations of 2026. From the pulpit to the kitchen table to the ballot box, we carried messages that challenged the status quo, captured the hopes of working people, and helped build the momentum behind a historic blue wave.
01 · National reach
We showed up in 26 states and D.C.
Four capabilities, often stacked in the same place: narrative architecture, influencer programs, organizing programs and design.
26 + D.C.Geographic reach
States where we delivered narrative architecture, influencer programs, organizing programs or design.
100+Churches engaged
Congregations that took up our faith toolkits.
50Creators
Micro-influencers in our family values program.
1M+Views
Total views across the creator program’s videos.
10%Engagement rate
Across the creator program’s videos.
3Ballot-measure wins
Props 1, 3 and 39, won with the California Alliance for Fair Living Standards.
02 · The Narratives We Acted On
We listened to the country. We heard three powerful messages. Then we built campaigns that carried them forward.
Throughout 2026, Americans were telling us something about the country they wanted to live in. In churches, communities, organizing spaces, and conversations about everyday life, we heard a growing demand for moral clarity, economic fairness, and policies that actually support families.
We saw three compelling narratives emerging from those conversations. Our job was to give them language, emotional resonance, and cultural reach. We translated what people were already feeling into speeches, campaigns, creative content, and public experiences that connected deeply held values to the political choices before the country.
Three narratives. One through line: Americans were demanding a country whose policies reflected the values they already held. We helped give those demands a voice, a visual language, and a place in the national conversation.
03 · Case study I
Faith
Thesis
The fight over faith was a fight over who belongs.
In 2026, the loudest religious voice in American politics claimed that God belongs to one party and one kind of American. The Black church had written the counter-story generations ago, building schools, shelters and the freedom movement itself on a God who sides with the oppressed. When the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act in April, protecting Black representation came to depend on organized congregations. So we contested faith on its own ground.
100+churches engaged through our toolkits
8–12%weekly newsletter open rates, 3–4x the network’s previous highest
300,000contact goal set for the organizing program
Execution 1 · With Live Free and Pastor Michael McBride
A relational organizing program, from the dinner table out
With Live Free, we built a program that moved people from Sunday Dinners, where churches and families began with stories rather than asks, into organizer boot camps and one-to-ones. We created the toolkits that brought more than 100 churches into the work, launched a weekly newsletter for the network with 8–12% open rates, 3–4x its previous highest, and placed national op-eds for Pastor Michael McBride and fellow faith leaders in The Root and ESSENCE.
Execution 2 · With the All Roads Lead to the South coalition
We led the coalition’s faith track
After the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act, we led the faith track of All Roads Lead to the South. We built the infrastructure that connected congregations across the region, created a Bible study rooted in scripture and the freedom struggle, and ran daily prayer calls that kept clergy and congregants moving together, all while supporting Justice Revivals across the country.
Execution 3 · With Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the All Roads Lead to the South coalition
Pull Up To The South
After Tennessee eliminated its only majority-minority congressional district, we helped shape Pull Up To The South, weekends of action in Memphis on October 25 and Orlando on October 30 that brought volunteers from across the country to make calls and knock doors. Alongside the congressperson’s field operation, HBCU students canvassed in Tennessee and Florida and field programs knocked on more than 2,000 doors.
The creative
Design · Live FreeThe Sunday Dinner Series identityThe visual language for a dinner series that began with stories, not asks. This flyer brought families to Imani Community Church in Oakland.
Justice RevivalsPastor Michael McBridePastor McBride shares the stage with young organizers, connecting the pulpit to the work of protecting the vote.
Organizing · Live FreeOrganizer boot campsWhere dinner guests became organizers, with one-to-ones and training toward a 300,000-contact goal.
Production · Live FreeA Sunday Dinner in BerkeleyTables of guests, Pastor Michael McBride at the front and our design on every surface: the relational first step of the program.
Earned media · The Root“Our Ancestors Fought With Love. Now It’s Our Turn.”An op-ed we placed for Pastor Michael McBride, Pastor Jamal Bryant, Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Thompson and Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain.
Earned media · ESSENCE“Authoritarianism Is Taking Hold. Minneapolis Is The Proof.”Pastor Michael McBride in ESSENCE, part of a national platform that also reached EBONY and The Don Lemon Show.
Justice RevivalsRev. Jamal BryantPreaching renewal and revival at a Justice Revival, part of the national revival tour our faith track supported.
Design · Live FreeFreedom Summer Justice RevivalRevival design for Martha’s Vineyard, part of the visual system we built everywhere Live Free went.
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03 · Case study II
Fairness
Thesis
Everyone said affordability. We asked who decided.
Every campaign talked about affordability in 2026, and the word was starting to mean everything and nothing. We reframed it as fairness: corporations versus people, billionaires versus people. Rent, healthcare and groceries are not weather. They are choices leaders make. Research for our housing work pointed the same way: a fair living standards frame held across the political spectrum, and naming the history of discriminatory policy persuaded more people than naming a villain.
+15Chris Rabb’s PA-03 primary margin, after polling second at 23%
3 winsProps 1, 3 and 39, won with the California Alliance for Fair Living Standards
Execution 1 · With Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
The fairness case, on a national stage
We provide narrative architecture and advising for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Through the 2026 cycle that meant helping shape how she made the fairness case on a national stage, from her own primary through a closing blitz across battleground states, as she backed working-class candidates from Philadelphia and Memphis to Michigan, Montana, California, Mississippi, Florida and Virginia. The through line was consistent everywhere she went: who benefits, who pays, and who gets to decide.
Execution 2 · With Housing California and the California Alliance for Fair Living Standards
A ballot measure toolkit and creator videos
We built the Alliance’s ballot measure toolkit around the fair living standards frame, that helped win Props 1, 3 and 39, and paired it with creator videos that carried the case to voters.
Execution 3 · With the Working Families Party
The New York state conference
We produced the party’s New York state conference and led its media and influencer strategy, putting members and creators on camera about what costs too much.
The message, itemized
We turned issues into a choice.
Pick an issue
WHO PAID FOR IT?Itemized · 2026
What they got
What you paid
Total dueWorking families
How we framed it
The creative
Narrative architecture and advising · Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezOn the stump in PhiladelphiaRep. Ocasio-Cortez with Chris Rabb before the PA-03 primary. Rabb was polling second at 23% before her endorsement and rally, and won the primary by 15 points.
Narrative architecture and advising · Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezMemphis, for Justin J. PearsonAfter Tennessee eliminated its only majority-minority district, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez rallied more than 1,200 voters in Memphis with Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Summer Lee.
Narrative architecture and advising · Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezMichigan, for Abdul El-SayedWith Sen. Bernie Sanders on the road for Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, which won its August primary.
Design and narrative · California Alliance for Fair Living StandardsThe ballot measure toolkitOne ballot guide laying out where the Alliance stood and why. Props 1, 3 and 39 all won.
Creator video · Housing California“Why does this still feel like I can’t afford to live in my hometown?”A San Francisco creator puts the fair living standards frame in her own words.
Creator video · Housing CaliforniaMaking the case for the measuresCreators carried the Alliance’s positions to voters who don’t read ballot guides.
Production · Working Families PartyThe New York state conferenceWe produced the conference and led its media and influencer strategy, with members and creators on camera about what costs too much.
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03 · Case study III
Family values
Thesis
Mothers and working women changed the conversation, in their own voices.
For decades “family values” has been used to narrow the lives of women and families. In 2026, with diversity recast as discrimination and Black women pushed out of work faster than anyone, the fight over what family means was cultural before it was political. So we went where culture is made: to 50 micro-influencers, most of them mothers and working women, who made the case from their own kitchens and cars for paid leave, reproductive freedom, care for mothers, and fair pay and dignity at work.
We ran the program for The 75 Million campaign and the National Partnership for Women & Families, briefing creators on the moment, from the Dobbs anniversary to the Listening to Mothers report, and letting them tell it their way.
50creators
1M+views
10%engagement rate
The creative · Scroll the phone
The creator is talking about the results of a survey of 4,000 mothers, and the policies that matter most to them.
The creator is talking about paid family leave, holding her newborn in the hospital.
The creator is talking about maternal mortality, and why Black women deserve to be heard.
The creator is talking about the impact of public policy, and why it matters to women.
The creator is talking about the changes to the EEOC, and what they mean for women at work.
The creator is talking about America at 250.
The creator is talking about her journey from feeling politically disengaged, when politics felt hard to understand or like it didn’t affect her, until it did.
Real people, speaking directly to the people who trust them.
Each creator took one idea and made it personal. Scroll the phone to see what each one talked about.
04 · The Election Day finale
The People’s Desk
A people-powered Election Day broadcast on the Justice Broadcasting Network, anchored by Joy-Ann Reid and W. Kamau Bell.
On November 3, everything the season built went live at once. Organizers, clergy and community leaders reported from their own polling places, from the first ballot in Georgia at 7 a.m. to election night, when Joy-Ann Reid and W. Kamau Bell took the desk.
Brand identityWe created The People’s Desk: its name, look and voice, carried across every promotion partners shared.
BookingWe booked the correspondents, organizers and clergy who reported live from communities across the country.
Live · Election Day morningFrom the pollsNsé Ufot at the desk with Alexis Boss reporting live from outside a polling place in Georgia.
Brand identityElection Night Live with Joy-Ann ReidOne of the promotional graphics from The People’s Desk identity we created.
Live · Election nightElection night coverageJoy-Ann Reid and W. Kamau Bell with Pastor Michael McBride of Live Free, Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party and Nsé Ufot.
Brand identityThe preshow with W. Kamau BellThe second graphic in the series, shared by partners the weekend before Election Day.
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05 · The studio and our partners
Soft Power Studio is a creative communications agency shaping the American imagination through story, strategy, and design.
We bring the political fluency and organizing instincts of movement builders together with the creative ambition, cultural intelligence, and executional excellence of a world-class creative agency.
From narrative architecture and national campaigns to iconic visual identities, major events, and digital storytelling, we help mission-driven organizations turn bold ideas into cultural influence, public engagement, and measurable impact.
