Atlanta rap superstar Lil Jon's epic performance of his classic “Turn Down for What” during the Georgia roll call at the Democratic National Convention in August wouldn't have happened without veteran social impact strategist Ashley Spillane. After seeing “from the window to the Walz” memes about Kamala Harris' vice president pick Tim Walz (a play on Lil Jon's 2003 hit “Get Low”) go viral, Spillane got to work. Drawing on both her pop culture and political connections, Spillane, who served as president of Rock the Vote, the nonprofit organization founded in 1990 to increase voter turnout among voters ages 18 to 24 years — was able to join forces with Tamar Juda, Lil Jon's longtime publicist, and key members of the Harris and DNC team to create one of the liveliest moments of the political season.
Connecting pop culture to civic responsibility has long been a sweet spot for Spillane, who founded his D.C.-based creative and social impact agency, Impactual, in 2016. Since then, the company has worked on myriad initiatives, particularly during the 2020 election. To address the shortage of poll workers during the pandemic, for example, Impactual helped deliver 1.4 million snacks to voters stuck in endless lines at 3,265 polling locations across the country through a national food truck program, “Democracy is Delicious,” and facilitating a partnership with UberEats. . Impactual's efforts have generated over 100 media placements across the ideological spectrum: from Time at Fox News. And the company has worked with more than 40 celebrities, including Lady Gaga and Tracee Ellis Ross, on endorsements.
This election season, Spillane has expanded his company by adding a new entertainment division that will work “directly with athletes, artists and celebrities to advise and support them in building their own social responsibility and civic engagement initiatives,” he says. The division will also work with nonprofit organizations to connect them with prominent cultural figures who can help “elevate their causes.”
To help with this expansion, Spillane tapped Marc Keiser, who has dressed professional athletes with Keizer Clark, the fashion brand he co-founded, as director of athlete and artist engagement, and Michael B's former chief of staff . Jordan CiCi James as director. of involvement of artists and celebrities.
Ashley Spillane
Kris Connor/FilmMagic
“I founded Impactual because I saw this extraordinary power that cultural institutions have, ranging from large employers to celebrities to social media platforms, [in] drive positive change in the world,” says Spillane.
Spillane was introduced to community engagement and civic responsibility as a child, in West Hyannisport, Massachusetts. “I remember going to meetings and helping my parents, who were like street captains, delivering flyers home about upcoming meetings or ice cream on the beach,” he says. “It wasn't about doing a real door-to-door search for a candidate or anything like that, but, from an early age, I was excited about being an organizer. I was about seven or eight years old [when] I started a small city newspaper for our neighborhood. I would sit outside the post office and hand it out.” He also recruited his colleagues to train the junior editorial team and deliver the newspaper. This continued at his small Catholic high school, where he got several friend groups and small businesses to support his many causes.
She attended George Washington University in Washington, where she was drawn to foreign affairs, thanks to a beloved cousin in the foreign service, whom her family visited in Senegal, among other far-flung locations. Being accepted into the school's women's leadership program and living in a girls' dormitory, where she interacted with Muslim and Arab women after 9/11 and at the start of the Iraq War, made her see “the impact that national elections could have on the international scene.” community.”
“I was considering interning in Jordan during the summer of 2004, when a mentor told me that if I really wanted to make an impact on Middle East politics, I should work on a presidential campaign. So I did,” he says. Spillane delayed her graduation and volunteered for John Kerry's presidential campaign, which gave her life a new direction. In the (then) battleground states of Ohio and Florida, Spillane says she “fell in love with our political process and loved being out there and talking to voters and helping everyone make their voices heard, and I've since continued to do it, which is crazy, because it's been 20 years.
Serving as president of Rock the Vote from 2014 to 2016 “was an eye-opening experience” for Spillane, who combined his love of music, pop culture and politics to effect change at the grassroots level. Taking a cue from Lil Jon's then-relatively recent success, Spillane and his team organized the major “Turn Down for What” concert in Atlanta for the 2014 midterm elections, led by then-emerging rappers Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug . Although Lil Jon did not perform, he was visible through Rock the Vote commercials and other outreach efforts. But that concert showed Spillane what social capital can achieve. Not only did the show attract a huge crowd of young people, many of them marginalized, but the two rappers also registered to vote, giving their fans the cover to follow suit. Under Spillane's supervision, Rock the Vote also convinced Kendall Jenner to register to vote on Instagram. Spillane is credited with revitalizing the organization through digital marketing campaigns and other efforts in the wake of the viral Turn Out for What campaign.
For Spillane, nothing better illustrated the potential political influence of cultural figures than Donald Trump's successful turn from businessman and Apprentice reality star to the president. “I think Trump's victory in 2016 made people realize not only the impact that pop culture can have, but also that They could have,” he says. The success of Trump's incendiary presidential bid indirectly led to Impactual's first big break. NBCUniversal cable network chief Bonnie Hammer hired the company, Spillane says, because she “wanted to bring back the Erase the Hate campaign to try to combat the rise [of] really harmful rhetoric, actions and some violence after the 2016 election.”
By joining forces with philanthropic partner Democracy Fund, Impactual helped Hammer and his team “identify the right nonprofit partners,” Spillane says. And they “worked with the company’s social impact team to create a research-based strategic plan and supported the creative agency in creating PSA content.”
Throughout 2024, Spillane continued to demonstrate the effectiveness of using celebrities and influencers to engage youth. In addition to Lil Jon's viral DNC moment that was broadcast nationally, his bipartisan nonprofit, the Civic Responsibility Project, staged Party to the Polls The Purple Tour in 16 states, many of them battleground areas, with the main goal of getting people excited about elections. process. The tour's 50 events covered a variety of activities, including voting, registering voters, obtaining absentee ballots and more. Poll workers were also celebrated.
With election season (almost) over, Spillane is ramping up the new entertainment division, the client list for which he promises to reveal in time. “Artists, athletes and celebrities are incredibly talented and expert individuals in their respective fields, but social impact work can be new and uncharted territory for them. This is where we come in,” he says, identifying the need. “We can fuse our expertise in social responsibility and civic engagement with their desire to create change, and we know how to turn their ideas into real impact .”
After a decade of experience leveraging celebrities to serve a higher calling, not to mention 20 years of experience in grassroots civic engagement, Spillane is still excited about the future. Having a daughter was her personal turning point. “We must do more. We have to fight harder for everyone's children,” he says. Now he never asks her why at Impactual: “We'll do it for her.”