The Polaris are hosted by European Association of Political Consulting, the region’s most prestigious professional association in the organising business, so we’re extremely proud of these awards (adding to our recent honour of winning the Best International Firm at this year’s Reed Awards).

In the days preceding our receipt of these prestigious awards, Tectonica took part in the EAPC 2019 Conference. The event was an important gathering of the most important innovators across Europe in the organising landscape. As part of the event, our Chief Creative Officer, Mar Spada, gave a masterclass on how to put design to work for digital campaigning. Our Principal of Strategy, Ned Howey, was also invited to give a talk on how using organising in digital is the key to unleashing the power of grassroots movements.

Our Work for Groen

In 2017, Belgium’s Groen reached out to us with the challenge of revamping their digital presence. With the opportunity to position themselves as the representative voice of Flemish progressive politics in the 2018 local elections, they decided to step up their digital organising in order to build trust in their governance. That’s why they trusted Tectonica to create their digital presence from scratch, relying on our experience creating strategies and digital products for progressive movements.

In December 2017, we launched Belgium’s Groen new website. This included the Party’s main site as well as theme template for over 170 local-level sites, both running on NationBuilder’s powerful tools. This project set a new standard for political parties worldwide: it combined a clean and usable design with the possibility of building a movement through digital organising.

The site’s interface uses an engagement method that is unique and incredibly effective by grouping information into clusters around issues: a story related to the issue, the party’s official stand, and related petitions that site visitors can immediately engage with. To propel this, we created a streamlined user experience. We created a simplified navigation so that users can move through the large site easily and perform actions related to the strategic priorities of the party.

Groen’s digital strategy had a transformative effect on their local election results. As more users joined the online hub, the party’s polling number improved. Groen achieved remarkable results: enormous gains in Antwerp and Brussels, and very positive results in a number of key cities, including Ghent, Mechelen and Leuven. These gains have allowed Groen to enter a number of additional majorities. 14 out of the 19 Brussels' communes have green (deputy) mayors. Groen is participating in the local majority of the university city of Leuven for the first time in history and almost doubled its presence in local elections from the previous year. We were honoured to have this recognised at the Polaris Awards.

Joining EAPC annual conference was an incredible experience. We exchanged experiences with fellow campaigners and met many of the industry’s most important voices. It was an honour to be recognised by the organisation with two Polaris awards.